That was my D’s HS’s policy even 5 cycles ago.
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I remember sitting in an info session at WashU 3 - 4 years ago and someone asked about applying ED if they weren’t sure they could afford the tuition should they be accepted. They were told not to apply ED then.
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She has been great. When I had a question early this year (my son was floundering in terms of picking schools) she called me at home and spent 1 1/2 hours on the phone with me. I was blown away as it wasn’t what I expected. I feel lucky as I know all the GCs at our school (there are 8 or 9) aren’t equally good.
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I can see where a pattern has developed from a specific high school that colleges will be skeptical of future apps, but what if it’s only one and it hasn’t happened before?
The problem that I see is that the person who commits the crime gets away scot free and the person who ends up getting punished is someone who has no connection to the perpetrator and probably is unaware it even happened. This provides no deterrent.
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Has this ever actually happened? Do you know of actual cases where a student was kicked out later when it was discovered they had reneged on an ED agreement years earlier?
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Maybe schools should make that $5000 non-refundable deposit due with the application. It would be refundable if the student was denied or deferred, but not if they were admitted.
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I am surprised that colleges have not utilized the application platforms (Common App, etc.) to prevent violations. For example, by not allowing a student who has applied REA to Princeton to submit an EA application at UChicago and vice versa. Similarly, a school can furnish a list of students admitted ED to Common App, which can then block any further RD applications by these students.
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I am not hearing on various counselor list servs that backing out of ED is more common this year, but who really knows.
Breaking the ED contract (which is not legally binding) for non-financial reasons is unethical. I am not sure what the schools can do about it, if in fact those walking away from ED increases. I guess we will know if there are more ED breaks when the CDSs come out next year.
I also agree with @me29034…I have never heard of an AO or college administering consequences to a HS if a student or students back out of ED, especially if it’s one here and there.
I would think if that’s happened, a former AO would have said something by now. Further, with the high rate of turnover of all levels within admissions departments, I doubt if a HS were on a bad list that it would persist with the new employees.
How would they know the reason though? Maybe the college is just getting more selective? Maybe the HS’s students have fallen out of favor for other reasons?
My kids’ highly ranked HS a few towns over from yours tracks matriculation in a very detailed manner (it’s publicly available), and over the last 10 years acceptances at highly selective have decreased, in some cases dramatically. I’m pretty sure it’s not because of students breaking ED acceptances.
That will run afoul of antitrust laws.
I am not sure the reasons Common App doesn’t do this, but if they did students could just use Coalition app, or a school’s own app to apply.
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I’ve thought of that. Make the application fee $5000. If you’re accepted it gets applied to your first years tuition. If you are rejected, most of it gets returned. You’d have to make special provisions for people who couldn’t afford the $5000. Maybe run a simple FAFSA EFC and people below a certain level can pay less. It would still take a lot of admin work to sort out the money though.
If this become problematic, and I really don’t think that is happening yet, there are plenty of ways universities can make it more difficult to break ED agreements.
I agree that an occasional applicant backing out of ED won’t trigger a red flag but if it becomes a pattern, that is different.
Some of the shenanigans described in this thread are too reminiscent of the morally repugnant Varsity Blues families for comfort. If all colleges choose not to use Common App, then I would at least have some kind of a database system that all college application systems (Common, Coalition, school-specific) that track ED or REA applications and then blocks other forms until a student clears a block (i.e. turning down an ED). If they’ve said yes and turned in a deposit somewhere, that would be marked in that central database and additional offers/applications would not be allowed.
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@me29034 in the one off case where your school sends a kid or two every few years I don’t think it has much of an impact. Where it could really hurt the HS is where they have developed a relationship. I look at my sons HS and there are 3 or 4 schools where you see acceptance rates much higher than the average, students getting accepted with stats that are lower than the average and year after year enroll a number of students. In that case if there was a pattern of bad behavior I would think it would have a major impact on future students
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Even if the Common App were programmed to prevent apps that violated ED rules, it would not prevent applications made through the Coalition App or independent state app platforms, etc., unfortunately.
If the schools really want to stop it, they would need to create something like the NCAA sports transfer portal I would think.
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A college that sees backing out of ED to be a problem could require the enrollment deposit as part of the application fee for ED (refunded if not admitted in the early round).
Another thing it could do is put the FA application numbers into its NPC and require the ED applicant to acknowledge the result and not be able to back out “for financial reasons” if the actual FA is at least as good as the NPC result.
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The application were correct. Kid didn’t apply to vandy until the RD deferral to Harvard and then the ED2. The wrong was not removing herself from Harvard’s pool and then getting in a messing with Vandy. The high school was appalled and thought that the student had done a withdrawal from everywhere else. Far from ethical. I don’t know if Harvard knows. I only know what the high school told my child also knows a teacher that wrote the student’s rec and the teacher feels horrible too. Not a pretty picture.
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Any rules that decrease/limit student choice in college selection and/or infringe on college recruiting activities are likely going to run afoul of anti-competitive practices.
For a bit of history, NACAC (the counseling and admissions professionals organization) had to drop their mandated Code of Ethics due to a DOJ lawsuit and what remains are non-compulsory best practices guidelines. Guiding Ethics - National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC)
Most AOs and counselors still do take these best practices seriously. For example, an AO would be in violation of these if they penalized innocent HS students for past ED indiscretions of those who had applied before them. Of course, it could still happen…but again, I have never heard of this.
Here are the previous NACAC ethics rules that resulted in the DOJ lawsuit and large fines. NACAC ultimately went beyond just removing these clauses from the mandated code of ethics, and chose to move to the best practices model: https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/about/governance/assembly-intro-final-8.28.pdf
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I don’t think $5,000 application fees is reasonable. It would cause an undue burden to the vast majority of applicants. Even if a kid is only applying to 4-5 colleges, that’s a lot of money. And if fee waivers are based simply on a family’s income level, a lot of people may not qualify for a waiver but yet find the fees unaffordable.
Instead, I think what the college could do is charge a large deposit very soon after an ED acceptance (example, $5,000 within a week). And perhaps, schools can share ED acceptance lists with each other (after admission decisions, not prior to).
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I thought our ED deposits last year were higher than the regular deposit and were do within a short time period.
I meant the $5000 application fee to just be for an ED application. All other applications stay at whatever they are now. That would get a family to think twice about applying ED.
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