Or have the ED applicant send the enrollment deposit with the application fee. The college then refunds the enrollment deposit if the early decision is anything other than admission.
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Some give only 1 week. Also if ED decision comes out mid to late December, the holidays create issues.
How do holidays create issues? Acceptance is very straightforward.
Because the schools don’t really care as much as some of the people on this thread!!!
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@Bettybuddy your public school experience matches ours.
My daughter also asks, “Why can’t they at least just be NICE?” about the counseling office staff. The students at the top of the class are treated as nuisances should they attempt to use the stretched-thin services.
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I was fortunate enough to have $500 in my checking account that I was able to re-purpose from elsewhere to pay the enrollment fee but at most points in my life I probably would have had to wait for my next paycheck. I assume this is one reason the colleges give a couple weeks to a month to respond. I think people on CC who are mostly financially very well off (whether it feels that way or not) don’t see $500 as a significant sum, but to most households in the US it is. I’m pretty savvy but somehow I’d forgotten that I’d have to come up with $500 in December if she was accepted. Even if you have a 529, which we do (which I hope to have 50% of our EFC in by the time D starts) it would have taken me quite a while to figure out how to actually take money out rather than put money in (that’s on my list for next summer). I don’t think giving families 3-4 weeks to accept and pay the deposit is unreasonable.
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Well, these families who “manipulate” (I would say lie or cheat) are not hurting the colleges. They are hurting the kids who follow the rules.
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We’ve had the same experience at a large public school in WA. My Senior started off the year with no GC assigned to her letter of the alphabet group. She was told that she couldn’t get any GC letters of rec or any other counseling services until a GC was hired. Talk about adding stress to the college application process. Just as I was about to escalate the issue, a GC was hired at the beginning of October. As you can imagine, the GC was overwhelmed facing a back log of issues. She did to her credit get everything my Senior needed submitted by the various deadlines. Of course, having never met my Senior, being stretched thin and being new to the school , I can only imagine how generic the letter of rec must have been. I’m sure her GC has no idea what colleges she applied to much less if it was ED, EA,RD…
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That stinks. I feel lucky having read some of the posts here. Honestly, I went into the process anticipating limited support and have been pleasantly surprised (we are in a public school as well).
“A GC at a private school or competitive feeder high school could be a gatekeeper, though, and maybe that is where it is most needed because those are the schools doing the most ED apps/monkey business.”
Just wow! I have to say our private school was super diligent about this. They have relationships with these colleges and care seriously about their reputation. And the case loads for each CC are such that they can monitor it.
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Another timely article by Ron Lieber in the NYTimes today, about ED and how many NPCs don’t estimate merit aid. He highlights Northeastern in this article.
Enter Northeastern University in Boston, a prime example of a popular school that does not always predict how much aid many applicants will get — an amount that could swing the final price by $100,000 or more during the undergraduate years. While examining its website in recent weeks, I also noticed that a key statistic that college shoppers need when assessing their odds of aid seemed off by at least 20 percentage points.
Some colleges will predict what merit aid you might get — which they determine by figuring out if they like your grades and test scores or other things about your application — before you sign an early decision agreement. Others, like Northeastern, will not do that in their net price calculators.
Why not? One big reason, according to Sundar Kumarasamy, Northeastern’s vice president of enrollment management, is that these calculators are able to put test scores and grades through some rubric or another to define and predict merit aid — but they have qualitative limitations.
“How would a student who has an art portfolio compete with a person who knows how math and science work and tests well?” Mr. Kumarasamy said. Blockquote
Another notable quote:
“Any student who applies, is admitted ED and finds the financial aid award (need-based or merit-based aid or a combination of both) to be unreasonable has every right to withdraw their application at Conn and pursue higher education options elsewhere,” Andrew Strickler, the dean of admission and financial aid at Connecticut College, said via email. “I fervently support a student’s ability to discontinue their candidacy at Conn under these circumstances.”
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Maybe the NYT article triggered the conversation?
I think there are something like 5 schools that are REA, all of very recognizable names. If a GC doesn’t notice that a student is applying to Princeton, they are not doing their job. But I am fully aware that there are plenty of GC out there that barely interact with the students but that is no excuse for signing something and walking back on it or, even worse, not even reading what they are signing. I think all GC have to sign the ED agreement?
That is a very interesting read. I always assumed that kids who needed merit to afford a school wouldn’t apply ED (knowing that it is binding) but I guess that isn’t the case. How many schools that offer ED also offer merit? Half? More? I know the Ivies don’t, nor do most of the other top 20 schools, but what about the rest?
There are some schools (HYPS) with REA with limitations against applying EA to some other classes of schools in addition to not applying ED anywhere else.
There are some others (Georgetown, Notre Dame) where other EA applications are not restricted, but which do not want REA applicants there to apply ED anywhere else.
I don’t think we even need to pay a deposit at S22’s ED school, Haverford. Probably because of their honor code.
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Late to this and this is highly anecdotal but: the guidance counselors at the privates and publics in my area that have a lot of ED applicants and insanely competitive families would not allow this to happen. You can argue that technically the colleges shouldn’t and wouldn’t hold the actions of an individual against his classmates or future graduates, but the gcs don’t want even a hint of a negative association.
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Sure, 6
Same. There is a story of a student not withdrawing other applications after an ED acceptance, though. The only recourse for the GC would have been to call the schools involved to let them know, but that would have been a pretty aggressive and provocative step. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.
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I would think backing out of ED happens few and far between.
I know when my brother (just applied ED) was told he can back out for financial reasons. When he was accepted there was a glitch with his aid and the FA office knew he couldn’t commit until his package was complete. This took an extra week as there was one item missing from CSS.
After he got into his ED school and received is aid - he was told he needed to withdraw his other applications as soon as possible. and had a short amount of time to submit his deposit.
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