Our son did not have any ED or binding EA schools on his list. I only know our experience at Choate. Other BS parents, please chime in.
What is a âbinding EAâ school?
no binding schools
@ChoatieMom and @dowzerw
These unwritten ârulesâ and âcourtesiesâ of the college admissions process are not somehow unique to BS - we have the same policies at our private day school. Students are all advised to pull any pending applications and notify schools ASAP when a decision has been reached - this is all incorporated unofficially under the âhonor codeâ umbrella.
I think rather that these ârulesâ and âcourtesiesâ are hallmarks of an expert guidance counselor who has developed strong relationships with schools and personal relationships with the students. He/she is able to guide the student in creating an appropriate list of schools that âfitâ, then presenting a complete, cohesive picture to colleges. Consequently, there really is not that much overlap and these âapply to all Iviesâ scenarios just donât happen, students are usually accepted at their first choice school and waitlists are rare.
Nicely said, Stig.
BTW, I never meant to imply the âall student to all iviesâ scenario, just that the BS gates the apps to those highly selective schools, so there are students who will be encouraged to apply to âmore appropriateâ colleges and not waste an application. To those who think that one of the highly selective BS will give them a leg up to those highly selective colleges, that may not be the case. A given student may be academically qualified (most of the BS population at these schools is), but will not receive support for an application the BS knows is not going to be productive. Not so much a ârule,â just SOP.
Isnât this more about the GC wanting to preserve the BS relationship with elite colleges where a student might withdraw for a waitlist opportunity than what is best for that individual student? I wonder why colleges ever give elite BS students spots on college waitlists at all if this rule is actually followed. Except courtesy waitlists for legacies, of course, which probably abound.
@ChoatieMom - oops sorry, I didnât think you were implying that! I was trying to say the scenario where one student would âapply to all eight Iviesâ is highly unlikely with an experienced counselor (BS or not). I agree that a student would be guided to an appropriate list and it may happen to include Ivy league and highly selective schools. A savvy counselor knows to which schools an acceptance is likely, but âreachâ schools are a reach for pretty much everyone.
@ChoatieMom and @TheStig2: Why are we presenting effects/results of effective college counseling as ristricting ârulesâ again?
To get back to the topic of prep school waiting listsâŠ
@ChoatieMom-
I have deep respect for the advice youâve given on other threads but what youâre saying here just doesnât match up with our experience. My kids have had friends who have been on many independent school waiting lists, including Choateâs and theyâve all been open about the other schools to which theyâve been admitted. None of my kids have remained on a waiting list, so I have no investment in defending the practice of accepting a second offer after signing a contract with another school.
We were told to contact schools immediately to be taken off the waiting list if the student would not attend the school if admitted, IOW, if they already had a better offer in hand. Otherwise they were free to stay on any waiting lists.
Weâve heard from both secondary school counselors and DOAâs at GLADCHEMS schools that there are two main periods for waiting list movement-April, after the initial contracts are due and early July when the first major payment is due, and that these have a cascading effect as students move from one school list to another. At least once we were told this in a panel discussion with half a dozen private school DOAâs.
Furthermore, Iâve seen this among my childrenâs classmates. âI was going to NMH but Hotchkiss called in July so Iâll be heading to Connecticut.â Knowing how much my kidsâ K-8 values its relationships with these schools I canât imagine them counseling families to do something contrary to good admissions manners.
This is from an admissions counseling website:
That is why I asked other BS parents to chime in. Thanks for posting.
FWIW: FormerCK was not waitlisted at any BS or colleges. We simply got the general e-mail during the CC process encouraging applicants to withdraw apps/remove from waitlists after acceptances were made
I believe that, in business, ârulesâ are not legally binding and itâs therefore not unethical to ignore them. Written policy and ârulesâ created from rumors or the random wishes of people who wish they were in charge are vastly different things. If schools donât forbid certain actions, then the decisions I make are based on what furthers my childrenâs interests, not their guidance counselorâs and certainly not the parents of the kid whoâs position on the waitlist is going to improve every time they pressure another family to drop out of the running.
(Emphasis mine)
The well to do are permitted to stay on waitlists but the poor are not, simply because theyâre poor? What schools allow that? Please provide the school name(s) and written policy name/ID number(s) so that I can verify this information. It is openly discriminatory against low income families to hold them to a different standard than families who donât need financial aid. Schools can require families to accept scholarships before a certain date, but even then (and even if itâs ED) if finances donât work out families can change their minds and enroll the student in a different school. However, itâs morally reprehensible to discriminate against people based on income.
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@PhotographerMom said:
I am a new BS parent and my experience in the 2015-2016 cycle was most similar to that of @Sue22. DD applied to 7 selective schools, was admitted to 5, and waitlisted for 2. I went back to read the language of the admission contracts - they all had varying deposits due A10 that would be forfeited in the event you donât attend the school.
None contained any language stating that we were to remove our name from any waitlists nor did we receive any verbal or written communication that removing our name from a waitlist was a rule. As far as I know âif a school offers you a full ride or FAâ is completely irrelevant - the contract terms do not change if you receive aid.
FWIW, DD had 5 acceptances in hand and did not accept a spot on the waitlist at the other 2 schools. However, I still received a call from 1 of the 2 schools well into the summer that there was an opening and asking if DD would be interested. DD wasnât, but I never once thought that the school was unethical or trying to âpoachâ a student from another school. I simply assumed a slot became available and DDâs strengths happen to best correlate with the needs the school was trying to fill in her class. Obviously, another studentâs circumstances changed for there to be movement. If, for whatever reasons, we had determined that this unexpected opening would be a better âfitâ for DD, I personally donât believe it would be unethical to accept. We want DDâs school needs to be met as fully as possible, just as the school is trying to best fill its needs in a particular class.
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I think this is about the money⊠the âruleâ is based on the idea that the student who needs FA has been lifted out if their dire circumstances by the magnanimous full pay families and donors at the boarding school, and (unlike their own full pay little snowflakes), are not allowed to accept an offer from a school they might prefer more. Ungrateful little urchins â how dare they!!
Nothing but snobbery⊠We are full pay this year at the most expensive college in the country (my kidâs first choice, she would not trade it for any other school), and I do not begrudge any admitted freshman with need or merit based aid if they got an waitlist offer from HPYSM and took it after May 1. Wouldnât feel any different if it was BS.
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In our case, a few schools wrote on M10 DS was on the waitlist and asked to contact the school only if DS wanted to stay on the waitlist. We wrote to the schools that we wanted to stay on waiting and we did not contact those schools that we no longer wanted.
Some of the schools kept on contacting though. Why ask only to write if interested and then keep contacting.
I think it is about time that anyone claiming that there is some legal obligation, formal rule or otherwise specified standard about withdrawing from wait lists needs to provide such proof or quit claiming it is so. As far as some understood standard of behavior for boarding schools that differentiates them from colleges, that is very hard to demonstrate and, given the significant number of people in this and other threads that have never heard of that standard and were never made aware of it, seems to be dubious at best. As others have said, the wait lists have very little meaning if these standards were true. @ChoatieMom said
That doesnât quite make sense to me. So a person on the wait list for School A that they really want, but is already accepted to School B, is supposed to have to make the decision to take the sure thing of School B or, on the hope they get the call from School A, risk missing the notification deadline at School B, lose their spot, and potentially have no place to go (except public school of course)? That makes zero sense to me. I can promise you that in that latter scenario School B is then using their wait list to fill that studentâs place and they donât care if the student they offer it to has already deposited somewhere else. I can say this because they sure donât ask the question first to rule out making offers to people that have committed to another school.
The wait list system is one that has been around a long time and works very well with taking people that have already deposited elsewhere. The student tells School A yes, please and tells School B they are not coming after all, forfeiting their deposit. School B then gets one off their wait list that perhaps was committed to School C, they say yes to B and C then goes to their wait list, snagging a kid that in fact either continues the domino chain or was not accepted elsewhere and was headed for public school and is now in School C, and the last domino has fallen. There is nothing remotely unethical about any of this. The schools themselves have set up the system.
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I will add a bit to the end of my post and say that what would be highly impolite or even rude, although I would have a hard time with unethical, is not telling School B that you have decided not to go there after all immediately upon signing with School A. I did want to make that clear. Some people might define that as unethical and while I wouldnât agree, I wouldnât put up a very strenuous counter argument either.
@intparent: I agree if there was such a âruleâ, your interpretation would be absolutely right. But for the record, there is NOT such a rule. It only exists in some peopleâs imagination.
Slightly off topic - there are not that many ârulesâ inside BS that are so secretive, arcane or hard to crack after all. Like many institutions in todayâs open society, much of the operation of prep schools is pretty common sense driven if you will.
Well⊠it may be a rule in the minds of families whose kids have gone to BSs for generations.
Third generation prep schooler here with kids who attend/ed different schools and a father who was Head of the Board at one. No such rule of which Iâm aware.
Following up on Panpacificâs post, prep schools are not interested in playing some sort of game to see who can guess what they want. If it was important to them that you not remain on waiting lists after accepting their offer theyâd tell you just that.
I donât think this is unethical, but it may be in the best interest of the student to go to the school that loved them first. They may not be quite cut out for the other school that they got off the waitlist. I think Iâve just really taken to heart the âlove the school that loves youâ. Of course, I have not been through this yet, so dream school gives me a call off their waitlist, I may not be able to say no. The first gem school would have someone else they could then offer the spot + FA or whatever to a new person. Itâs not like they would have no other students to bring to their school. Itâs really not that different from getting an offer from one school and turning it down. Lots happens over the summer. You lose your deposit as people say.