A lot of colleges now will admit you early but in return you agree to go to that school . You only apply for the early decision at 1 school.
What happens if you get in and then change your mind and want to go elsewhere? I assume the school just gets ticked off . But does this cause you any problems going to another school?
There is also a non-binding option called Early Action at many schools.
I don’t know if they actually would, but the school could take you to court for breach of contract.
In most cases they allow you to say no if you cannot afford to attend.
I think some colleges have banded together to make a common and streamlined admissions process–I imagine you could get "blacklisted " among those schools.
It is a contract, but few schools will try to enforce it. They can generally fill the spot, anyway, and it looks bad if they take you to court.
I was 17 when I applied for – and got – early; I’m guessing a lot of kids did likewise, since, y’know, early; I don’t know if that makes breach-of-contract stuff hard for them, but I do know they ask for a nonrefundable deposit, which seems sensible.
They will let you off the hook for financial reasons, or if you have a really compelling reason-like your dad dies, and you need to stay near your mom. If they get even a whiff that you were gaming the system-Applied ED at a safety but didn’t intend to honor it-they will punish your high school by becoming very reluctant to take any lids from that school for several years. This discourages schools from supporting kids in later applications, such as sending in recs, and encourages schools to pressure kids to honor that commitment if they manage to get accepted anyway.
Really nothing happens.
I work at a fairly selective school, and the process is decent for the people reading your Early Decision application to figure out how enthusiastic the applicant is about attending the school. Sure, you could fake the enthusiasm, but every year our numbers are just about what we predict for how many accepted Early Decision applicants actually come, so if we are tricked, we are tricked at the same rate we use in our forecasting. (And we also factor in the rate of people who applied Early Decision in good faith but have some sort of significant life change that precludes them from attending - in my experience, they’re usually sad reasons, like a parent being diagnosed with a terminal illness.) We can re-fill any of those spots from the Regular Decision cycle.
The other thing about Early Decision is that you also have to accept it early, which includes paying a deposit (my school requires both a tuition deposit and a housing deposit if you are planning to live on campus). If you were applying to hedge your bets, and all along planned to apply Regular Decision to another school, you’d have to do that knowing you need to accept your Early Decision and pay prior to knowing whether or not your other schools accepted you, and be prepared to to lose that money.
As far as I know, it’s not the kind of contract that can be enforced by a court. Not that we would bother with that. We can enforce it through our own policies – we would not admit you in the future as a transfer undergrad student, and it’s possible that if you blow us off for Early Decision, we could hang on to that if you decided later in life that you wanted to apply here for graduate school. To be really transparent, we probably wouldn’t bother with that. We’re just not that vested in keeping track of it to that level and for that long.
punishing a high school because of 1 person? That seems way over the top.
With selective schools, the assumption is that the counseling department was complicit. If you know a kid is ED Duke, why did you send in a recommendation for Stanford? And if it happened once and you could explain WHY, it probably won’t be a big deal. But if kids at your school like to apply to Harvard just to see if they could get in-but don’t really want t go–you need to out a stop ro that. It’s wasting everyone’s time.
If you are a school that traditionally sends kids to highly selective schools, you have a relationship with those schools. They send reps in the fall, rhey call for grade updates, they maybe fly you out for counselor tours. You go to conferences together. If you let your kids fuck those people over for shits and giggles, they quit going out of their way for you–and there are always plenty of other talented kids looking for a place. Not taking a kid from school A just means equally talented kid from school B gets in.
If you’re a school that rarely sends kids to selective schools, there’s no relationship to ruin, so it won’t make a dofference.
so the kids are punished due to bad people at the school then? That explanation doesn’t make it any better.
NOTHING about highly selective college admissions is fair. It can’t be . . .too many qualified kids chasing after not enough qualified slots. If a kid is clearly a good match, he will get in. But that means being an Olympic athelete or a successful entrepreneur at 17. But the vast majority of kids who got in displaced other kids just as deserving.
And, honestly, “incompetent advice means you can’t get into selective colleges” is a theme across the field. Guess what happens if transcripts don’t get sent in? Or someone gives a kid inaccurate feedback on a college essay? Or low grades for dumb reasons? Or sends in an honor code flag on the wrong kid? Incompetent adults keep kids out of schools more often than competent ones get them in.
And, again, it’s about harming a counselor/admissions relationship that’s kinda unfair in the first place. Our kids have an advantage at certain schools.because we have a relationship-they know us, they trust our grades, our recs. . Our kids reliably graduate. If we ruin that, we’ve returned our kids to where lots of other kids are. Is that punishment?