Exactly. And someone made that point in the article in the OP.
I agree with this too. Not sure about the great harm point, but why force a student to attend a college they don’t want to attend? The student can transfer after one semester with no penalty (ethical or otherwise), so what’s the point of that? No one ‘won’, certainly not the college. Nor the student of course.
Again, I’m not advocating for people not behaving ethically and obviously being advised to do so. But whatever the number of kids that reneg on ED is, it’s just not in the top things that make me crazy about college admissions.
Some of the posters are clearly encourage the students to break the ED agreements freely and use ED as shopping around tool. That is the only take home message from these posters.
Not a false equivalency at all. The principle is the same.
Let Tulane require a refundable deposit in advance if they want to attach a financial penalty to the ED application so they can impose a penalty without suing. I’d have no problem with that.
I might argue a student has a reasonable chance of admission through EA but the chance of admission is MUCH greater through ED. When any school weighs a particular tranche of applications as more important - it’s going to drive applicants to submit through that channel. Yes, ED has much greater implications to it.
So I’m not clear of your argument - are you anti-ED AND anti-waitlist?
My problem is with a school artificially boosting its selectivity rating by taking extreme numbers from ED and thereby blocking RD as a reasonable option. I don’t think that was ever the intent if ED and that doing so is an abuse of the system by a college which engages in such a practice.
Not really. Look at some other schools that go to WL’s - it can be huge numbers. At the point they’re making the offers most applicants have moved on and are well on their way to planning and attending wherever they deposited. They might have to accept 400 from the WL to fill 10 spots (a number that no one reports in the CDS).
And WL admittance can be hugely variable one year to the next.
Tulane does offer non-restrictive EA. So it’s not just a choice of ED or RD.
But, I’m not defending Tulane’s admission practices. I definitely don’t support them ‘punishing’ HS students who did nothing wrong. In general, people in higher ed have been incredibly critical of what Tulane did, as detailed in the article in the OP.
So what % would constitute “non-abuse”? This is all opinion. Where you would call it abuse someone else might not. And where you draw the line someone else might say it’s still abuse.
If the expectation is they should be accepting the ~same % of applicants through ED that they do through other types - then what would be the purpose of ED? Yes, I know some school %'s are very similar so they clearly see some purpose in it but as an applicant what would the difference be?
And I’ll reiterate what I said further up at the start of this chain - not defending Tulane at all - I don’t love the ED practice either and how much they rely on it (I think the yield conversation is silly). But I am in favor of any private institution putting in whatever strategy they believe best suits them within the bounds of the law. There’s plenty of other options out there for consumers.
I’m not going to debate how high the number is, so I’ll happily remove the word “incredibly” from my post. My point was that it wasn’t an isolated case or two. They encouraged hundreds of applicants to break their agreement with other schools because it would benefit them.
And lose their deposit - which could be $1,000 or more. And it becomes a big round-robin with the schools… Johnny got accepted to X but was holding out hope for Y… gets into Y from the WL and it opens a spot at X to which they go to the WL and accept Suzie who withdraws from Z.
This has almost certainly been discussed elsewhere, but just in case it isn’t clear, the ED agreement is not an enforceable contract under contract law. It’s just an agreement.
One of my kids “benefitted” from ED but I still think it’s not an appropriate practice for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, even with all of big data behind their enrollment management consultants, colleges still cannot come up with a better way to determine which applicants are virtually certain to enroll (yield).
No student got sued. And no suit would stand up since there is no contract and there is no financial damage.
If you don’t like Tulane’s ED policy? Don’t apply to Tulane.
You don’t like the unethical behavior of Colorado Academy? Don’t send your kids to Colorado Academy.
You have a current student attending Colorado Academy who is impacted by the one-year ban? Pull them out. And or/sue the school.
Want to revive a thread that’s been dormant for 2 months about an issue that likely has facts not yet publicly revealed? Be my guest. But as is often the case on these threads, saying the same thing over and over won’t change anyone’s opinion.
I’d suggest rephrasing the line about CA. There’s no evidence of “unethical behavior” at CA, and even Tulane’s statements say the counselors there were acting professionally. The way it’s phrased suggests it’s factual.
Okay then. In order to provide context to others who might have missed it, here’s what Tulane’s statement says:
“at each of the schools where we’ve placed a reluctant pause on considering Early Decision Agreements, their college counselors have been nothing but professional and have attempted to steer their students toward ethical decision-making.”
Can you share where you saw this? I looked through about the first 70 posts and didn’t see Tulane’s message. The NY Times article in the first post shared this from Tulane:
In a statement to The New York Times, Tulane said Colorado Academy had failed to uphold the expectations of the early-decision agreement. “A last-minute withdrawal without explanation unfairly impacts other applicants who may have missed opportunities due to the limited number of early-decision offers a university can make,” the university said.
Tulane added that the one-year ban allowed “student counselors to enact a process that ensures their students fully understand the binding nature of early-decision agreements before signing them.”
