I don’t think this is true at my kids’ schools which are similar to CA. If the kid is released from the obligation that is different.
I believe that the kids at these schools get a huge advantage from the very personalized college counseling. The admissions teams put a lot of trust in the LOR’s, and the counselors help the kids apply ethically (well other than the whole ethical question of providing some kids this help when public school students don’t get it) and strategically. When a counselor violates that trust and those ethics, it seems reasonable that the advantage goes away.
If the situation is as it seems, and there isn’t some other factor, then I think CA should probably fire the counselor, and that should restore Tulane’s trust.
There are several interesting points here. First, in the article it says “So when Tulane quietly placed Colorado Academy, a private high school in Denver….” this indicates that the whistleblower was likely someone at CA. That, IMO is bad form. Additionally, with so many students from CA attending Tulane, Tulane is unlikely to want to shoot itself in the foot for no reason. So, IMO as others have said, there has to be more to the story. Maybe CA and the other 3 schools given the 1 year ED “pause” had been warned previously and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
There used to be “stories” that AO’s at some top schools would communicate with some of the other top schools’ counselors if a student reneged without good cause on an ED acceptance, especially late in the game, and “reportedly”, in some cases, the student’s other acceptance (that they chose over the ED) was rescinded if it was discovered that the student did this and violated the ethical agreement. Now, the Common App explicitly states “that if a student is accepted under an Early Decision plan, the institution may share the student’s name and early commitment with other institutions.”
Many of those schools are known for their generous FA, and if a student “wants” to compare FA offers, they shouldn’t apply ED. It’s pretty simple. No one is holding gun to their heads to apply ED. They are doing so to increase their chance of admission. There is, IMO, a big difference between what a student/family CAN pay vs. what they WANT to pay. If a student gets an ED acceptance that they can afford (even if they don’t “want” to pay that much), then they are done. If the ED FA offer differs significantly from what they got when they ran the NPC, then they can request a review or decline the ED and stick with their other completed applications where they were hoping to get more $$. Yes college is in many cases ridiculously expensive. But if you apply ED and can afford to attend with the offer they made, then it seems distasteful to claim they (the schools, Common App, SCOIR and the Higher ed Financing Consortium/COFHE) did something wrong to “deprive” them of other opportunities. I hope that suit gets tossed in summary judgment, TBH.
To add: We have seen many schools close due to cost constraints, and there are other factors (to be better discussed in the political forum) affecting schools’ funding. If wealthy students and their families feel they should sue b/c they don’t want to pay their cost to attend, well cry me a river.
My kid went to a private school, and the CCs made a huge deal about what the obligations were for an ED applicant. They also emphasized that other students at the school could be negatively impacted in future years by a bad actor. I doubt anyone was surprised, including current CA parents. Ime, schools are pretty forthcoming about expectations and responsibility to the community.
If there isn’t already another thread about that lawsuit trying to squash early decision (I was going to type “squash ED” but that looked “wrong”, LOL), maybe we should start one so as not to derail this one too much. Lots to unpack in that lawsuit, where they refer to it repeatedly as the “Early Decision conspiracy”, that the common app uses “scare quotes”, calls ED a “scheme”, and it seems they want to do away with ED, which they say violates antitrust laws.
In reading this thread, and thinking about it, I think “good for Tulane”.
I also do not know what prompted to Tulane to take this step. Like some others who have commented, I am figuring that they must have had some good reason to do this.
I am not a fan of ED. However it is supposed to be a tradeoff. The student needs to make up their mind early and commit, without even knowing whether they get in. In return they might get an improved chance to be admitted. If they want the university to live up to the university’s end of ED, then the student needs to live up to their end.
I think that Tulane’s move here helps to bring fairness back for the students who choose not to apply ED.
All 100+ seniors can’t go to Yale, but it is easy for none to go to Tulane, even for none to go to Tulane for 3-5 years in a row. I think in Denver the ‘prize’ school is Stanford and a lot of kids try to get recruited to Stanford or schools like Pepperdine as they love the sunshine.
I’ll ask at bridge this week if the former counselor has any idea of what happened.
Yes, my mistake. Pre-k is $33k per year, k-5 $37k, and middle and high school $42k.
But tuition for private schools in Denver is a lot lower than on either coast. When we moved from Denver to California, the catholic school tuition (hs) for my kids was double - and then I got to pay for sports, which were at least triple.
Read the whole thread and am struggling to see where Tulane is in the wrong. Whatever happened to “A deal’s a deal?” My assumption is that the student who backed out wasn’t as transparent as they should have been. There are in fact explicit circumstances under which one can back out of ED, and my read is that the student didn’t qualify. My between the lines is that there should have been more guidance on implications from the school itself, given that they have to sign off on the ED docs and given that they presumably have a history and relationship with Tulane. Seems a betrayal of trust.
I’m with @Mashinations. The ire should be directed at the school, not Tulane.
I see no way this is about one kid. The little info we have suggests this is also not about kids rescinding for legitimate reasons like financial or emergency change in circumstances. I agree that independent schools of this type know that unjustified bailing on ED can have consequences for future students. My kid’s school makes this crystal clear to the parents and kids. I have no issue with what Tulane did here based on the info we have. This year’s kids can still apply EA.
I wonder if it was an athlete who in the past would have signed an NLI but now NCAA rules allow students to jump schools and not require a year to sit out.. The ED contract would still be binding even if the NLI is not.