I spoke with my friend the other day and he said that he applied to Northwestern ED and the Huntsman Program ED at UPenn also. When I asked him how he did it, all he said was that it was legal but a complicated process. My school has a pretty good rep, so I doubt my guidance counselor would allow anything shady. So my question is: is there in fact a way to apply to two programs ED? I know the admissions rules for the Huntsman dual-degree are a bit different than applying to just a single college at Penn, maybe that’s it?
You cannot apply ED to two schools. You can do ED and EA, but not more than one ED.
That’s… actually a good question. I know a good number of people who applied ED to Northwestern and another school, but I never really questioned it. It’s not just your friend though, other people do this. And not just with special programs. There’s gotta be some reason for it.
What does a student do if both schools accept them?
You are not supposed to have two ED applications at the same time.
However, a student may apply ED to one school, get deferred or rejected, then apply ED to some other school after the first school’s ED agreement is no longer in effect due to deferral or rejection.
This previous post might be related. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1960022-binding-policies.html
There is ED I and ED II at some schools. Or they may have applied EA, or early in a rolling admissions process. I can’t think of other options that are allowed.
The only ethical answer I can think of is that perhaps the person was denied/deferred ED from Penn and then applied in the ED2 round to Northwestern.
The school counselor must sign an agreement when a student applies ED. Counselors risk losing their jobs if they knowingly sign two conflciting ED agreements, so I doubt it was exactly the situation the OP has described. Far more likely to be as other posters have suggested.
@happy1 I didn’t know that Northwestern offers EDII - is it new?
I don’t know…I was just trying to guess at the reason one could ethically apply ED to two schools. I didn’t look up any specifics. Sorry if I misled you.
No, Northwestern doesn’t have ED II, so it really doesn’t seem possible to properly apply to both ED.
The main difference with Huntsman is that if you are rejected from Huntsman you will be fully considered for either Wharton or Arts and Sciences. So it’s very possible someone rejected ED from Huntsman will be deferred to RD for one of those schools. But the applicant won’t know that until Dec. 15, which is too late for regular ED anywhere else.
It could be that Huntsman ED agreements are only binding if you get into Huntsman (not sure about that), but I think they have to be binding if you’re accepted to Huntsman at early decision time.
@Wilson98 Yes but say you got into both Huntsman and Northwestern. Then you would be binded to both. How do you get out of that?
The OP is not applying until next year. I imagine that the OP has a misunderstanding which can be clarified with the friend in question or with his/her guidance counselor…
I hope this is a misunderstanding because any GC who knowingly aided a student in applying to multiple ED1 schools is terrible and is likely to bring strong disadvantage to his or her school’s future applicants.
@marvin100 yeah I hope so. Or else it would negatively affect my application
Colleges that bear such grudges against future applicants from the high school or counselor should really post on their web sites which high schools or counselors are on their auto-reject lists, so that students know beforehand not to bother applying.
Yeah, maybe, @ucbalumnus , but that’s never going to happen and such “grudges” (whose existence can’t be conclusively proven anyway) will never even be confirmed.
Keeping such grudges secret also means that the deterrent effect against counselors enabling ED cheating is also less.
Colleges do not send rejection notifications to every applicant’s GC. They really have no way of knowing where hundreds of kids are applying and to how many schools.