College Deposit Pressure

scirocco
Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:01:27 +0000

Hi,

Thanks, we’ve been out of power and had a minor need for a hospital visit, so I’ve been offline since my last post.

Quick update - College #2 indeed said, and I documented, that no aid offer would be sent without a deposit. I later met with a more senior financial person there and although we didn’t discuss “deposit vs. aid offer”, she did share that their school is in the midst of some upheaval with their aid offer processes. By then, I’d already sent the deposit, so I didn’t bring it up with her and still was thinking this was a normal request and that I was just learning the ropes about the offer/acceptance/aid process.

College #3 replied to my email asking them to clarify what exactly we were committing to. I did not say that we might withdraw and request the deposit back, however, they figured out that was what I meant, and replied that if we declined their acceptance and requested our deposit back, the housing form would be invalidated at that point. This certainly is not what the forms say. I’m still not sending the forms back yet.

I do want to be sure everyone reading my posts understands that the mandatory deposit requirement and the housing form commitment were from two different schools, just I received them about the same time.

I thank martina99 for her outrage, it is very helpful to me and justifies my panic over misunderstanding the whole process. I also want to thank Northeastmom for her posting in this thread the links to the NACAC guidelines as well as her recommendation that this subject of deposits and commitments become a sticky on the financial section of CC.

This part of the process seems to be underdiscussed in the “college presentations” so popular at our high school. There is only a focus on how to apply to college, how to be accepted, and how to finance (FAFSA-centric, unfortunately). No one ever discussed sitting tight until after all acceptances and offers were in before responding with a deposit. No one ever mentioned that letters would be sent from colleges pressuring for early commitments.