Considering Deposit at Two Universities Due to the Unknown - Anyone Else?

[Bill_Marsh]

@ucbalumnus

@Bill_Marsh

A few years ago (2015?), UC Irvine had 800 more students accept admissions offers than expected. UCI didn’t have room to accommodate them. In late June (!) 500 of those students received letters rescinding their admissions offers.

Ethical? Or just a case of doing what had to be done under extraordinary circumstances? Somehow the University of California found a way to justify that despite what appeared to be an ironclad offer of admission.

It’s a 2-way street.

What they actually did was strictly enforce the stated conditions of admission (submit final high school transcript by a certain date, with a sufficiently high senior year GPA and no D/F grades), rather than the probable leniency given in other years.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-uc-irvine-rescissions-20170728-story.html says that 499 were rescinded in 2017, 290 for transcript issues (probably missing or late final high school transcripts) and the rest (209) for senior year grades or GPA being too low.

@Teresa Watanabe in Los Angeles Times

campus spokesman Tom Vasich conceded that the admissions office was more stringent than usual about checking requirements “as a result of more students accepted admissions to UCI than it expected.”

[…]

Yunek said UCI had revoked acceptances only for students who had not met the conditions of their admission contracts. Those conditions include receiving a high school diploma, maintaining a weighted 3.0 senior-year grade-point average with no Ds or Fs in UC-approved courses and meeting deadlines for submitting all official high school and college transcripts and test scores.

In other years, they may have let slide a slightly late final high school transcript, or a 2.9 senior year GPA. But the conditions of admission did not guarantee such leniency. Just because a clearly stated rule was not enforced the last time does not mean that it will not be enforced the next time.

Ahh . . . the fine print. Somehow it always works out to the school’s advantage, doesn’t it?

And this is the sanitized version, the one released by the college’s PR Department for public consumption after consulting with the lawyers. What they’re basically saying is that they’re perfectly happy to be lax if it allows them to take your money but they will be sticklers if it’s going to cost them.

There’s another POV - that of the parents and prospective students - which isn’t represented in this article. I’ll reserve judgment until I hear their side of it.

This case was cited just as an example of how ethical issues can become complicated depending on the circumstances and of how compromises get made by both sides, not just by parents and students.