<p>Sending in an app to a school promising to attend if accepted was no mistake. If it had been, family could have immediately written ED school asking for discard app. That would have corrected the error.
Op here has had a change of heart because she found a better offer. Not an error. maybe poor judgment, but not an error. Op is now considering actions to deliberately renege on offer and we are debating here the legalities and the ethics of such an action. Unless UCSD had intended to admit students, but just before deadline found others they liked better, then this does not compare. If they did intend to enroll them, but crossed them off because they liked others better, then I would agree that is wrong ethically.
Poetgrl didn’t provide explanation for the UCSD rejection letters so I can’t be sure.</p>
<p>anneroku - there are a lot of good, qualified students out there. If a student turns down one ED because of financial then it’s very likely the same student would have problem accepting similar financial package from another school. If those schools send out their ED list to each other and over 95% of students accept the offer, I don’t see those schools updating their lists. If I were an adcom at one of those schools, I would just load the initial list to my database, and do cross reference once to flag those ED students who have been accepted by other schools. No one would know why I rejected those students.</p>
<p>Dartmouths’ ED program…</p>
<p>No student who needs financial aid is locked in…</p>
<p>[The</a> Dartmouth Free Press : Early Indecision](<a href=“http://www.dartmouth.edu/~thepress/read.php?id=1259]The”>http://www.dartmouth.edu/~thepress/read.php?id=1259)</p>
<p>“Additionally, the extensive financial aid policies Dartmouth offers are all available during the early decision round and students can even appeal their financial aid packages if they feel they do not accurately reflect their needs. Awards are frequently revised in response to new information from families. No student admitted to Dartmouth through early decision is locked in and unable to receive the best financial aid package, Furstenberg said. With over half of the Class of 2010s early decision students applying for financial aid, it does not appear that Dartmouth is making the process unfair for applicants.”</p>
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<p>ClassicRockerDad - </p>
<ol>
<li><p>No I did not take the exact text from the Penn website to the GC’s. We are a well regarded college prep private school with 100% college placement - and at least 10% of our graduating students are Ivy league admits each year. So our GCs are well aware of each colleges policy</p></li>
<li><p>However, I did print out your post and a few of dstarks and I had a chance to see the GC’s at lunch and I asked them about your question. They laughed. Loudly. They can not believe people here are trying to parse words from Penn’s website and try to assign their own meaning to them. They point out a website is not a be all and end all and those giving so much weight to it are crazy. Bottom line per our GCs is that under well understood ED guidelines that clooeges follow, Penn expects anyone applying ED to live by their agreement. The student applying, their parents and their GC have to sign off on said agreement before submitting the application. Any GC in this situation will have discussed the ramifications of said agreement and the pros / cons of applying ED. The student will have been counseled upfront and will know what they are getting into. </p></li>
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<p>Overall they again told me Penn is very generous with FA. While there are rare exceptions where Penn and a student admitted ED may not agree on financial issues, they are indeed rare. But they point out that nothing in the OPs circumstances here changed. They say the offer of a full ride from state school is irrelvant in the process. They see no legitimate financial out. The OP has not even tried in good faith to talk to Penn. It is likely that Penn has met the OP’s need based on objective criteria - and wanting to change to MIT is not ethical.</p>
<p>Finally, they reiterated that the OP is not only putting her Penn ED admit and MIT possible EA admit in jeopardy, but also hurting students at her school for the next several years as she is destroying the school’s and the GC’s credibility</p>
<p>I find it interesting that people who want to believe that the contract begins the moment of acceptance are “listening” to the law arguments one way and using that to support their position and the people that want to believe the contract begins when the financial aid is accepted are using the same arguments to support. I look at it this way, if I have $25,000 to spend and my EFC is $18,000 (retired) or something like that and institutional calculators tell me we can spend $30,000 on college and that is our budget, what can be easily tapped (read can get the money within a month easy), cash, etc. and$30,000 is getting scary and my kid applies ED, is accepted and I receive a package that amouonts to me paying $40,000 or $50,000 I believe I have every ethical right to say sorry my child is not attending that will harm my family. If it came back expecting me to pay $30,000 I’d probably call and tell them that is about $5000 more than we can get our hands on annually and gee if your tuition goes up it’s even more and ask to go over line by line where they perceive the differnce is and maybe we’d be signing if we can work it out. That is the reality for me and I think I’m pretty ethical. If we walked, reneged, breached, call it whatever name you want to call it… I would feel no guilt whatsoever or feel that we had done anything unethical. It is all in good faith until the point of the money discussion I feel and I’m listening and reading the same posts as those that are convinced otherwise.</p>
<p>After reading the more understanding posts on this thread, I can almost hear some HS Junior discussing his college application plans:</p>
<p>“UPenn ain’t my first choice, and I really don’t want to go there anyway. But I’ll be the envy of the school if I do get in ED, and what’s the downside? All I gotta say is the FA offer s*<strong><em>. Besides, it’ll keep the parents off my b</em></strong>. They’ll be too busy bragging to friends that their kid is applying to Penn ED.”</p>
<p>For those who haven’t read this thread all the way through, recall that UPenn’s FA offer to the OP was adequate for her to attend. I believe “Not too horrific” was her exact description … this from a person with every reason to describe the offer in extremely negative terms. And she’s keeping the MIT option open, apparently in expectation that MIT will offer a SIGNIFICANTLY better FA package.</p>
<p>Perhaps the solution to this situation is for colleges to boost the ED application fee to $1500 … refundable if the student is accepted and actually attends. If a student wants the ED boost, that’s the price. At least this would give pause to those who might argue “Hey, what have I got to lose?”</p>
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<p>No one knows this for fact. It’s an assumption. The original question was turning down the ED for a full ride at a state school. The OP never said anything about negotiations. We don’t know anything about what the OP did or will do. All the conversations regarding MIT are assumptions. The OP would not know finaid at MIT until spring and is not bound to any agreement with MIT. The agreement on the table is with Penn. The only thing given at the point of the OP’s question is if she could turn down Penn for a full ride at her state school.</p>
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<p>And this is factually stated where??? Again, an assumption.</p>
<p>“The only thing given at the point of the OP’s question is if she could turn down Penn for a full ride at her state school.”</p>
<p>Of course she can, so long as UPenn doesn’t offer her a full ride. Perhaps, not even if UPenn DOES offer here a full ride. Several posters insist the ED “contract” is unenforceable.</p>
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<p>EXACTLY. Which is why the it is wrong and unethical for those saying it is ok for the OP to back out of her ED agreement with Penn - and keep her EA application with MIT active</p>
<p>“And this is factually stated where??? Again, an assumption.”</p>
<p>Actually it’s supposition. The OP’s many posts on the MIT board … all subsequent to her OP on this thread … warrant that supposition.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys: What you are describing is perfectly legitimate under all the ED contracts I have seen. This would not be reneging or cheating and is not unethical. It would be a clear case of you and the college not coming to an agreement on FA, and therefore a reason for both parties to end the ED contract.</p>
<p>The question still remaining is, after this hypothetical, mutually-acceptable release from ED, it appears that the student is still penalized by remaining on the ED list. If that is true, it seems unfair. Oldfort’s description of the list process makes sense to me, but if true, the applicant will mistakenly remain listed as an enrolled ED student rather than one who was legitimately released.</p>
<p>I believe the student can back out of the UPenn agreement in order to go to the full ride state U, as I said on the first page. I believe Penn would agree to that if they did not in fact choose to up her finaid packet, which given it is Penn, I think they might have done, actually.</p>
<p>I do not think the EA MIT potential acceptance is okay for her to get involved with and said so. But I do believe if ED is to be equal and not only for the wealthy, there has to be a way out for the not as wealthy. Otherwise, I agree they ought to do away with the “need blind” malarky and simply charge the 1500 deposit to apply, refundable upon enrollment or resjection.</p>
<p>berryberry61…</p>
<p>“Overall they again told me Penn is very generous with FA. While there are rare exceptions where Penn and a student admitted ED may not agree on financial issues, they are indeed rare.”</p>
<p>What happens when the rare event occurs. Might be less rare with the economy the way it is these days. So what happens? The student is not bound to the school, is he/she?</p>
<p>And what if I don’t have a counselor from a private college prep school?</p>
<p>In your example momof3, I’d recommend you NOT promise to an ED school, but rather shop and compare then join the best match. The intent of ED isn’t to get a price quickly then compare to others. The intent is to get a definite answer quickly in exchange for promise to attend if accepted.
If you have 25k to spend, why would you promise to enroll in a school when you know the price could be 50k?(Your example) Why would u not wait to see price before u make a committment?</p>
<p>I just can’t agree that choosing to say “I’ll buy it” then after a guy accepts, trying to negotiate a lower price or backing out is right ethically. If you can’t be sure you can buy it without knowing the final price, then don’t offer to buy it until you know the price.</p>
<p>I don’t think we’ll ever find out how this turns out. But I would be interested in hearing opinions people have should the OP spurn UPenn AND spurn the state flagship offer … in order to attend MIT on the same (or worse!) FA as offered by UPenn.</p>
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<p>Dstark - Well if no one knew before you had were unethical, they certainly do now. To applaud such behavior is beyond comprehension</p>
<p>NewHope-- in the spirit of the holidays and with the idea that we don’t simply post here idly, I have chosen to believe that the OPs decsion to REMOVE her posts from the MIT threads is an indication that she intends to honor her UPenn agreement or else go with the state school.</p>
<p>When in doubt, I choose to see the best in people and OP is young and still learning and ascribing all sorts of evil intent as opposed to some minor ignorance, buyer’s remorse (which I have heard is exceedingly common), and hopeful thinking, is counterproductive and speculative in a very negative way.</p>
<p>I’m not applauding the behavior. I think it is scummy. Scummy, but smart. But thanks for the comment.</p>
<p>So is Penn telling the high school counselors one thing in private and posting another thing in public? Because that is what you said Berryberry.</p>
<p>And that is unethical.</p>
<p>And while we are discussing this, what about Dartmouth?</p>
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<p>That’s pretty much the perspective of the colleges so your thinking is just twisted to the wrong party. The colleges tell you they they are fair and generous, but by the same token what they look at to base their fair and generous offer is not necessarily the total picture of people’s cash flow situations and it’s cash flow or access to cash that writes the checks. If you are a parent you know this if you are a student ask your parents. Colleges want all kids to be able to apply ED so they give those small number whose actual situation can’t be reconcilied with how they look on paper the ability to back out of an arrangement that simply would never come to fuition. e.g., no college wants to admit a student only to have the parents check bounce in August because the parent can’t get any more loans or can’t arrange the money that the college presumed that had. That is not at all difficult to understand. Extreme maybe, but so are some of the wild assumptions that are being made about the OP or her motivations. People aren’t talking about huge percentages of people that apply ED, they are talking about small percentages of middle class people who can be potentially gapped significantly. The OP said her offer was “not horrific”…I’m sure there are offers that I would consider horendous that my kids could potentially say are “not horrific.” Her parents could have looked at the offer and thought it was horrendous in light of a full ride.</p>