<p>Do colleges compare notes on applicants? I know at one point the Ivys routinely shared applicant lists, so each school knew what other schools to which you were applying. I think this practice stopped. Do other schools share applicant lists? Other than the colleges you may willing list, can a college truly know other schools to which you are applying?</p>
<p>Personally, I think it is none of their business and they have no right to share personal information. I’m not even sure it would be legal to share such information without your consent.</p>
<p>Good question. I’m also wondering the same thing. I hear Wash U tends to waitlist overqualified applicants who they think are applying to Wash U as second choice to HYPSM, which leads me to believe they don’t know for sure where you are applying (seems like they just waitlist the extremely overqualified as a guess).</p>
<p>That being said, I’m wondering the same thing for other schools like the UC’s and the elite universities.</p>
<p>I was looking at the Early Decision agreement for Northwestern because I’m planning on applying Early Decision, and it says:</p>
<p>“I also understand that with an Early Decision offer of admission, this institution may share my name and my Early Agreement with other institutions.”</p>
<p>I don’t know if that’s just legal-speak so they can share my application among the different schools within Northwestern University, or if it actually means they’ll be telling other universities that I have my heart set on Northwestern.</p>
<p>I hate it when you catch some evil legality, but the offer is still just too damn enticing to resist.</p>
<p>Though I can’t speak officially of course, I’m going to tell you no. Why? Because there could be alot of privacy laws broken if so. Plus, with all the applications that schools already have to sort through, why would they waste their time calling up other schools for notes on applicants? It would be very inefficient.</p>
<p>As far as the ED line, that is included because if a school accepts a student via ED, then learns that they applied ED to another institution, they will lose their offer of admission, and most likely be “blacklisted” aka, they would probably inform other institutions of this unhonest act. </p>
<p>I can say for sure the ivies do not share applicant lists anymore. Infact look up a nice legal spat princeton and yale had a few years back because of one of said institutions trying to “spy” on cross-applicants. fun stuff.</p>
<p>What occured previously with the Ivies + MIT was that once decisions had been made, they would confer about financial aid offers for cross admits. They wanted to see that their offers were all within range of each other. This was correctly challenged in court as being collusion and they no longer do so.</p>
<p>Sharing if it occurs at all would be identity to verify an ED admittee has not applied and been admitted ED elsewhere. Privacy laws prohibit most sharing but be aware all such laws have an exception that they can reveal identifying info of students who apply or are admitted (name and address) to others.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Privacy laws protect a lot of information, but I don’t think it would stop them from sharing names. (not sure though).</p></li>
<li><p>The ED question has been covered; they are covering themselves. I doubt they would share the fact with other schools that you’ve applied ED. Why?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>a) They’re swamped with apps at that time of year and would have to assign resources to have people contact other schools</p>
<p>b) If they did (a) and someone was rejected ED and from their other schools they would doubtlessly be sued.</p>
<ol>
<li>Beyond the ED question, I have a hard time seeing the value of knowing/confirming that “Ashley” or “Connor” applied to the other schools they said they did.</li>
</ol>
<p>quanta: No you don’t. The reason why courts found the practice injurious to the applicants was that with collusion, the schools offered LESS FA than if they did it independently. For example, Yale’s initial plan is to offer Student A is a $9000/year grant. Brown is planning on only giving a $7000/yr grant given its calculations of the student/family finances. The two FA officers look it over – decide both to grant a $7200 and $7300 grant instead. See how it would work?</p>
<p>The only situation I could think of is if an applicant broke an ED commitment to a particular school. Then, Columbia or whatever would contact other schools and admission to those schools would be revoked. </p>
<p>Maybe if an applicant were really really bad (e.g. found guilty of a crime) colleges would confide among themselves and reject the kid.</p>
<p>Who has time to share applicant information on 30,000+ applicants?</p>
<p>I think they can share if you apply ED because you are signing a contract, but otherwise it would be a violation of privacy laws. A college application is part of your educational record, and FERPA forbids them sharing your educational record with anyone besides you unless you consent to it. (Agreeing to apply ED gives them that right.)</p>
<p>Everybody - let’s think for a moment. The top schools get what, 20,000, 30,000 applicants? Do you think they have time to review all of them AND compare notes with other people?</p>
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<p>You’d be applying to a given school at Northwestern – so it’s not as though you’d apply to Medill but they’d share your application across the schools and then Engineering would decide to let you in. It says exactly what it means. IF they offer you admission under Early Decision, they reserve the right to tell other institutions. As they should.</p>
<p>I applied to four UC’s (UCLA, UCB, UCI, UCSD). According to this email I received from UC admissions, other UC’s do read your application. The email reads as follows: </p>
<p>I am delighted that you have applied for admission to the University of California. As you await information on campus admissions decisions, I am writing to let you know that this year the University will continue an effort that has proved to be of interest to many of our applicants in recent years. While your application is being reviewed by the campuses you have applied to, other campuses within the UC system will be looking at your record, too. They may get in touch with you directly to tell you about degree programs they offer that could be a good fit, given the interests and talents you described in your application. </p>
<p>Don’t worry – this doesn’t mean that you aren’t being considered by the UC campuses you chose. We just want to make sure that if we see an additional opportunity for you at another UC campus, you will know about it and can make an informed decision about all of your UC options. </p>
<p>Once our campuses make their admission decisions, they will notify you. We expect all decisions to be completed by April 30. No matter which UC campus you choose to attend, you will have immediate opportunities to learn from internationally respected faculty and bright, capable students from around the world. At your doorstep will be a vibrant social, cultural, athletic and artistic community, as well as a range of support services to help you succeed. </p>
<p>Thank you for considering the University of California, and I wish you the best of luck in attaining your educational goals. </p>
<p>Sincerely yours, </p>
<p>Susan A. Wilbur, Ph.D.
Director of Undergraduate Admissions</p>
<p>That’s great but irrelevant – the UC’s are one big coordinated system and it is common knowledge that you might be admitted to a different campus from the one you prefer. Same goes with some other state schools that have multiple campuses. The OP isn’t talking about those kinds of situations. They’re talking about college A sharing the application with college B.</p>
<p>As Pizzagirl (my new best friend!) so eloquently stated, “That’s great, but irrelevant”. The UC’s are essentially one entity with several branches.</p>
<p>The question is can UMichigan and UVA share applicant lists? Can Duke and Notre Dame compare candidate lists?</p>
<p>From my uneducated legal viewpoint, this is against privacy laws and collusion. How do you think WashU is going to feel when they find out you applied to 5 Ivys. </p>
<p>It’s one thing to volunteer this information when asked on the app (I personally don’t like the question that many colleges ask), it’s another thing for the colleges to collude. Personally, I think it’s unethical, if not illegal.</p>
<p>As to sharing ED information, that is just as bad. Let’s say you apply to Harvard ED and Dartmouth finds out. You then get rejected from Harvard and Dartmouth rejects you out of spite.</p>
<p>That wasn’t the scenario discussed above, though.<br>
We’re NOT discussing “I applied to College A under ED and while they were debating my application, they informed College B, who rejected me out of spite.”<br>
The scenario is that if you apply to College A under ED and they ACCEPT you, and you then try to break your agreement, they are then within their rights to inform other colleges that you broke an ED agreement. I mean, they can’t force you to go to a college, but they sure can tell other colleges that you didn’t live up to your world. That’s why it’s not good to apply ED if finances are a key factor.</p>