Related to the thread about the Tulane decision to pause ED for a year at 4 secondary schools, a lawsuit against 32 colleges/universities, the common app, Scoir and COFHE (consortium on Financial aid) was brought by 3 students (from top schools) and one former student , trying to file a class action suit, who allege they were harmed by being unable to compare financial aid offers b/c of the “early decision conspiracy”. So apparently they were “forced” to apply ED?? One claims she did in order to “level the playing field with her peers”. Funny, most consider ED a way to get one up on their “peers”.
If you want or need to compare financial aid offers, then do not apply ED.
The 32 schools on the list do not have anything even remotely close to a monopoly on very good undergraduate education. If we don’t get into any of the schools on the list, or get in EA or RD and can’t afford it, we go somewhere else.
Bingo. And most of these schools have very generous FA packages. If its not affordable, decline. But there is a big difference between what one CAN pay vs what they WANT to pay. Colleges need to pay their bills. If you don’t want to help them, go somewhere else.
Looks to me like 3 of these 4 plaintiffs were ED applicants. They attend/graduated from top schools, but one whines that she “didn’t get to compare FA offers” b/c she had to apply ED to keep up with her peers. Um, no that’s not how it works. I hope this case gets tossed.
“The lawsuit alleges that schools that participate in the Early Decision scheme entered into a coordinated agreement not to recruit or admit students accepted through Early Decision elsewhere despite their shared understanding that Early Decision offers are not legally binding.
According to Jude Robinson, a named plaintiff and current Vassar College student, “It does not seem fair that, in order to put my chances of admission on a level playing field with my peers, I had to give up the right to compare the cost of attendance at different schools. I thought I would get more financial aid than I did, but I never got a chance to weigh other options.”
3 of the 4 were ED admits.. one was a RD full-pay (per the lawsuit). And this:
“ Plaintiffs seek to represent themselves and a proposed Class of all persons who have (a) enrolled in one or more of Defendant Schools’ full-time undergraduate programs and (b) directly purchased education from one or more of Defendant Schools not fully covered by grant-only financial aid and (c) were either (i) admitted through the Early Decision process and received financial aid in the form of school-provided grants for any semester in which they attended the school or (ii) admitted through any decision process and did not receive financial aid in the form of school-provided grants for any semester in which they have attended the school (d) during the period beginning four years prior to the filing of this Complaint until the effects of Defendants’ continuing conduct cease.”
Honestly, I predict that ten years from now ED will be gone. But not because of some lawsuit alleging some hard to quantify damages (how much is the right to compare financial aid packages worth anyway?) But because the colleges determine that the cost and pain of administering and managing different deadlines and responding to queries and being transparent (or at least more transparent) regarding admissions is “too much squeeze and not enough juice”. The old way of colleges getting a “first look” at what they thought would be the top of the admit pile (kids who want them badly enough to commit upfront) has become a costly and complicated multi-month process with every more complicated algorithms trying to predict who is going to yield at what rate when and by the way is summer melt happening in June or August? The predictability of their ED admits is great of course- but not when it skews the pool so that the RD admits have to compensate for too many things- fewer prep school kids, PLUS fewer athletes and more musicians or poets, PLUS too many or too few women majoring in computer science PLUS we can’t have an entire class from New Trier and Belmont High, can we? PLUS who the heck is going to take “The History of the Supreme Court” if every ED kid is a premed or electrical engineer PLUS PLUS PLUS.
As the ED numbers tick upward, the pressure on the RD process gets more intense. So I predict the pendulum swinging back. Recruited athletes in the early round. Staff and faculty kids in the early round. The Physics Olympiad winner from Bhutan is located and encouraged to apply early. And everyone else- deadline is Jan 1 like the good old days.
I thought NPCs were a way of comparing financial aid ahead of time. I realize for people that have complicated finances that may not work, but for the vast majority of us they work just fine. And if for some reason they miscalculate and you can’t get the school to change their offer (I took screenshots of every page of the NPC which turned out to be unnecessary as it was quite accurate but I had them!) it’s a valid reason to back out if the ED commitment. Given the existence of the NPCs I don’t see how this lawsuit works.
Funny that the lawyers have no objection to themselves using their money to buy political votes to allow them to continue filing these frivolous lawsuits.
It was 100% “fair” (I HATE that word) - your peers gave up that same right to compare cost. You were all treated the same that decided to apply through that channel.
Jude Robinson attended Friends Select School, a very highly regarded school in Philadelphia, with 2 college counselors handling a graduating class of about 50.
I’m quite sure her college counselor taught her how to use the NPC. I’m equally sure they were familiar with the accuracy of each NPC and if they guided her to apply ED to Vassar instead of wherever else she wanted, it was because they knew from experience what the outcome would have been
Looking at it from a work management standpoint the different deadlines allow the school the ability to spread the work over a longer period of time. Rather than having a single RD tranche of applications due 1/1 with an expected notification date of 4/1 and having to read all those applications in 3 months, it allows the school to spread them over a longer span of time. Auburn doesn’t do ED but they do multiple rounds of EA and then RD… and although I think many suspect the early rounds of EA get some amount of preferential treatment it’s exactly the ability to spread out the work that makes sense to the school.
is all I can say!
