I wonder if docking ED renegers a deposit would reduce the sense of violation of the AD agreement as a moral issue. IOW, if a student loses their deposit if they back out of the agreement could it lead some students to feel they’d “paid” for reneging and therefore were off the hook?
I worry that the students who would be most impacted by this would be students for whom finances are an issue. For a full pay student $200 is just not enough to make a real difference. I’d hate to see poor students who could benefit from ED further discouraged from applying early.
There are many studies that show that the presence of a penalty does exactly that. The one I remember best was related to a late fee for pick up at day care. When a charge was set for every so many minutes parents were late MORE people picked their kids up late.
@gettingschooled If the ED contract is valid and enforceable the damages would be the annual fee that the school would have gotten if the student had “performed” her contractual obligation. One can say that the school has a duty to mitigate its loss and get another student to substitute. But the school could argue that this ED breaker was so unique and special there is no substitute. If the school has a high drop out rate after first semester maybe you can argue that it is entitled to just one semester of fees.
I don’t think there is a binding agreement to enroll for a year. Only the fall semester and there is no obligation to enroll full time. Maybe they get a little bit of money in court - tuition and fees on a part time student? Most state laws would require them to mitigate the loss and replace with another student though. And these schools easily can do that. They publicize how many perfectly qualified students they turn away every year.
I am not arguing the ethics of it mind you just the realities of why lawsuits don’t get filed and won.
@gettingschooled “No obligation to enroll full time” - If every other entering student lives on campus and attends full time, that is the implicit expectation for an ED applicant to that school.
Since the school writes the contract and the student has no option to alter it or negotiate it, a court will not allow the school to say there are “implicit” obligations on the student’s part. When a contract can’t be freely negotiated, courts put a greater burden on the one who controls the contract. The court will say “School X, you had all the contract writing power in this relationship. If there is an implicit obligation, then you should have made it explicit.”
As far as I know, no school has 100 percent full time students and while they may require a student to live on campus, they also require a student to sign a separate housing contract and put down another deposit. We have not even mentioned that the student is generally a minor when they sign these things which is why the parent has to sign as well. Plus the school reserves the right to rescind the acceptance based on anything that happens between December and August leaving the applicant with few options at that point.
Contract law, the court system and public opinion is not going to favor these schools. These are gentlemen’s agreements for all practical purposes and upheld by the integrity of the parties. The schools pride themselves on their ability to build a perfect class and they look pretty closely at every candidate. They seem to be doing a good job of finding those with questionable ethics who might not honor the agreement. As long as they can do that, they’ll keep doing ED.
I am not a lawyer, but I’ve been in business long enough to have picked up some rudiments of commercial contract law.
Even if they tried, colleges won’t be able to collect monetary damages from a student who inappropriately backs out of an ED commitment.
By default, the non-breaching party to a contract has a “duty to mitigate” - i.e. an obligation to make reasonable efforts to limit additional losses after a damaging event. Here’s an example. Suppose you sign a binding contract to buy a car for $25,000 from a car dealer and then refuse to honor the contract. In a court, the car dealer won’t be awarded 25K in damages. You would introduce evidence showing that the dealer could have easily sold the vehicle at a “fire-sale” price of (say) 21K where there are plenty of buyers. The court would at most award the dealer the $4,000 difference. This would apply even if the dealer never sold the car and allowed it to rust.
In the case of an ED “contract”, in almost all cases - as long as you tell the school early enough that you aren’t going to attend - the college could just admit another student in the RD round or from the waitlist. This would fall under their “duty to mitigate”.
So there aren’t any monetary damages to be awarded.
However, I’ve heard rumors that the colleges “enforce” their ED contracts in two other ways.
They share lists of students who breach their ED contracts with other colleges. So if a student is accepted ED to Brown, then applies and is accepted RD to Harvard and tries to enroll at Harvard, then both Brown and Harvard will compare notes and both will rescind their acceptances unless they agree there were genuine financial issues at stake. This is to prevent “gaming” the ED system.
They also rely on the high-school guidance departments to make sure their students aren’t “gaming” the ED system. If a high school has too many cases of students breaching their ED contracts without justification, then they’ll put the high school in the “penalty box” and refuse to accept any of their students for a few years.
LOL, I too thought this was going to be a Viagra thread (so of course I clicked on it!).
It does seem like a lot of people are not taking the Early Decision commitment seriously. Why on earth would you apply ED and then still be “shopping around?” The terms of ED are very clear and you are agreeing to attend and pay whatever they determine your price is, unless you really can’t pay (in which case you probably should not be applying ED!). We applied Early Action to a few schools, and this is a great way to get a little bump in admissions without being committed. All these ED renegers make me question the ethics of the students/families involved, and if it became a common trend, I wouldn’t blame the schools if they just ended the ED option altogether. Ugh.
Assuming arguendo they sued, they’d win, though, and they’d collect a little bit in damages: the cost of admitting that student. It’s not zero.
I wasn’t suggesting that a college sue. That would be silly. I was merely saying that the student, on signing the contract, has signed a legal contract, and is legally and ethically bound to honor it. Which I guess is not controversial here.
I’m wondering if the Common App has any built-in systems that restrict RD applications for ED applicants who’ve accepted an ED offer. Both my D’s had successful ED admissions rounds; neither submitted RD applications, and both withdrew any early applications or acceptances. If they already had RD applications in the CA system, I wonder what would’ve happened to those.
Re: ED colleges looking severely on high schools where students behave badly with ED contracts: I do feel for the innocent students in later years, but the school counselor is also at fault here. The ED agreement must be signed by a parent (or guardian, I suppose) and the high school college counselor. If a high school isn’t doing a good job of explaining the ramifications of ED to applicants, then the college has no reason to expect that future applicants from that school won’t also do a cut and run.
Rather than just tick a box on a form, how about if ED applicants had to scan and submit their hand-written copying of a statement along the lines of “I am applying ED to X University because it is my top college choice, the school I want to attend over all others. I have thought long and hard about my college choices, and I am convinced that X will be the school I will attend if admitted. I understand that if accepted ED (and if awarded enough financial aid that my family agrees the school would be affordable) that I am honor-bound to attend X. I will withdraw any other applications” blah blah blah. Also maybe a line about “If at any time up to (date) I do not feel that X is my first choice, I will immediately contact the admissions office and ask to change my application to RD.” My thought is that actually writing this out will make more of an impression on students than just skimming some text.
You may be right. Our HS makes students write out a similar statement regarding commitment to AP classes (they schedule the number of periods based on enrollment, so they don’t want kids backing out without very good reason). I think it probably does have a bigger impact than checking a box.
I doubt it, I don’t know that Common App knows who has accepted an offer. But even if it did, this wouldn’t effect those who applied ED 2 since that deadline is generally the same as RD.
Some colleges share their ED list with others. So if you reneg on an ED and happen to apply to one of the colleges that saw the list, you may be at a disadvantage
I don’t see an issue with reneging when something happens or when the aid calc turned out to be wrong. But it does seem that there is a segment who, upon being accepted, seem to think, “hey, if XYZ accepted me, then I probably could do better…” instead of just being thrilled they got in.
I have also seen the inverse, where an ED rejection causes a kid to rethink their whole lisr: "I’m not goid enough for XYZ, I’m probably not getting into any of my schools.
Thankfully few act upon that fallacy ob either side!
Perhaps related is that high school students posting on these forums believe that ED makes a large positive effect on their chances of admission to a “reach” school (as opposed to a school where they are “overqualified” and which considers "level of applicant’s interest). So then we see posts like “what school should I apply ED to?” when it is clear that the poster does not have a clear first choice.