@gettingschooled “when a contract can’t be freely negotiated, courts put a greater burden on the one who controls the contract.” Hmm, did you include that bit of jurisprudence on your bar exam?
Regarding your post #88: So I’m going to wait an hour for a table at Portland’s most popular pizzeria, then tell the waiter to bring me what the guy at the next table is eating. I am served a cheese pizza, I eat a slice, the check says I owe $24, and I offer to pay $4 for the slice. I refuse to pay for the whole pie. I just wanted one slice like I saw the guy eating at the next table. The pizzeria’s menu doesn’t list slices for sale, only whole pies. I respond I never looked at the menu and the waiter had the “burden”. I’ll call you, getting schooled, to defend me.
Just as no one forced me to eat at that pizzeria and it didn’t allow me to “freely negotiate” my order, an applicant to “School X” is neither forced to apply nor allowed to alter the terms of the contractual relationship after admission unilaterally. Moreover if every contract had to expressly address every possible aspect of the relationship with nothing ever implied we’d all be signing reams of documents just to buy a Big Mac.
Contract law treats agreements made “under duress” differently because that circumstance makes it impossible to have a meeting of minds (an essential element to a valid contract). While I agree with you that applicants and their guardians are at a distinct disadvantage in terms of bargaining power vis-a-vis higher educational institutions, that doesn’t “shift the burden”. I noted in a previous post that perhaps binding ED agreements should be considered unconscionable as a public policy matter.
@al2simon Many top athletic recruits have backed out of their commitments to attend D1 football programs. A duty to mitigate when the school loses a nationally ranked quarterback? Not all students are fungible- that is you just can’t replace one from the wait list.
Not on my bar exam- the law portion of the CPA exam TYVM. The law can be read by non-lawyers, but since you think it can’t you just proved my point. Judges assume the lawyer who wrote the document to be more sophisticated than the people signing it unless they had legal counsel negotiating terms and conditions on their behalf.
@Oregon2016 You were allowed to freely negotiate your order for pizza. You could have ordered a slice and you didn’t. You ordered what the guy next to you had - he had a whole pizza in front of him because that’s what you pointed to. If he only had a slice and they brought you a whole pizza, you would have said-“sorry I didn’t order this and I am not going to pay for it” before you ate any of it.
Unless the school is going to publish that withdrawal deadlines don’t apply to ED applicants, they do.
You obviously disagree with me and have some sort of bee in your bonnet about it or me. Not sure what I did to have you ruminate about this for a week, but you should get over it. I was pretty clear in what I said and stand by it. I think the proof is in the pudding, don’t you? Colleges don’t run around suing ED back peddlers. I guess if you don’t like it you can sue me.
I think they don’t sue partly because it is bad publicity. And because who really wants a kid on their campus who doesn’t want to attend. It may or may be due to the legal teeth or lack of them in the agreement. But blacklisting GCs/schools, especially if it happens repeatedly from the same school – I can see that.
Of course, this secret penalty against innocent students in following classes is completely ineffective, since a student with the lack of ethics to back out of an ED agreement is not going to care whether students in the following classes will be put on an automatic-rejection list. Such a penalty is also ineffective since since it may not be publicized.
I think a GC can put more emphasis on the ED rules, making sure that the parents and kid really understand what they are signing up for and possible scenarios.
Considering that dealing with college stuff is just one (often small) part of the job of a GC at a typical non-elite high school, it is certainly possible that policing ED could get overlooked among all of the other issues that they have to deal with.
Indeed, colleges that make work for GCs at high schools effectively favor the elite high schools with dedicated college GCs and relatively low student/GC ratios. A GC dedicated to college stuff for a smaller number of students is likely to write a better recommendation than a general GC who deals with everything for a larger number of students.
A contract of adhesion is construed in the light most favorable to the one who had little say in drafting the terms. A contract to rent a car is going to be construed against the car company. That doesn’t mean the terms are unfair or illegal, and most of the time the contract very legal, just favors the big corporation. There is nothing illegal about charging a penalty for being one minute late in returning the car. If the contract calls for you to pay an entire extra day if you are late returning the car, that’s harsh but not illegal. If they contract says you must buy the car if you are one minute late, that would be unfair and most likely not a condition that would be enforced.
We all sign contracts of adhesion all the time. Credit card agreements, cable TV agreements, insurance policies, student loan docs, most business agreements. Very few consumers negotiate terms of any contract. Even most commercial agreements are ‘canned.’
There is nothing unfair about the ED contract. The school(s) sets out the terms and no one is forcing the student, parent, or CG to sign the contract but if you want the offer, the terms are there. No school is going to force the student to attend the school if there is an ED offer, but another term of the agreement is that the student will withdraw applications from other schools and not attend another school for one year. THAT is a term that can be enforced, and enforced without going to court. School issuing ED can inform other schools of the offer and non-acceptance of the ED spot, and the other schools can agree to honor the ED contract. In the ED application, the student has agreed to this.
After reading yet another thread where a kid is trying to find a way out of an ED acceptance, it’s looking like many HS students don’t really understand that they are suppose to follow through on a commitment that they make. They have second thoughts, change their minds, don’t withdraw their other apps so they can compare and decide, etc. Perhaps they have never been held accountable for any commitments or promises they have made in the past? I do think this is why both parents and CC/GC need to sign the agreement as well, but even then the meaning of the word “binding” doesn’t seem to mean much to these kids.
I wonder if some of the problem is because some people seem to resent colleges for giving others need based aid or not taking cost of living expenses into account. If they believe colleges are treating them unfairly because they’re upper income, maybe breaking an ED agreement doesn’t seem unethical to them.
Honestly, I think a lot of this is due to panic. It used to be that ED was used only by a few kids who absolutely knew where they wanted to go. Everyone else went RD. Now everyone and their cousin is applying early, and the result is that kids who would benefit from more time to make a decision are reading stories touting the higher ED acceptance rates and the low overall rates of admission and, freaked out that they may miss their opportunity, are jumping into ED agreements they’re not really ready to uphold. It doesn’t help that because ED has become widespread, “Are you applying early anywhere?” has become a common Thanksgiving table question. Pressure, pressure, pressure. The kid half-blindly applies early, with the blessing of equally panicked parents, and a couple of months later is thinking, “Is this where I really want to go, and can we afford it?”
As far as I can tell there are no ramifications. I have never heard of a student being held to an ED contract, or a school or guidance counselor being black balled, or a list being shared among colleges. Has anyone?
As for the moral ramifications, I guess this is why people under 18 aren’t allowed to sign contracts.
I do know a student who was accepted ED, did not pull the other apps and was then accepted at another school and decided go to the second school. Somehow it was found out and BOTH school rescinded the offers.
Sue22 - I think there’s a lot to that. Last year when we were visiting colleges, as we were walking away from a particularly nice one, my son turns to me and says “I think this is where I’ll apply ED”. I was floored. I’d never mentioned early decision to him. It had never been part of our conversations but clearly among his crowd at school it was just a given. He goes to a middle to upper-middle class public HS and he is definitely not hanging out with recruited athletes. It’s still seeped into their consciousness though.
These two issues seem totally disconnected to me. If they’re connected, it would be because someone didn’t get as large an FA package as they’d hoped for, in which case they could–ethically–turn down the ED acceptance.
I think schools are over accepting ED. Last year when D got wait listed at a number of schools that she was at or above their 75% I went back and looked at their ED acceptances. I think Vandy accepted 48% of the class ED. I probably would have discouraged her from bothering on the RD round had I known that ahead of time. These statistics are simply crazy. The net result is D had a miserable senior year because she did not ED or EA anywhere except our state school which she had no interest in attending (EA so no commitment). There was one school that she came close to doing ED but would get freaked when I reminded her it was a commitment. She probably would have gotten in had she done ED. There were a couple of schools she was wait listed and then rejected in June. Had she chosen any of the them (there were a couple she considered ED), she probably would have gotten in ED and would have been happy to attend.
The net result was that she did not get into most of her top choices. She had some choices but none that she considered “great” which is always a subjective interpretation anyway. The school she picked was the most prestigious of all but I think she would have picked either of her wait list schools over it. Bottom line, by NOT applying ED she lost her ability to choose in my opinion. I will strongly encourage D2 to apply ED. I think the NPC is generally accurate for most married couples, even if your financials are complicated.
A lot of those ED acceptances are athletes or legacies (if the school gives legacy preference). This isn’t really a thread about ED acceptance rates, though, we have other threads about that. For what it is worth, though, my D2 got in everyplace she applied a couple of years ago, including some top schools – all in the RD round. Your certainly that your kid would have gotten in during the ED round can’t be verified… And my kid’s senior year was not miserable due to waiting (plus she had EA acceptances, and a couple of safeties she was willing to attend). Bottom line – the answer to having a happy kid in college isn’t ED applications – it is applying to an appropriate list of schools.
@SlitheyTove, I’m confused about how ED works. I thought people could decline if they felt the net cost was too high, but I’ve recently read posts where people seemed to be saying it’s unethical to turn down an ED acceptance unless financial circumstances changed. Is that always true? What if they asked that special circumstances be taken into consideration? Or are people who have special circumstances not supposed to apply ED? That makes ED seem like a special advantage for upper income families, but maybe that’s who it was designed to serve. If families hope for a better package than the NPC indicates but they don’t get it, don’t they have the option of declining it? And if they can, why are people so upset when they do?
The NPCs are pretty accurate with uncomplicated finances. If someone gets a worse package than the NPC shows, then declining ED seems valid. Or with complex finances where the NPC was inaccurate. But I don’t have much patience for those who are relying on merit to make it affordable – merit is uncommon in ED rounds – why give money to someone who is committed to attending? And those who don’t apply for FA, but see a cheaper offer elsewhere.