Rolling Schools/Safeties

fallenchemist
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:26:27 +0000

robinsuesanders:

No, the student is not in a disadvantageous position just because Brown turns the ED student down. While Brown says you can’t apply other places EA and ED there, they do allow both rolling applications and RD applications which can be submitted anytime during the cycle.

You and I will have to agree to disagree on this one. Anything that restricts the schools that a student can apply to, as long as those schools are non-binding, puts the student in a lesser position and for, as far as I can see, no good reason. The reduced stress a student has from getting an early acceptance is quite valuable indeed, as those of us that read CC know all too well.

The student would be violating the agreement with Brown IF they got an acceptable package from Brown and still turned it down. That I would not agree with the student doing, but I find the scenario unlikely anyway. If Brown meets their need and that was clearly the “dream school” since it was ED, presumably another package won’t sway the student. If, on the other hand, Brown’s package doesn’t meet all need or has a fair amount of loans and the other doesn’t, then the student is perfectly within their rights to turn the package down as financially inadequate and thus within their rights to terminate the agreement. Who is Brown to force a student into debt if they don’t want to be in debt? You may well be right that Brown is trying to not let the student see more attractive financial packages. That can actually be taken as rather vile. Here is a school dictating all the terms and the student has to decide whether to give up the advantage of applying to Brown early decision or potentially be out thousands of $$ they may not have had to be? Really nice. But this may be moot anyway. As far as I know most schools don’t tell students their FA package just because they applied EA. I think in most cases they still have to wait until March, but maybe you know more about that.

I agree with you that applying to more than one school ED is highly unethical and risky besides. But there is no way Brown would know if a student applied EA to another school. I cannot imagine the circumstances where that would happen.