Legality aside, HS counselor should also try to hold the student and parents accountable for not honoring the ED contract. There’s a reason HS Counselor also signs the contract. So, if both student/parents, as well as HS can get away for breaking the ED contract without any consequences whatsoever, then it’s actually pretty messed up. Relying on people’s morality unfortunately doesn’t work today. They need to fear consequences.
Also, while most AOs won’t say it, but high schools do bear the brunt of students rescinding ED offers—and I’m personally fully supportive of it. Decisions are anyways super subjective, colleges don’t have to explain anything to anyone.
Well said. There are high schools in our area that seem to have very good relationships with many of the big OOS flagship schools as well as the LACs, and it seems the last year and this year, my son’s HS was shut out of EA acceptances whereas the other HSs did very well with students getting large numbers of EAs. Anecdotally, when kids pull out of ED, it sours the AO’s relationship with the school. How can it not have impact? The counselors at HSs must take charge of the discussion and make clear to the parents and students that the ED application is binding.
I didn’t say anything about legality, but I expect everyone here knows that the ED contract isn’t legally binding.
And that’s your prerogative. I will never support punishing students who didn’t do anything wrong as you are suggesting…I believe that is unethical. I don’t know the numbers, but it doesn’t seem that people pulling out of ED is a significant problem in the big picture, or for any given school. With that said, I’m sure there are some bad actors.
People have no idea why a family might have pulled out of ED…perhaps the school’s NPC is inaccurate in general (or specifically for the family’s situation), maybe the family didn’t enter the NPC info correctly, maybe a parent lost their job since application time. Those are all reasons for pulling out of the ED contract.
No school wants a kid to attend who doesn’t want to be there. What’s the point of making a kid attend if they can just transfer after a semester?
I can’t speak for @Idontgetthis – but I am personally seeing a lot of parent posts on various socials, esp FB, where parents are like “oh my teen is so fickle, and doesn’t want to attend his ED anymore - can’t blame a teen for changing his mind!” - THAT is what builds the outrage. Not when circumstances legitimately change and a student has to unfortunately pull out of an ED acceptance.
lol… wish admissions were this perfect…
Students get rewarded/punished for a number of reasons. Being from a certain race, family income, school profile, state residence.
Among all of these of I had to pick one, I’m all for punishing schools which are uncaring of their students breaking EDs.
Breaking ED due to financial reasons is fully supported by almost every college I know of, no one is talking about it. You very well know of the cases we are talking about here.
So your solution is to make the kid attend for a semester before they transfer out?
ETA: Other reasons that families may pull out of ED is because they didn’t even know about NPCs and/or the fact the school they applied to doesn’t give merit aid and/or they wouldn’t get enough need based aid. These things happen. Maybe some random FB poster is saying the kid is ‘fickle’, but they really had no idea they were supposed to run NPCs. People on CC are relatively educated about college admissions, the majority of the populace is not.
I don’t have a perfect solution, but I’d like high schools to take these contracts more seriously. For example, in our high school will not let a student break ED unilaterally. Students know that HS will take strict action including sending a note to all the schools the student has applied to if they engage in such behavior. So, there is fear.
Our high school has cancelled student’s IB diplomas for much less severity reasons, and hence had amazing credibility with most selective colleges.
Oh I absolutely believe what I am seeing on socials. These parents are looking for “creative” ways to break an ED acceptance because their “teenage with an undeveloped brain” got accepted to another school they didn’t think would happen and has changed his/her mind.
@Mwfan1921 - I so appreciate your input and being a senior member on this page, don’t get me wrong. Not sure if you have a senior this year or are using your experience to help all of us going through it. I have an older son who graduated in 2022 and so I’ve been through this once before. This cycle is so completely different, all around. In 2022, I did not see comments of parents or students saying they applied to 20+ schools. I did not see nearly the numbers of students applying EA. And I did not hear ONCE about a student breaking an ED contract for any reason other than a drastic unexpected turn or valid financial reason that was again, unexpected. When students apply ED, they are expected to run numbers and not count on significant merit awards to make it work. This year, all bets are off.
I’m coming at it as someone who currently is in admissions (not at Wisconsin) and prior to that was an independent counselor. I hear you that this year seems different. I don’t support people willy nilly breaking the ED agreement.
We will just have to agree to disagree that it’s ok to make a student attend a college they don’t want to (for whatever period of time or reason) and/or to punish future seniors who did nothing wrong. Perhaps I will hear from HS counselors and/or AOs after this year that the number of ED renegs increased significantly, though right now I haven’t heard that and ED1 enrollment deadlines have passed.
Appreciate your helpful insight. I do not disagree fully (although I think if a student decides to apply ED, that student should have taken the decision seriously, with the expectation to attend if accepted), and I hope that the impact to future seniors is nill when an ED contract is broken. Thank you again for your thoughts.
I think that @NJmom31 clarified that his acceptance actually was with RD.
Speaking of – has anyone gone back to 2023 and 2024 to find out when UW released last year? I believe like this year, the University said no later than March 31st, but what was the actual release date?
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Yes but she actually said “he did receive his acceptance before the regular decision release date” so hence why I asked was it a couple days before or a few weeks before. Trying to gauge if all of us EA Deferred have to wait until 3/31 or if it could be anytime between now and then. Based on NJ comments it sounds like her student found out before RD. Sorry for the confusion Birdflies.