<p>I am sure there are many of you who are in this situation or have faced it. This is the first time college application for us and wanted some help on this. </p>
<p>Daughter has acceptance from a great but far away college. She is wait-listed on another great but nearby college. It would be rare if she ever gets off the wait-list IMO.
She would like to finish the process by accepting what she has and moving on. My question is what happens if she actually gets off the waiting list? We would really like her to be close by. Will we ever be able to get the deposit back? Is there a built-in process in colleges to deal with such a situation?</p>
<p>My understanding is that you’d lose the deposit.
A friend’s son was admitted off two different waiting lists and offered a z-list admit as well…I think she paid three deposits and bought three sweatshirts. He decided to hold after the second wait-list admit and not go for the z-list admit.</p>
<p>It may depend on what kind of deposit it is, and the timing.</p>
<p>My D was waitlisted at a couple of schools. She enrolled at a school where she was accepted and we sent in various deposits, including deposits for housing.</p>
<p>In early June she was admitted to her top waitlisted school. One of the deposits could be refunded if we had notified by the end of May, so we forfeited that one. Some of the other deposits were refundable.</p>
<p>We had to move on since being admitted off a waitlist can be such a long shot. Read the fine print about the deposits. If and when your daughter is accepted off the other school’s waitlist, you can decide then if attending a different school is worth any forfeited deposit(s)! However, you will likely have a very short time frame to decide about accepting a waitlist offer, and they will also probably require a deposit.</p>
<p>In almost all cases that I can think of you would lose the deposit you paid at any school if you move off a waitlist and accept another school’s offer. Sometimes you move quickly off a waitlist, sometimes not until middle of May and sometimes not at all. Some schools will announce whether or not they will take any off a waitlist early on.
Grad school may be a bit different… but my d moved off a grad school waitlist on Memorial Day weekend.</p>
<p>IMHO, loss of a deposit is a small price to pay (depending on the size of the deposit, of course!) if your child is accepted at the school he/she really wants. And considering four years of tuition and room & board, a couple of hundred bucks pales in comparison.</p>
<p>I’ve got a question regarding getting off the waitlist. For those with experience, does the school offer any merit aid or financial aid when they notify you about acceptance off the wait list.</p>
<p>Or, do you have to be ready for full pay to get off the waitlist?</p>
<p>Some schools are open about being “need aware” for their wait-listed students, meaning that they are more likely to pull someone off the wait-list who does not require need-based aid.</p>
<p>Other schools will offer admission from the wait list but may not be able to be as generous with aid. Still others do manage to give need-based aid to students admitted from the wait list.</p>
<p>I would think merit aid would be unlikely to be offered, as it is used to attract the students the school is most eager to have accept the offer of admission. I would not expect such students to have been initially wait-listed.</p>