What exactly are the consequences of breaking an Early Decision agreement?

[ucbalumnus]

@yonceonhismouth

I can speak from experience at my school, when an ED applicant broke the contract (and not for affordability reasons), no student of ours gets admitted ED or RD (and we’re a high performing school). Even a legacy who was top of his class was rejected this year. Another triple legacy whose family is a major donor to the institution was rejected. Every student applying from my school gets outright rejected or waitlisted.
And this isn’t just speculation- our guidance counselor has asked the regional rep at Brown that handles our area, and he told her “off-the-record” that Brown takes breaking an ED contract very seriously and that essentially they don’t want to waste admits on our school, since they don’t trust the students to come.

Since your high school is on Brown’s auto-reject list, shouldn’t your high school put Brown on the advise-students-not-to-apply list, so that students will not waste their time and money applying?