Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The ONLY time I can see it as morally acceptable is if it's done way before May 1 (deadline for acceptances at most universities) and it's done at a school where an early deposit helps ensure better housing (or simply on campus housing freshman year at all). So unless you are accepted to several schools with this criteria (my 2 kids applied to 25 universities and only had 1 where this was the case), you can morally put the deposit down at one and then as soon as you decide where you will actually be attending (ie put the deposit at the other), then you pull your acceptance at first school. So really it's not a double deposit, because this would be done before May 1 deadline.
But really the need to secure better housing is the only ethical reason to do it that I can come up with. And any university that does this probably knows this happens, and also probably doesn't refund those deposits---all part of their game. And ethically, you are not going past the may 1 deadline with 2 acceptances, you'd pull one of them by May 1
**I really wish someone had told me this before my oldest went to college. He was accepted at an EA school that was probably his first choice, wanted to see if he got into his reach, so waited, didn't get in and finally accepted EA only to find out he got a shitty place in the housing preference list which we could have avoided with a $500 deposit. Now paying thousands extra in off campus housing even though he was admitted in early round. It is OK to do it in this sense and I will do so with my second kid if she gets the chance.
We did it because D changed mind three weeks after deposit was made. We couldn't get hold of anyone to tell them she wasn't going.