Do schools hold it against a sibling if you turn down their offer?

[Anonymous]

My DD was accepted at several schools. One of the schools that we are choosing to reject might be the perfect school for my DS in a few years. Will it be harder for him to get in since we turned them down once already?

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure if they do or not. But, obviously, there are a lot of people applying for not many openings at many of these schools. If I were looking at two equally qualified candidates, and the only difference was that one of them had a sibling who turned down an offer, then I would pick the other one. Let's face it, most parents will tell each and every school they apply to that it is the "best" fit for their child or their first choice, when it reality the school may actually be their "fallback" school. The school wants to find someone who will accept their offer.

It's not worth sending your older one somewhere just to ensure admittance for the younger one later. I do know families who have kids in different schools, so it does happen. But, I also know several families who have younger kids that were not accepted anywhere (other than the older sibling's school) and those parents thought that the reason was the schools assumed they would just accept the offer from the older sibling's school, so why waste the offer.