Is It Time to Say Yes? You’ll Need to Decide

This may be the biggest decision of your life. College is a four-year period (which often goes uninterrupted). If your deadline for submitting your agreement to college has passed, you should have only told one college “yes.” Otherwise, if you told two or more colleges that you intend to join in the fall, the colleges reserve the right to revoke admissions to both schools and you’ll be out of luck.

If it’s that difficult a decision for you, you should visit the colleges for one last time to make your decision. If it’s not possible, contact students in the school and ask them what they think of the school, the programs, the areas of study, the student life, the food, and whatever else is pertinent to your lifestyle. Because you now have Facebook, that should be a lot easier.

If you say yes to two schools at once, you’re killing the chances for a student who may be wait listed, and trust me, these students will not be happy. But let’s say you’ve been wait listed from another school and get notified after the May 1st date that you’re accepted to the school. You can tell the first school that you agreed “yes” to that you’re respectfully revoking your admission there, and the only thing you have to lose is your deposit.

Make your decision and stick to it. The ethical decision is to say you’re ready to choose one school — as this is the very nature of “commitment.” Worst comes to worse, you can transfer. But you’ll very likely love the choice you make. Just don’t make it unfair to your peers who are dying to attend the school you’ve been accepted to but don’t want to attend.