joe82 wrote:
Soooo...I just want to throw this out there to see if anyone else has thought of this or if I am just crazy. I applied ED to Columbia on 10/3 with the hopes that an ED application would give me a small boost in chance of admission, but late enough that I could stretch out the admissions process to coincide with RD1 decisions from HBS, Wharton, & Kellogg. I got the interview invite from CBS 10/19 but I still haven't communicated with the interviewers because I don't want to speed it up too much and have to make a $6K deposit decision before knowing from the other schools. Can this work? We'll find out.
The short answer is no, this cannot work. ED is binding, no matter where else you are accepted. That's the whole point. Best case scenario you get interview invites everywhere. You will still have to interview with Columbia before you hear back from HBS. So even if you get accepted to HBS before Columbia you will still owe Columbia $6,000. The only way this could work is if you got accepted to HBS or Wharton before interviewing with Columbia and intentionally bombing the Columbia interview. But the timing won't work that way. You can always game the system using ED to boost your odds. People do it every year. The consequence for doing so is burning any bridges with the Columbia network and you forfeit $6,000. There is no way out of the deposit, that is how they make ED binding.