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Hi Everyone, (please don't quote)

So USC's seat deposit due next Monday stipulates that you have to withdraw from all other schools to which you have been admitted to. I'm hesitant to deposit because I would then automatically forfeit my ability to negotiate for more scholarship money from USC since presumably I should have withdrew from any school that accepted me. Since I applied really late in the cycle I currently don't have any leverage to negotiate for more scholarship money as I am still waiting to hear back from a few schools (UCLA, Duke, NU, Vanderbilt) and the only other t14 school I have been accepted into has not provided scholly info yet. My COA for USC would have been a bit around 130K and I don't think I would have been entirely comfortable with that. It seems as if I really have two options: I could simply just not deposit to save money or deposit simply for the sake of using USC as leverage with other schools, particularly UCLA if I were to get in. Is the latter a reasonable option? Is it ethical?

jdanz wrote:Hi Everyone, (please don't quote)

So USC's seat deposit due next Monday stipulates that you have to withdraw from all other schools to which you have been admitted to. I'm hesitant to deposit because I would then automatically forfeit my ability to negotiate for more scholarship money from USC since presumably I should have withdrew from any school that accepted me. Since I applied really late in the cycle I currently don't have any leverage to negotiate for more scholarship money as I am still waiting to hear back from a few schools (UCLA, Duke, NU, Vanderbilt) and the only other t14 school I have been accepted into has not provided scholly info yet. My COA for USC would have been a bit around 130K and I don't think I would have been entirely comfortable with that. It seems as if I really have two options: I could simply just not deposit to save money or deposit simply for the sake of using USC as leverage with other schools, particularly UCLA if I were to get in. Is the latter a reasonable option? Is it ethical?

If you deposit at USC now and then you get into UCLA, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, if UCLA gives you more money than USC you could try to negotiate with USC and there will not be anything wrong with that. They just want you to withdraw from any school that you have been admitted to, so waitlists/acceptances after you deposited don't apply.

But if you get into UCLA and then deposit at USC (without withdrawing from UCLA), then this becomes unethical.