Tuesday, December 16, 2008

no refunds even if we reject you

This post is in response to a comment about seminaries on another blog...

Do you think it is fair that seminaries that dump you and decide you are not the material they are looking for get to keep your application fee?

I don't

And all of us parents who are applying to many seminaries and can barely afford it (another post another day)but HAVE to send our girls to Israel, could better use that money for the seminary tuition. Or all the other myriad expenses we have with our children (B'H)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ummm...all colleges do this, and so do many contests...the only difference is I think the application or entrance fees are significantly lower than seminary application fees, but it's the same concept.

It's mostly to deter non-serious applicants, making you put your money where your mouth is, and not to apply for something your grossly unqualified for...however with the seminary attitude of "you might not get into your first choice" they kind of defeat this concept in the first place.

daughtersintheparsha said...

I know that other places do it. There is just something that is unsavory about seminaries, which is about ruchnius, growing, yiddishkeit, blah blah, that makes it all so unappetizing. The reason the girls are told to apply to more than one place is because there are hundreds of girls applying, and except for maybe bnos chava and one or two others, most places do not take 150 girls. Everyone is allowed to have a first choice. But $300 or whatever it costs to apply? imagine 300 girls applying, that's $90,000. You think that's okay? or normal? I think that is part of how they make money to pay salaries. I think that is disgusting.

did you go to sem? get rejected by any?

G6 said...

The problem is that they all ENCOURAGE you to apply to multiple (what is it up to now? three or four?) seminaries in deference to their cronies so that they can all get a "piece of the pie".
They create an atmosphere of hysteria so that they up their profits.
We all know that the wrong seminary could "ruin your life and shidduch prospects forever" ;)

tembow said...

i have to say that i agree with the seminaries keeping the money because it's called an "application" fee (not an "acceptance" fee)- it's money that's going towards processing ALL the applications that come in, plus paying for the principal or people giving interviews, to fly to different cities or even countries to interview girls. no small fee!

of course i can understand it from the other perspective as well, being that i went to seminary and applied to FOUR (!) schools and it's no small sum of money altogether.

but you gotta look at if from both sides. and not just bring a one-sided argument.

tembow said...

"agree" would be the wrong word. "understand" is more like it.

*in ref. to my previous post