We understand.
It may be that you have applied to several schools. Only one can be your first choice. If your first choice waitlists you, and your second or third choice extends you an offer with a limited amount of time to respond, it may seem like a really good idea to accept the seat you are offered, while holding out hope you will get nudged from the waitlist to the acceptance zone at your dream school. It may seem like a worthwhile investment to pay the acceptance deposit for your own security. You will lose the acceptance deposit if you get into (and decide to attend) the school you are waitlisted for.
We completely understand.
However, some applicants pay the acceptance fee at more than one school where they have been offered admission. That is, they accept the seats they have been offered at BOTH UVic and UBC. This is a practice we call “holding multiple seats.”
There may be a variety of reasons that people decide to hold multiple seats, but we guess it’s mostly that these are people who cannot make up their minds which school they want to attend, and they simply want more time to decide. Add to this that there is always a financial penalty in the practice of holding multiple seats (you lose your acceptance deposit when you decide to give up either seat), and it becomes clear that is only an option that is available for those who can afford to delay their decision.
Once a person withdraws their acceptance (and loses the deposit), a vacancy in the incoming class opens up. This is offered to someone on the wait list. While this is good news for someone, it’s only good news if that next person on the list can actually make arrangements to attend. Incoming students often have to relocate themselves (and sometimes a family or pet). They may have to leave their jobs. If they remain on the waitlist too long into the spring or summer, they may have made alternate plans for the fall. Or, it might just get to the point where it’s too difficult to decide to move last-minute.
While we understand that there will be movement on the waitlist as people try and work out their own logistics, holding multiple seats puts an unnecessary delay on creating a vacancy. This can make a class difficult to fill. It can put deserving applicants in difficult positions. And it’s hard on the school, whether it’s UVic or any other law school. It’s a practice we strongly discourage.