[tzs]

Even getting admitted to two colleges would be financial crippling to a majority of applicants.

Insurance premiums would be a significant fraction of the average tuition, which would be beyond the reach of many.

The effect of the proposed system would be that most people would just apply to one school. If rejected they would try another next year, if they haven’t given up on college, and so on.

[apparent]

This would result in lots of schools moving to a rolling admission process with monthly (or even weekly) notification cycles. Students would then apply serially to several schools.

Of course, there's no way to get schools to all require a deposit, and even if there were schools would give fee-waivers to low-income students (giving them an advantage over middle-class kids).