Now And Then

Rejection is real

There existed, once upon a time, a time where students applied to three schools and got in to all three. There were no needs for elaborate presidencies, no needs for finding a cure for cancer, and no needs for 26 letters of recommendation.

Today, however, the situation is very different. Rejections are very real indeed. That is why it is so important to ‘love thy safety’. No, I'm not saying you should write love letters to your safety schools; what I mean is that you have to place equal emphasis on your safety schools as much as your reaches and matches.

Set on just one

Here’s a hypothetical scenario that involves "Alex" that can turn out to become true: No matter what his teachers and friends told him, Alex had his eyes set only on Dartmouth. He keeps on telling everyone how much he loves Dartmouth, and everyday he learned something new about the school.

His guidance counselor could see through his stats; Dartmouth was a ‘reach’ for Alex. But Alex didn't care. He was sure that his intense interest in the school would offset his poor stats. He kept visiting the school and coming back with new information. When he was deferred in December, he handled it very well. Why? He was so sure he'll get it in April.

The danger

What’s the danger? By focusing on only one school, Alex has not given himself the opportunity to look at other schools where he had at least a 70% chance of getting in. When rejection from Dartmouth came in April, Alex was so disorientated. He didn't know where else to go. Some of his ‘safeties’ sent him rejections too, on the basis of a “total lack of interest in our institution”.

See how dangerous it can be? Therefore the best attitude to adopt when building your list of colleges is to treat your final list of your top choices. Your final list of 8-12 schools is your ‘first choices’. Love all equally, and you can be sure that acceptances will be on your way to your mailbox.

A True Story (Andi)

Here I wish to present you a true story, as opposed to a hypothetical one. This story originated from the College Confidential forums, posted by a parent with the screen name Andi.

I wrote this with her permission:

"My son, known to CC regulars as Andison, was one of the top graduates in his competitive public high school graduation class, was a National Merit Finalist, had SATs of 1550, four SAT IIs with scores between 730-770, had a nationally recognized EC etc etc, and, no he didn't have a personality defect, he's a great kid.

Anyway, he applied to five Ivy League schools and was rejected from all of them. He was waitlisted by three schools and ultimately these schools took few to no students from the waitlist. One of the waitlisted schools accepted at least six students from his HS who are all at this college now, who had lower credentials than he had (yes we know this because most of them are friends of his).

Andison's SATs were 200 points higher than the mean SATs of this year's accepted students at that school. His GPA was higher as well (this told to us by his GC who found out from the admissions office). The school waitlisted him, because they sensed that he was using them as a safety. He ultimately hung onto the waitlists until June 15th, when the last list closed. He went through all the fun senior parties, the graduation, and the entire end of his senior year desperately hoping he'd get off the waitlist. It never happened."

Enough details...

The point is that this can happen to you!
What can you do to avoid this?

1. Build your list from the bottom up.
2. Don't put all you energy into the top choice applications.
3. Pay just as much attention to your "safety" schools. VISIT them.

It doesn't matter how brilliant, nice, talented, funny, popular, beautiful etc. you are..... it can happen. I'm not posting this because I want to resurrect that episode and analyze it. I most definitely don't - please don't try. What really went wrong was that they didn't put together a realistic and balanced list, and didn't put energy into the safety schools. Andi was a victim or poor planning and unfortunate circumstances.

So, what happened to Andi?

Andison is taking a gap year. He's taking a semester of physics as a 'special student' at MIT as well as studying music there, commuting from home. He's also teaching music to children at a small local music school, has an internship and a pt job. He's in great shape now and has no doubt learned an important life lesson (and so has his mother).