In this series, though, I want to be proactive, thinking ahead, to prepare seniors for the possible inevitability of a denial, deferral, or even a wait listing. It’s important to understand the current state of college admissions, particularly the state of competitive admissions, and especially the state of extremely competitive admissions — the Ivy League and other so-called “elite” schools. It’s time to get your mind right, seniors!
When you play the high-stakes game of college admissions these days, sometimes you may lose. Rejection comes with the territory. It can hurt badly. The good news, though, is that things seem to tend toward working out for the best — most of the time.
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My experience has shown me one thing for sure: There are no sure things. Much of life is a series of carefully — and sometimes not so carefully — considered ventures. Quick-and-dirty folk wisdom tells us to “Do our best and good things will happen.” Sure, that’s neat. Many of us, though, suffer an excess of after-the-fact self-criticism. “If only I had done [this] or [that], things would have been different.” Those are words of torment. We can second-guess ourselves until the Mother Ship arrives, but it won’t change reality.
The great composer Beethoven, when faced with inevitable deafness and an onslaught of physical ills, clenched his fist and proclaimed, “I will seize Fate by the throat!” And he did. He went on to tremendous things. I know, I know, you’re not Beethoven. However, the message here for high schoolers considering the serious challenge of applying to selective (especially super-selective) colleges is that much of your likelihood for success lies not so much in winning a wrestling match with Fate as it does with creating a savvy plan.
Rejection should not equal dejection. Getting a rejection letter from a college or university doesn’t make you a bad person. Unfortunately, some high school seniors see themselves in a less-than-positive light when they read the bad news from a highly desired institution. Dealing with rejection is difficult. Most high schoolers tend to take being turned down by a college or university on a personal level. They seem to think that the letter from the admissions office is really saying something like, “You are deficient and we don’t want to have anything to do with you.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth is that in a lot of cases, some rejected students could have performed as well, if not better, at these colleges than those who were accepted. This isn’t a rationalization or sour grapes. At schools where there are a significantly larger number of applications than seats (essentially those schools whose acceptance rate is ~50% or less), there just isn’t room for all the qualified applicants.
This fact is borne out by the so-called Wait List. A wait list is a group of “in-betweeners” who haven’t been rejected but haven’t been admitted. They will be offered admission if the number of enrollments doesn’t meet expectations for the incoming freshman class. One well-known former dean of admission said that his institution receives so many outstanding applications that he doesn’t have the heart to send rejection letters to all the non-accepted applicants. He noted that placing these fine young men and women on the wait list is his way of saying, “We should have admitted you, but we didn’t have room.”
Such is the case with many good colleges. Everyone who is good enough to get in isn’t always
offered admission. Take a little time to feel disappointed about not getting into your most-
desired school(s). It’s perfectly natural to feel bad. Don’t dwell on it, though, and don’t develop an obsessive attitude about it. Don’t hate those schools forever. Don’t view successful candidates at those schools as snobs. Accept the fact that you didn’t make the cut — for
whatever reason — and get on with your life. Embrace those schools that have embraced you.
Select the one that best suits your needs and prepare to have a great higher education experience. Yes, there is life after rejection, but how can you head off rejection at the pass?
Shakespeare said, “Know thyself.” That’s good advice in general and great advice for college applicants. Your college application strategy should begin with an honest appraisal of how you stack up as a competitive applicant. A frank assessment early on can save you much rejection grief down the road. How can you do this?
The first step is to develop a reasonable list of college candidates. This may be old news to some of you, but it’s surprising how many seniors overlook the obvious advantages of “spreading the risk” by creating a candidate list that is ridiculously top heavy. A typical top-heavy list might include the usual suspects: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, and so on. Sometimes candidates will throw in a hastily picked “safety” just in case.
A spread like this is way out of balance. I see it all the time. When I do, I initiate the first step of my impending-disaster recovery program, which I refer to as a “Stats Evaluation.” A Stats Evaluation is a kind of academic, extracurricular, and writing-skills cat scan that usually gets to the heart of the problem quickly.
Among other things, I ask students to tell me where they live, whether their school is public or private, and what grade they’re in. I also ask for their current academic credentials: current GPA (weighted and unweighted), class rank, test scores (SATs [I and II] and ACT, if applicable), and their current course schedule. I want to know how many and which Advance Placement courses they’ve taken and what they scored in the AP tests.
As for extracurriculars, I examine what kinds of activities the student is involved in and the length and depth of their involvement. I also ask for similar information about their volunteer work. Honors are important, so I ask for a list of them along with any summer-activity data, such as college programs, jobs, or whatever.
I also (told you this was an in-depth examination), I want to know what the student’s college candidates are, the complete list of all schools s/he is considering for application along with any legacy connections the student may have at these schools.
The icing on the evaluation cake for me is the writing sample.I ask students to send me what they believe to be the best sample of their writing. This might be something they wrote for an English class or (hopefully) something they’re planning to use as an application essay. It’s interesting to note that there isn’t always a positive correlation between the quality of a student’s academic profile and his or her writing skill. That is, sometimes students who appear to be not all that outstanding from a sheer numbers standpoint can be amazing writers.
I also encourage questions and comments. Many times I’ll learn that a student isn’t all that sure why s/he has selected specific candidates. I’m often surprised to see a large apparent mismatch between a student’s overall profile and his or her candidate list. This tells me that the student needs to be very careful in planning his or her application strategy.
Once I have all this data, I can evaluate the student’s relative chances at his or her candidate colleges. If their list is way out of whack, I tell them so (nicely) and make sensible recommendations based on whatever preferences they have mentioned to me. My goal is to get them clearly focused on a properly balanced spread.
So then, if your overall profile compares favorably with those of admitted first-year students at your candidate colleges (information usually available on college Web sites), you’ll know that you at least have a chance. As I mention above, though, don’t just go by numbers alone. There are also the essays, your recommendations, your application packaging (marketing extras), and those ever-present (or never-present) intangibles …
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[This ends Part 1 of my series on dealing with rejections, deferrals, and wait lists. In Part 2, I’ll address some Plan-B approaches, should you find yourself in one of these situations in December or next spring. Stay turned!]
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Be sure to see my other college-related articles on College Confidential.
