<p>What's the protocol on contacting colleges that rejected you? I would have never have though about doing that, except someone today brought up the good point that if there was a specific reason they rejected you, it would be helpful to know for the future. I understand this point--we all put so much time/effort into the college process but don't necessarily get to learn from our mistakes, because we don't know exactly what constituted those mistakes. </p>
<p>I'm planning on applying to grad school, so obviously this idea intrigued me. What do you guys think? </p>
<p>You can call the admissions office to find out the reason. It can be helpful to know if you’re appealing their decision. Some colleges allow you to submit appeals; others don’t. I don’t know about long-term benefits of rejection, though. It’s more helpful just to move on. </p>
<p>You’ll and every other student will get the same answer from every college. They are not in the business of giving feedback. They’ll tell you there were many more qualified students than their ability to accept, blah blah blah (insert feelings soothing platitudes here) and wish you good luck.</p>
<p>The fact is, weeks after the fact, they probably don’t know WHY they rejected you,. I doubt they even note why on your file – there are 1000s of files to go through. And if they did, the notes would be extremely personal and may not be flattering. Anything revealed and more specific = lawsuits.</p>
<p>It’s just like submitting resumes to a job posting. Those who don’t get invited to an interview don’t get told why not. That’s how it goes.</p>
<p>The graduate school admissions process is different than the undergraduate admissions process. If there was a specific reason you had been rejected, you would already know (test scores, grades, course rigor, ECs, hooks compared to the pool of admitted students). Much more likely that your rejected profile looks a lot like the profile of an admitted student, there isn’t a lesson to be learned and you need to look ahead to how you will be evaluated in four years.</p>
<p>Their likely response would be “There are many qualified candidates and they cannot offer admission to everyone.”
Particularly for top schools, many students got rejected without any obvious reason. </p>
<p>Well I did contact McGill to give me a concrete answer why I was rejected…their response was, “Sir we do not accept students with technical diplomas” and then I went on to UoT, their answer, “We had a pool of excellent students, making a decision was so difficult, we are sorry but you can always reapply”. To be candid I learnt nothing from the answers. Each college has its own reason for rejection…what is really important is moving ahead, much lies in front!!!</p>
<p>Unless you are taking a gap year and apply again, I don’t see how this do any help anyway. When one apply to graduate school, it will be a totally different game.</p>
<p>If anyone has a chance of getting an answer, it’s a GC with connections in the admissions office. Most GCs don’t have that connection, and it’s more likely you’ll get a meaningful answer at a smaller school, rather than one that just processed 50,000 applications, but the answer can be interesting.</p>
<p>We had our GC contact D’s ED1 school after deferral, to find out if waiting for RD was worth not doing ED2 elsewhere. GC thought she had a very good chance, and was surprised by who they did admit. After the usual standard answers, he finally got one - the student who was admitted was not under the control of the admissions office, D was deferred because “there was no compelling reason to admit her ED”. In other words, thanks, but no thanks - your chances at RD are minimal. So we moved on to ED2 and got in - probably a better fit anyway.</p>
<p>You will not get any insight toward your grad school applications, even if you got your GC to feel them out about this year’s results. Grad school will not be looking at your HS record or ECs, SAT or essay. Grad school doesn’t use any of those things. It uses your college gpa and coursework, rarely any ECs, they use GRE, research experience, important letters of references from people you did research with, personal statement which is really a research and skills statement, not a story about your life. So there is no good point here because they will not be looking at the same data, plus you will have 4 years to be better informed and a better writer.</p>