Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with a kidney disease as well as a chronic illness in the beginning of my freshman year. As a result of being out a lot freshman year, my grades significantly suffered. For sophomore and Junior year, I was placed on home instruction due to this medical illness. Senior year, my doctors and the school agreed on a medically excused half day schedule for at least the first semester, to help me ease back into school. Additionally, I am taking 2 AP courses through an online individual private institution.
Freshman year (through senior year), I was given a 504 plan that ensures no ill (or disabled) student can be discriminated against or denied equal opportunities (especially education wise) for having an illness or disability.
With that being said, there was a certain college that I strongly feel has based their decision on (or technically off of) my medical history. Considering my scores qualify (with the exception of freshman year), my essay was good (reviewed by many teachers and professionals and many peers said It was the best essay they ever read), and I have (strong in comparison to my situation) extra curricular activities including internships/work, community service and several clubs, I do not believe this decision they made is fair. Especially when you take into account they accepted friends of mine who have MUCH lower scores, few to no activities and not as strong of an essay. (Not being mean, but they told me their scores, I know their activities and feel their essay is not unique, as confirmed by some teachers and essay editing professionals).
Just wondering who I should contact about this? I have no problem being deferred/waitlisted/denied, however NOT when it is due to discrimination against something I had NO control over, especially when it is legally against the law to do so.
Colleges and universities that do not admit strictly by the numbers are free to make up their freshman (and transfer) classes as they see fit - including deliberately rejecting students who have better grades, test scores, ECs, etc. than others do.
University of Miami
University of Maryland
Florida State University
Rutgers University School of Business New Brunswick
University of Central Florida
If the OP’s medical issues resulted in D or F grades in courses that the college requires to be eligible for admission, then it could be that the college rejected him/her for that reason.
There are many threads on CC where students ask how their friends with lower stats got accepted to colleges that waitlisted or rejected them. Nobody knows for sure why anyone receives the decision they do. That’s why students are advised to cast a wide net. Good luck with your other schools.
@ucbalumnus those were reach schools, this is regarding target and safety schools. Secondly, never received an F in any class. Third, even having received 2 d’s and 2 c’s freshman year, my grades were so strong the other 2 years, my combined GPA was within the range of my target and safety schools.
Unless someone in admissions sends you a smoking gun email stating that you were discriminated against, you really don’t have a case. Most likely the school could show they denied admission to other (non-disabled) students with stats equal to - or higher than - yours. Many students get denied by schools they thought were reaches and safeties, and by schools where their stats are in the top 25% percentile. Having stats within the stated ranges means you had a decent chance at admission, but is by no means a guarantee. You can never tell what the tipping factor is that gets one kid with lower scores admitted over another kid with higher scores.
You need to check those colleges to see if they have “hard” requirements on high school course work. In many cases, courses where you got D grades do not count. For example, if the college requires four years of high school English courses with C or higher grades, but you got a D in one semester of 9th grade English, you may have only three and a half years and be automatically disqualified from admission.
Also, there are some colleges which do not like to be used as safeties, so they consider “level of applicant’s interest” in admissions, so that they can deny or waitlist “overqualified” students whom they expect will not attend.
Since you did not name any colleges, no one else here can do anything but speculate.
Unless the college/university in question publishes the GPA and test scores that flat-out guarantee admission right on its website, and you have numbers that are at least that good, you cannot consider it truly safe. If human beings are reading the applications and making choices about who to admit and who not to admit, even if no one with your profile from your own high school has ever been rejected, that college/university can be considered reasonably safe but it isn’t truly safe.
If your own guidance counselor firmly believed that there was no way you would be rejected by College X given years of close observation of their admissions patterns and his/her relationship with their admissions office, AND if College X is a clear first choice for you, then it may be worth it to find out if your counselor would be willing to contact the admissions office at College X in order to ask if anything specific went wrong with your application and whether they would possibly consider reviewing their decision. Sometimes there is a problem with the file (such as mislabeled transcripts) and decisions do get changed.
It violates Federal statute if a university (public or private) discriminates against members of a “protected class” (which is also defined by statute) in its admissions practices. Examples include race, religion, and gender. If your maladies dictate your inclusion in a “protected class,” you MIGHT have some leverage. If they do not, however, the institution has the prerogative to be rather arbitrary (not to say that is “right,” but by now I am sure you have learned that life isn’t always “fair”).
I second what @happymomof1 said. If the college offers “assured admission” which guarantees admission to those who meet certain standards, I would speak with your GC to see if he/she is willing to reach out to the college admissions.
If the college does a holistic review, then I highly doubt that you were discriminated against. I applied to a college with 65% acceptance rate (as a safety) and was rejected with stats far above the admitted student average.
Regardless of the cause/reason, you can write an appeal (if the college accepts appeals).
Note that “assured admission” criteria often include a specific high school course pattern. If any D grades were in such courses, that can prevent the applicant from being considered for “assured admission”. It could also cause “assured rejection” if the high school course pattern is part of the minimum criteria for admission.
Ditto. Unless this is a stats driven school with guaranteed admission ,or a school with an open admissions policy, there is no evidence of discrimination just because someone with comparable grades or scored got in.
The only guaranteed admission program I’ve ever heard of are the articulation agreements between the 2-year SUNy schools and the 4-year colleges, and even those say (if you’ve earned a degree from the 2-year SUNY) that you’re guaranteed to transfer to “a” SUNY 4-year, not “the SUNY 4-year of your choice.” Do other states have guaranteed admission programs based on stats alone?
Lots of others. See the sticky thread about that. But completion of a course pattern is also specified - a 4.0 in non college prep courses will not qualify.