GW is a FANTASTIC option for your area of interest. Go forth and make the most of your opportunities there.
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I guess the main concern I have is that I applied to GW on a whim, without any major research and without as much effort I put into every other application, which is why I am hesitant to consider GW and much more disappointed I only got in here. They accepted me even though I put little effort into my application while the schools where I delved hours into writing essays rejected me. I donât know GW as well compared to every other school I got denied from. I never felt any sort of connection to GW that I did to the schools on my rejected list.
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Do you feel more connected to either of your other choices?
There must have been some reason you picked it. If you do some research about GW you might find that it aligns with many of your interests and goals and your âshot in the darkâ was very fortuitous.
Not really, Rutgers was the safety state school that I never wanted to go too and Penn State was just a backup I applied to because my guidence counselor said I needed 2 safety schools.
GW is also costly, the Presidential Scholarship I got from them is only 10k, the smallest Presidential Scholarship possible, and it barely covers any tuition, 59k with the aid, which makes it much more harder of a decision.
What is the net cost of all 3 schools? Will you/your parents need to take out more than the direct student loans of $27K over 4 years ($5.5K first year, then 6.5K/7.5K/7.5K)?
Since you only gave weighted GPA, should we assume that your unweighted GPA was something like 3.1 overall, 3.33 junior year, and 3.83 senior year?
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3.4 Freshman
3.5 Sophomore
3.8 Junior
3.95 Senior
GW is great for political science, and you got some money there. However, if you donât feel itâs the place for you, then itâs no big deal since itâs not your only option. I feel you didnât really have anything between GW and Northeastern besides Boston College and you maybe shouldâve added some more public schools such as UIUC, UVA, Wisconsin, and UGA (which might be your state school since you mentioned Ossoff) since they are a bit less holistic than private schools and cheaper. But I definitely think that you still have good options in GW, Penn State, and Rutgers. Maybe youâll get lucky and get off the Boston College waitlist, but assuming not, GW is a great option for Poli Sci. Itâs right in DC so the opportunities are there. However, it is quite urban and feminine (might not be a bad thing for you though) so it might not be for you. Penn State is a good school still and so is Rutgers. But I feel the program at GW is easily the best and can help you get more experience in Politics on top of your Ossoff campaign (thank you btw, I hoped Ossoff would win).
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Assuming the school is affordable, Iâd take the next couple of days and do some serious research into GW. The school saw something about you that they wanted and it happens to be a great fit for your area of interest. If you canât visit then Iâd do things like:
âparticipate in any online accepted student day functions;
âlook at the online course catalog for classes in your major;
âlook at the GW forum here as well as Niche
âget some good college guide books (Fiske, Princeton Review) and read up on GW
âgo through the schoolâs website carefully
âTry to get the school newspaper online to get a sense of campus life.
I know a number of graduates of GW â all were excellent students and all enjoyed their four years there.
I know you are frustrated by the results but it is time to start viewing your admissions glass as half full rather than half empty. IMO if you tell anyone you are interested in politics/political science and you chose to attend GW it would make all the sense in the world.
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Why not consider completing your degree where you start?
The sooner you let go of unrealistic dreams, the better it will be for you. Between you and your GC, it appears the person with vastly more experience in dealing with student records and college applications knew you needed more match schools than unrealistic reach schools. Iâm not referring to the three schools you got into as âsafetiesâ because if they were true safeties you probably would have received larger scholarships and entry into their honors programs.
The result of your application process was close to what should have happened. Just because a student/family assumes that student is a match for a certain school does not make that assumption fact. The results speak clearly. The fact that you applied to GW only on a âwhimâ says more about your lack of knowledge of where you actually stood than the quality of GW.
The best thing for you to do now is to stop looking for clues as to why you were denied admission to T20 schools, and start figuring out how to make the most of your true match options. Youâre not alone in your overestimation of the schools you thought you were a match for - many many students make that same miscalculation every year. People have a hard time truly understanding what it means when a college has an admit rate below 15%.
GW is a great school. I have a step-sister-in-law who is half my age who received her masters in PolySci from GW a few years ago. She now has a great, interesting, well paying job in her field that, pre-covid, took her all over the world. I have a hunch that by the time you get to the second semester at GW, youâll not be so eager to transfer.
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Why so harsh man? I get the âharsh truthâ thing but you didnât have to tell him that he was a bad applicant and that he should have expected to get rejected from everywhere, even George Washington.
I did not get into Michigan State Honors but I got into George Washington Honors, each school is different.
My friend had a 1430, 4.2w and was a president of the science club and got in at Brown for Chemical Engineering, anything is possible. You donât know how his essays were man, that kid also applied to 4 safety schools because he didnât believe in himself and his college counselor recommended that he should. So saying that the poster has no common sense is harsh.
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I donât think itâs harsh. Itâs the same way I spoke to my son when he went through this process last year. If an applicant cant accept the hard truth of my statements, I predict thatâs a student that will have a difficult time adjusting to the rigorous coursework at a T20 institution. I never said he was a âbad applicantâ. I said he had unrealistic expectations.
Many students, regardless of their stats, seem to think they âshouldâ get admitted to schools that arenât really matches for them. For some, the unrealistic dream is T20 schools. For others, the unrealistic dream is T40-80 schools, for others the unrealistic dream might be T100-140 schools.
If a student applies to 15 top 30 unis and gets accepted to 7, that indicates they were a match for most and simply lost the battle of numbers. If a student applies to 15 top20 unis and gets admitted to none of them, that says they were all unrealistic reaches. There is nothing wrong with applying to reaches. In fact, I encourage anyone to apply to their person dream schools. But it is important to accept that they are/were reaches.
EDIT: And as I have said several times, I think GW is a great school. Any student who is admitted to GW is obviously a great student. The OP should feel proud of his accomplishments.
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Yes I get that but telling a kid who is upset he didnât get into any of his ideal choices that he isnât good enough is far from what should be said. This was a pandemic year, application numbers were high and many deferred their application and as a result admission rates were low. I would advise him to go to GW and persevere. If he doesnât like GW he can transfer out, next year probably wonât be as competitive as Covid begins to clear up.
My own college counselor, who you praise to be college geniuses, told me if this were 2019 and not 2021 that Iâd probably see myself at an Ivy League School, the same way this kid might be.
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@jym626 your response is probably unnecessary. The student was simply expressing his/her exasperation on the utter opaqueness of college admission process (which is borderline lottery or an elaborate scam). The whole admission process has been a crap shoot especially this year. Moreover GW may not be a safety for you but perhaps it is for this student.
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This is the best way to look at it, this year was a sh-tshow, and Colleges arenât one size fits all. What is a safety for some are reaches and targets for others. We shouldnât judge a student like these people have been doing in this section
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NYU and Northeastern are holistic as are all the schools you applied to⊠No one has the âstatsâ to get in there. They likely got a sense that you were using them as safeties.
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What is the true scam is the magazine/articles/sites that rank schools, then try their hardest to convince families that only by attending one of these top-ranked schools can their student be supremely successful.
What is a scam is that yearly, hundreds of thousands of applicants apply to the T20 unis assuming they have a better chance at being admitted than not, when there are only 20K freshman seats available. What is sad is apparently most applicants donât realize the blatantly clear math of that equation that 90% of the applicants (hundreds of thousands of students with fantastic stats) will be denied admittance. There is no shame in not getting admitted - the sad part for me is that so many students/families assume they are incompetent and fail to realize their immense worth.
By all means, APPLY. But these students should always realize the facts of the math.
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According to US News rankings, BC is at #35 and rejected from the others with NEU at #49 as a surprise. Did you show a good bit of interest in both BC and NEU? That can certainly tip the scales at private universities.
Others in between PSU and GW are Wm & Mary, Tulane, Lehigh and Miami. Wm & Mary mightâve been a solid pick for POLS, as well as other public Uâs like Maryland.
Besides the grades, which showed an awesome trend, especially in a senior year that may not have âcountedâ, the ECs werenât spikey with strong leadership across multiple activities. Also, universities are looking for how students overcome adversity and take advantage of all opportunities.
GW is a very competitive university with ambitious students. If you can swing the $$, go for it. Otherwise, Rutgers is quite solid. Attend there, transfer if you feel so compelled or make the most of it and go to a top law school.
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Water under the bridge at this point, but OP fell into the classic trap - an average excellent student who focused too much on reach schools, and not enough on match schools. Also, NYU is a reach school for just about everyone and, because of itâs wonky and unpredictable admissions, NEU is nobodyâs safety school.
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