I got rejected from everywhere except my 3 safeties, need advice

Applying to College
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Whenever students (and/or parents) wonder how a college admission cycle ‘went so wrong’, and wonder why only the ‘safety’ schools came through that weren’t even really schools the student is interested in attending - I wonder why these individuals only seems to find CC after the cycle is over.

I also wonder why there seems to be differing definitions of safety schools. If you don’t want to attend the school and can’t afford the school - by definition - it is NOT a safety school.

@daacquan2 If you don’t like the schools you applied to that you were accepted to - you have some options. NACAC releases a list every May (1st week) that shows all schools still having space for freshman applicants and also shows whether they have financial aid still available for applicants. If you have your application ready to send the first week of May, you can put some quick study/work into looking at that list and seeing if you can find a better alternative to the schools you have now.

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@Econpop is spot on, @Bongadi and @Patel034. Interesting @patel034 that you just joined CC 30 minutes ago, but are so active on this thread. And @Bongadi- GW may have been a match, but it was not a safety. A school with a guaranteed admission is a true safety.

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I’m going to close this fourm its getting to out of hand. I’m gonna try to get off the Boston College waitlist and try to get more aid from GW. Thanks guys!

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People who think this is a lottery or a scam do not understand the college admissions process.

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I wanted to ask a question and stumbled across this thread as this student is in the same boat as me in terms of Schools

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Unless things have changed, only a mod or an admin can close a thread. Not liking the feedback is not a reason to close a thread. This issue comes up year after year after year after acceptances are announced, and having current or upcoming applicants read and learn from it can be very helpful, which is what CC is all about.

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You can ignore the ranking and not purchase the magazines/newspapers that publish these ranks. If you end up buying the magazine, at most you will lose $10.

IMHO real scammers are the the school and its admission officers :slight_smile: who ‘highly recommend’ a housing deposit at the time of filing the application. Hide the real admission criteria behind words like ‘holistic’, or utter BS like admissions are decided by millions of different factors. Even Trump was not this banal and vacuous.

I totally agree with your point about students sometimes miss the arithmetic for T20 admissions. I think the frustration/confusion occurs when someone with lesser stats gets in and the students are left wondering why they missed out. IMHO this student is just doing that on this forum.

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Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."

The conversation is getting a bit salty; please be mindful.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/guidelines

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I think an equally large problem is 17-18 year olds not understanding that the way they personally might weight their stats/EC/essays is not how highly selective, holistic admissions colleges weight those items. There are plenty of schools the OP could have applied to that he would have been assured of admission and also would have had a completely transparent aid package (University of Alabama, Miami of OH, Arizona, etc). Great schools, but not what the OP wanted.

Transparent admission/aid practices were not something he valued enough to make that a main component of his college applications. Fair enough, he got to choose what he most valued - it seems like prestige was very high on that list (reasonable, it is on a lot of people’s lists).

However, it seems clear that he didn’t understand his realistic chances at these schools, and if he feels it is unfair that students with ‘lesser’ scores might have be offered an admission spot - he doesn’t understand that holistic admission means the school chooses how they evaluate and value the applications upon receipt. Someone, with say, a 1490 SAT score, with an uw 3.9 won’t be looked at as having ‘lesser’ stats by Admissions, especially if the rest of the application is incredibly strong.

Having listened to a lot of admission podcasts (Rick Clark’s is really good), it seems clear that most, if not all Admission Officers at holistic admission colleges read each application to see if the college application makes the case for that student getting a spot at the college. Admission Officers want to accept students to their school, that is literally their job. They read every application to find the story that makes an acceptance likely.

Putting together an application that makes a compelling case for admission is hard. Most ‘average excellent’ students put together an application that shows they are smart, capable of doing the work and ‘a good person’. Relatively few applications make a case that the school would be missing out if they didn’t accept this particular student.

To be clear this is a pretty sophisticated idea, crafting your college application to create a compelling story of why all the components of your application come together to require a specific college to admit you. Most students (no matter how smart) aren’t skilled enough at 17-18 to do this. Which is why Admission Officers often talk about how they could choose multiple classes of high qualified, impressive students who could succeed at their school - those highly qualified kids start to blend together so what separates a yes, from a waitlist from a no can be relatively small institutional needs, versus the Admission officer thinking one kid is clearly better than another. Very few 17-18 year olds can make a great case for themselves, and those are the ones who get admissions offers from every incredible school you can imagine.

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:pray: Thanks for sharing the guidelines. Please add a clause specifically to call out cyber bullying. Lot of kids who are on this forum, and not playing a video game, are here because they are trying to navigate through a really crucial time in their life. As this is a friendly and welcoming place, we all should be empathetic and kind - especially to students.

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I wish I had read this or seen the podcasts you refer to before I started applying. I thought for the most part my essays portrayed me as a ‘good humorous intelligent passionate kid’ when I should have tried to emphasize what I bring to the table as well. The problem I have with a lot of these college’s prompts is that many don’t give you any opportunity to show what you bring, they ask “Why Us” but rarely ask “Why You?”, and I remember that one college did but the word count was so short you could barely fit anything relevant.

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Getting back to the issue, @daacquan, is any of these three universities affordable without loans? Are you instate for either Rutgers or Penn State and can you afford them? Did you get into the Honors College at either university?

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Penn State is out of the picture, its over 35k and no point of going there when Rutgers is cheaper.

Rutgers is around 16k because I plan to commute from home my first year (if I attend) and its affordable. Didn’t get into the Honors College and I suspect its because they didnt consider Senior Year Grades and many of my internships were Early Senior year. I’ve tried to submit an appeal but they said ‘to ensure all applicants a fair chance we do not allow the submission of additional information’

GW is 69k after a measly 10k scholarship and it is technically affordable because the FAFSA says that my parents are ‘expected to contribute’ around 70-80k. Didn’t get Honors for GW as well

Do you think George Washington could offer more financial or merit aid if I appeal with Rutgers’s aid letter?

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:pray: Thanks for the elaborate response.

“Admission Officers want to accept students to their school, that is literally their job. They read every application to find the story that makes an acceptance likely.”

“Story” is what makes this thing unauthentic. People with scruples will be honest and write an essay about their loving family, people with less scruples would write a more ‘compelling’ story.

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That is simply not correct, @Bongadi, but its not relevant to this discussion.

To the OP: You were given a $10K scholarship from GW. It may not be sufficient for you, but to scoff and call it “measly” is kinda inappropriate. It is unfortunate that you did not discover sooner the wealth of information available on how to make your application stand out, but it is what it is. If you choose to request professional judgment from GW, have good concrete, justifiable reasons. This might also be a good thing to research here a bit before you do it.

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How much can your parents actually spend without compromising their retirement savings or college funds for any younger siblings you may have, or taking out parent loans, or cosigning student loans for you?

Rutgers is about $16k for in-state tuition and fees. The cost of you living at home and commuting is not $0, however. If you commute from home some years but live on campus other years, frosh year is probably the year to live on campus.

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I get “measly” may not have been the right term, I just mean that the scholarship didn’t help that much in terms of affordability.

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Rutgers is known for not giving money to in state students, and the honors is very hard to get into (my daughters had 3.9 UWGPA, 33/34 act, my daughter’s friend just got accepted into Cornell and rejected by Rutgers honors with no merit).

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Ok, so Rutgers v. GWU.
My recommendation is that you NOT commute to Rutgers. Living on campus will give you SO MUCH MORE that you’d be missing by commuting.
Here are three living-learning communities you should consider applying for, depending on what aspects of poli sci you want to focus (international relations, policy&law, leadership)
http://ruoncampus.rutgers.edu/international-2/
http://ruoncampus.rutgers.edu/leadership-2/
http://ruoncampus.rutgers.edu/law-2/

Technically affordable = have your parents agreed to pay that amount and are they able to pay for it from current income and savings? If so, then GWU is a TERRIFIC option.
GWU doesn’t see Rutgers as a peer university, so they wouldn’t offer a better financial aid package in relation to it.

There’s the NACAC list during the first week of May but I doubt you can do better than GWU, which is many students’ dream school and which you’re lucky to have gotten into due to your uw GPA freshman&sophomore years, despite a clear upward trend. To give you an idea, a 700 math score is average there, and 25% students got higher than 1450. It’s a really hard school to get into.

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After speaking with my dad, he thinks that 69k isn’t worth it for George Washington but says it is for an Ivy or T20 (old school academics first Indian parent), he wants to try to get the price to come down and essentially wants me to use it as a buffer school to transfer to Georgetown or a T20 after freshman year.

He also says that I should try to get off the Boston College waitlist as well.

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