<p>Hi,
If a highly competitive undergraduate school is turned down because the financial aid offer is too low, how does this impact an application to the same school for graduate study a few years later? Do they hesitate to offer an acceptance because of being turned down earlier, or do they look at the candidate favorably? Or does it lose relevance? I appreciate your time!</p>
<p>I believe it’s irrelevant. I don’t think grad and undergrad admissions offices share this kind of info. Anecdotally, my daughter is now in a grad program at a selective university she turned down for undergrad school. (When she went to get a university ID, however, she found that the ID she had been assigned as an undergrad applicant was still alive!)</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter in the least. My kid did a prelim interview junior year at a top college and sent some test scores there. Applied early elsewhere and never sent in an offical app. </p>
<p>After the deadline, kid got a letter saying we were surprised you didn’t apply, given the interest you had expressed in the college. If there are extenuating circumstances which prevented you from meeting the deadline, please contact us about an extension. If you’ve decided to go elsewhere, we wish you the best of luck and hope that you will think about our university again when it comes time to apply to graduate or professional school. </p>
<p>I thought it was a nice note and it certainly made clear that choosing to go elsewhere wouldn’t hurt kid’s future chances.</p>
<p>0 impact. The admissions offices for grad and undergrad are different, too. I also went to grad school at a place I’d turned down for undergrad.</p>
<p>Grad school admissions are usually done by the department, not a university-wide graduate admissions office. I went to grad school at Stanford, which I had turned down for undergraduate. I don’t think the graduate departments even really communicate with the undergraduate admissions office.</p>
<p>Exactly. Totally different groups of people looking at the applications.</p>
<p>Exactly right. A committee of faculty in the relevant department review grad school applications and choose the applicants they deem strongest and/or the best fits for their department. They don’t give a hoot what the applicant thought about the school as a place to do undergraduate study four years earlier—that’s simply irrelevant. Some faculty actually encourage their undergrads to go to grad school elsewhere, on the theory that the students will get exposure to a broader range of ideas, research methods, etc, and emerge intellectually stronger for it.</p>