its NEVER about luck when you don't get in

Applying to College
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Therein lies the problem. You are not a failure. You simply weren't as fortunate as some of your peers to get in where you wanted.

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<p>its the "ohh i'm so unlucky" self-pitying and counter-productive attitude thats the real problem here</p>

<p>1) first of all, college admissions is not lottery, the admission officers dont draw blindly from ballot boxes to determine who gains admission....they evaluate each and every application thoroughly and admit based on the school's needs and the applicant's ability to contribute towards a vibrant and enriching college experience for all (be it in academics, sports, diversity etc.)</p>

<p>sure some of the indicators used may be arbitrary, but thats just one part of the holistic evaluation process....there are so many ways in which applications (even from students with seemingly similar credentials) can differ from one another i.e. essays, recs, specific strengths in certain subjects, certain sub-topics, certain sports, certain sub-positions in sports etc, so how could you say "my 2200 SAT didnt gain me admission while those of others did hence its bad-luck on my part"?</p>

<p>2) besides, while i agree (and many others have repeatedly stated) that not gaining admission to a specific college is certainly not indicative of one's ability, brushing it off as bad-luck on ones part is certainly the least-productive way to deal with it....a much better approach would be to look at the colleges you applied to, whether they were really a good fit for you and your specific abilites</p>

<p>if they werent, take it as a lesson learnt and be more informed about your specific capabilities and talent and learn how best to utilise them in the future....if they were, then you need to take a step back to see if you were working hard enough **in the right direction<a href="taking%206+%20AP%20classes%20and%20having%20a%20schedule%20fully%20packed%20with%20back-to-back%20swimming%20and%20guitar%20lesson%20are%20pointless%20endeavours%20if%20one%20just%20immerses%20himself%20blindly%20w/o%20appreciating%20these%20activities,%20the%20meaning%20behind%20them%20and%20the%20connections%20between%20them,%20and%20i'm%20not%20even%20talking%20about%20CV-padding%20here">/b</a>....theres a reason y some ppl get much more for seemingly having worked much less, life is both about working hard and working smart </p>

<p>in case anyone attempts to debunk my comments as rantings of an unsympathetic elitist, i've seen my fair share of rejections, and have had ppl who've tried to console me for being "unlucky"....and i think its time to cut out that condescending pretence, because all that crap about luck achieves nth apart from continuing to delude oneself</p>

<p>might as well say i'm unlucky because i wasnt born an Einstein</p>

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<p>Common knowledge, I’d assumed…</p>

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<p>not many share the same enlightened view as your esteemed it would seem</p>

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<p>true to some extent, but you have to remember the process is subjective…</p>

<p>Admissions decisions are made by people who have bad days, good days, and biases.</p>

<p>There is some luck in getting an admissions officer who LOVES your essay, while someone else might not be so impressed. Maybe your admissions officer also played tennis in high school, so while they try to be objective, they like tennis players better than chess players. Or maybe they hate tennis. Either way, people have biases.</p>

<p>Perhaps your application got put after someone amazing (or abysmal) and yours looks different than it otherwise would have in comparison. </p>

<p>I always felt that while I was 100% qualified for my alma mater, that I got lucky to be among the admitted students. They rejected a lot of people just as qualified as me. It very well could have been that my application was read on a friday, not a monday. Who knows.</p>

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<p>I agree wholeheartedly with Alum007. I realized this when I actually spoke with an admissions officer from Duke on an accepted student day. She came up to me and started raving about a certain project for which I was in the news (a big story at the time). She told me that it was cool because she’d read the article that talked about me already 2 years ago in the NYT. Had I happened to get an admissions officer who hadn’t read that article, the project may not have appeared as novel as it did to the one I did get, and that could have easily tipped me the other way.</p>

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<p>Well, there is probably some degree of “luck” involved, i.e., whether an adcom loves or hates your essay, personal statement, or teacher rec, but gaining admission mostly deals with your own abilities. If you get rejected, then it clearly means you did not meet the standard against which you were measured. The only person you have to blame is yourself.</p>

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<p>Here’s the thing: with the way college admissions are these days, many absolutely wonderful applicants who performed to the best of their abilities in high school get rejected from top colleges.</p>

<p>Now, a C student who got rejected from Harvard shouldn’t be blaming luck. That’s a given. But what do you say to the valedictorian with strong SATs, ECs and essay that also got rejected?</p>

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<p>tough luck? obviously not</p>

<p>with more than 2000 valedictorians across the nation, even if H were to admit only vals, they still woudnt have enough space for everyone of them, so it boils down to which val is the strongER applicant…it’ll nvr be about luck unless 2 vals have the exact same apps</p>

<p>and besides, H never admits only vals, that wouldnt make for a very diverse and vibrant community would it? grouping a bunch of privileged (at least more so than many others) students together who frankly speaking know nuts bout how the rest subsists does no gd except to propagate elitism and exclusivity…besides, where would their resources (hence their world-class facilities and education) come from if they dont admit a few developments?</p>

<p>not getting in = not fulfilling the college/adcoms needs (which already took into account space and financial constraints), which means if u really want a gd shot, u got to work in the right direction, be it differentiating yourself so that u have sth unique to offer, or really excel and make yourself too gd deal to pass up…good ECs/SATs/essay might not be enough =)</p>

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Didn’t you just refute your own point about how “its NEVER about luck when you don’t get in?”</p>

<p>What about luck of birth? Surely the wealth of one’s parents is beyond one’s control.</p>

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<p>^ for some reason your username resonates strongly with the comment you made =)</p>

<p>let me just add to the fray - tough luck for not being born Einstein</p>

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<p>So how can you say it’s “NEVER” about luck? The circumstances of one’s birth do greatly affect one’s opportunities.</p>

<p>It can only never be about luck when everyone goes to the same high school, are all equally able in every respect, have all of their achievements correlate with effort, and have their applications read by robotic adcoms. In the real world, human subjectivity and chance do play a role.</p>

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<p>Factors beyond one’s control always influence college decisions: Who your parents are (For instance whether they encouraged your educational opportunities; whether they were neglectful high school drop-outs, whether they were billionaire potential donors); where you live (influences the quality of schooling you got; whether you’d get in state preference to public universities; whether you’re in a region or location that is underrepresented or overrepresented at the college); your talents, skills and interests (For instance, if you happen to have a strong background in a field the college is expanding, you’re in luck); whether you happened to remind the admissions officer of themselves or their worst enemy.</p>

<p>It’s great that the OP got into college, but the OP shouldn’t assume that meant that s/he was head and shoulders above applicants who didn’t get in. The OP also shouldn’t assume that it was only their own hard work that caused the admission. </p>

<p>To make things even more obvious: International applicants to U.S. private and public schools have to be way better than U.S. citizens to gain admission. Whether or not one is international is a factor of luck of birth.</p>

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<p>^ isnt it abit pointless to make statements like “oh tough luck..” or “i’m so unlucky..”…thats really counter-productive and delusional</p>

<p>no offence but one thing i’ve noticed about you northstarmom from your other posts is that you have the tendency to label anyone whos unwilling to adopt this sympathetic/self-pitying attitude as someone who thinks he’s “heads and shoulders above applicants who didnt get in”</p>

<p>as in said, i strongly agree that not gaining admission is NOT indicative of one’s ability, its simply about not meeting the specific needs of the college (which imo if i really wanted to get in i would try to achieve)…and i rightfully think that it was my hardwork that allowed me to gain admission</p>

<p>btw i’m an international and i’m not complaining bout the rejections</p>

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<p>of course there is luck involved-</p>

<p>time of day your applicaiton was looked at
how many similar ones to yours were in the pile</p>

<p>if you don’t think some luck is involved, </p>

<p>not getting in is maybe about not fitting the needs of a school at a moment in time</p>

<p>I have read several books about the process and this is what the admin people say </p>

<p>“today I need to reject 7 of the ten apps I read…because yesterday I accepted too many…”</p>

<p>yes, this is reality, and if they read your app one day your could be in, the next, not in</p>

<p>to think there is no luck involved is being naive to the proccess and how real life works, and how people are</p>

<p>Of course you have to have talent, a good package etc., but yes, luck is often involved</p>

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<p>some people think admissions officers are a bunch of over-emotional cranks with convenient mood swings who get paid for choosing candidates on a nearly arbitrary basis, something which could just as well have been done by lottery. adcoms have YEARS of experience. they are PROFESSIONALS. in any case, applications are read by at least two or more adcoms, adcoms who also have bosses to answer to. they’re not gonna produce crappy work. yes, there is a degree of luck involved, but please don’t put most of the blame on them when you get rejected. it undermines all the months of work that admissions officers have done.</p>

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<p>Some years you’d be the only tuba player applying to a college in which the first tuba is graduating. Other years, you’re applying along with 5 other tuba players.</p>

<p>One year, the college is attempting to start a new program for which you have particular characteristics, so is trying to woo more of such students. Or the college is thinking of eliminating such a program. These factors may not known to applicants.</p>

<p>These are both “luck”. </p>

<p>I actually believe that your construct of trying to see if “you were moving in the right direction” is the one that’s counter-productive unless you were rejected from all of the colleges to which you applied. You apply to college only once; assuming you met the basic requirements for admission to the schools (i.e., you’re not the C student applying to Harvard), there are no productive “lessons” to be learned here. Not getting accepted to a school does not mean that you’ve done anything “wrong.” Additionally, as an applicant, one does not know the strength of the applicant pool in any particular year, nor does one know the colleges’ needs.</p>

<p>You can wallow in the rejections and try to “learn” what you did wrong, or you can see that you didn’t get in, chalk it up to “luck” or happenstance, and move one. The latter, to me, is much healthier.</p>

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<p>Disagree with OP. College admissionsa are about LUCK. And there is nothing wrong or unhealthy about stating that you were unlucky not to get into this or that school.
Hard work in the right direction and carefully planned college applications can assure that you will get into a great school. Just because you generally can get into your match school and schools at the border of top 10 CAN be match schools.
But beyond that it is about luck. And here are examples:

  1. Someone is waitlisted at ALL HYPSCMs and someone gets one acceptance and 4 rejections. The first applicant can be stronger, but the second is luckier.
  2. Someone wants to go to Stanford and gets into Stanford (with rejections not only from HYPs, but from schools like Brown and Duke). Another student dreams about Stanford, but gets a rejection despite of acceptances at generally more selective HYPs. Once again, the second applicant may be stronger, but the first one is luckier. </p>

<p>And I see no point in analyzing the rejections at reach schools. Just move on. If you didn’t get into several match schools, you should think why, but if you knew you were an average applicant for that school in terms of grades and test scores and the competition was tough - it can be just luck. As said before: the problem can be with admission officer, not you. They ask you to list the books you read, and if admission officer hasn’t read those books, you don’t score extra emotional points, even thugh it is admission officer who is not well-read.</p>

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<p>How about gender and geographical manipulation? What would you call that? </p>

<p>As my d has said many times over the last few months, “how am I supposed to change my gender and where I live?”</p>

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<p>The admissions officers are human beings, they are not machines, and thus there is indeed the human factor that must be considered</p>

<p>Where you are in the stack of applications the admin officer has is a matter of luck, if he/she has a rule of accepting half everyday and you fall into a pile of equally strong students one day and a stack of not so strong the next, that very same applicant could be rejected one day and accepted the next</p>

<p>That is the realiity of the system and this is done with the best of intentions</p>

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<p>The latter is healthier, but that’s only true if it were really mainly down to luck. Yes, maybe they needed tuba players that year, and yes, maybe they wanted more archaeologists - but how many good tuba players or aspiring archaeologists do you know? Luck happens to the minority. Most people getting accepted are still the typical all rounded good applicants or those with passions that I wouldn’t call rare - scientific research, government work, etc. Most of them have great GPA, SATs, etc. When there aren’t enough spots, they still try to pick the best candidates AND pick the best combination of students. Since both of these criteria don’t vary that much, admissions as a process are still pretty predictable. We aren’t surprised about most of the people who get in. Luck counts, but not as much as people would like to think.</p>

<p>So for the majority of the time luck doesn’t play a big part IMO. I don’t think that great achievers just chalk their failures down to luck as a form of escape or denial. They don’t wallow in misery and what-ifs and rigorous analyses of their failures either. You have to find a balance between the two, but don’t just walk away without learning from your mistakes.</p>