My College Admissions Journey.. Hope for anyone who has been deferred or waitlisted!

Applying to College
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Hey guys, I am a senior from New Jersey and I thought it would be nice to share my experience with applying to colleges as it is rather unique in my opinion. I’ll start by saying that I have taken 10 APs in high school, but mainly got b minuses to A minuses in all of those classes. This caused me to have a decent looking weighted gpa, but my unweighted one was always the worst part of my application.

I scored fairly high on my ACTs, securing a 32 on my second attempt. After meeting with counselors and a “college admissions coach” I mapped out my plan and applied ED1 to Wake Forest and EA to Tulane, Miami, Villanova, Penn State, Providence, Boston College, and Richmond. I felt fairly confident I would get into one of my top three schools (Wake, BC, Miami), but I soon realized it wouldn’t be as easy or straightforward as I imagined.

What started out with a surprise deferral from Tulane spiraled into 6 deferrals (including Wake) and only 2 acceptances (Penn State Smeal and Providence). I started getting a feeling that I wasn’t good enough for these schools that were deferring me, and I was ready to give up. My dad refused to let that happen, however, and we wrote follow up emails to every deferral with graphs, more recommendations and demonstrated interest.

For Wake forest I even scheduled an interview over the phone with my regional admissions officer. Then the process took a pause for a couple months and I didn’t think much about my situation. Slowly the disappointment resumed. Richmond waitlisted me. Boston College denied me. Nova and Miami both waitlisted me and I really was convinced I would end up at Penn state, which is a great school, but every student who’s gone through this struggle knows what its like not getting into the school you want.

I started telling people I was going to Penn State after the Miami deferral, as I thought that was my best match of the deferrals. Then yesterday I was checking the Wake forest forums with no confidence at all, and people said they were starting to get their results in the mail. I rushed home after school, before my baseball game and almost fell down when I saw the big black envelope with gold cartoon figures on it.

If there’s anything to be learned from this, it’s that giving up is never the answer no matter how bad it looks. Also for those applying to schools in the future… demonstrated interest goes a long way. I visited, interviewed at, applied ED, wrote follow up emails, and constantly communicated with my regional admissions officer. I hope this story was beneficial to anyone, and if not I just really felt like writing it down hahah. Thanks for those who read!

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MODERATOR’S NOTE: OP, I divided up your post into paragraphs because the “wall of text” was very difficult to read.

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Nice story.

When my oldest got deferred from two colleges in the fall, he finally roused himself to get the outside recommendations I said he really needed. His teachers had no idea how far beyond the curriculum he was in computer science and it wasn’t obvious from his ECs that despite being an introvert he actually is quite capable of playing well with others. In his case, neither deferral turned into an acceptance, but he did end up getting into schools/programs that were as competitive or more competitive. Just because one college doesn’t quite see the fit, another might. This is particularly true I think when you have a kind of diamond in the rough application. (Higher scores than grades, not quite slacker level grades, but low enough that they raise questions.)

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@mathmom , I love the description of a “diamond in the rough” application. Our realtor once said to us, “you don’t need a pile of offers; you just need one good one”. I think that applies equally to this kind of college application! You just need that one college that sees where the shine comes in.

OP, congratulations, and thanks for sharing the story!

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What a happy ending. So pleased for you, OP.

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Congratulations on getting accepted to your first choice school! Your post reminded me of my son who applied to many of the same schools you did and in the same type of format.

Though, it’s wonderful that you did get into a school from which you were deferred, this doesn’t happen to everyone. SOme kids apply only to selective schools, and it would not be a huge surprise had they found themselves on waitlists and on the out from all of them. Many kids do not get the happy ending you did, even if they did not give up hope. The end of the application process can come without a college in hand for some, if they did not apply to safety schools.

I always urge those putting together their lists to make sure they finds some schools they really like that are not super selective for them AND affordable because those may end up being the best choices, and even the only choices. When placed on a waitlist, my advice is that once addressing the schools once again to reaffirm interest, to focus on the choices at hand. With a good spread of choices like you made on your college list, one only needs one acceptance to have a happy ending.

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Thanks for sharing a very uplifting story during a stressful time ?. Congratulations on acceptance to a great school and best of luck!