Rejected by all colleges ? What now ?

Student Lounge International Students
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<p>Hello there :)</p>

<p>I applied for the class of 2018 at a few (18 tbh ) and long story short I was rejected by all of them . After the initial despair I kinda reflected and noticed the flaws in my application in one of the '' thoughest year in our university history '' , low act ( 28 , really low math and science ) , low SAT II and terrible essays .
I think this was due partly to me trying to make everything work along with keeping my senior year grades up , oh and of course I could afford only 1/4 of full tution and fees.</p>

<p>Anyway since home is not an option I decided about taking a gap year . What should I do however to make things work out the right way this year ? Besides noticeably raising my SATs scores ? </p>

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<p>work on your essays, work with a decent SAT book to improve your scores and volunteer somewhere that has a purpose.</p>

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<p>If you need FA, as an international student your stats need to be stellar. A lot of American unis are admitting international students who are full pay. I think you should try to make your home unis work for you.</p>

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<p>@oldfort I know my stats need to be stellar , that is why I posted this thread , so that I know how to make them so . I have no problems with grades or recs or ecs ( which are quite good in my opinion ) and as I said home is not an option </p>

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<p>What schools did you apply to? If they were all elite schools, you should not be surprised that you were rejected. </p>

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<p>I’m an international as well so I can kinnda relate to your problem. You may have good grades, recs and ecs but with low scores AND terrible essays, your chances of acceptance were close to none… what is good is that you now know the flaws and you can work on them.
Raise your ACT scores. At the very least aim for a 33 composite with at least a 32/31 in each section.
Raise your SAT II scores. Aim for 700+. 750 plus is ideal though.
Write better essays this time.
and MOST IMPORTANTLY select your schools carefully! other wise you can apply to 50 and still get rejected from all! I’m curious as to which ones you applied to this time.
Good luck.</p>

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<p>When you’re applying the second time around, pick schools where your stats are in the very upper percentiles of incoming freshmen and located in regions where fewer international students apply - the central US and the south. </p>

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<p>“What should I do however to make things work out the right way this year ?”</p>

<p>Choose better schools for next time. That should include your state flagship, and the nearest non-flagship state college to you.</p>

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<p>^^^ OP is an international student without a “state flagship”</p>

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<p>I applied to
Bates ( they waitlisted me actually )
Hamilton
Colby
Uchicago
All ivies but Yale
Vanderbilt
Vassar
Amherst
Colgate
Duke
Northwestern
And two I can’t remember :open_mouth:
I know these are top tier institutions , so I’d be happy if any of you knew some schools a little less ‘’ popular ‘’ offering at the same time consistent FA for internationals :slight_smile:
Yeah sadly state is not an option for me :’( ( even if I think the University of Arizona , correct me if I am wrong , offers some kind of aid for international students )</p>

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<p>What is your prospective major?</p>

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<p>Physics with a minor in philosophy ;)</p>

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<p>Ah well there are many LAC’s that you can check out! Increasing your ACT and SAT II scores will only open more doors for you so do work on them!
Apply ED if you are sure about a place.
Thing is that you have a good 3/4 months to research colleges and find your fit! use it wisely! :smiley:
I’m gonna inbox you…</p>

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<p>@EarlyAction95‌ you are completely right I definitely should look at more LACs :slight_smile: </p>

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<p>if you’re into physics, Lawrence is a top school for that. It’s in Wisconsin. Essentially, apply to the Midwest and South and target merit scholarships.
If your ACT is 32 you can aim for quite a few scholarships.
For Fall 2014 , you can also apply to some schools from the NACAC list that’ll be out tomorrow. It’s the list of schools that miscalculated yield (ie., more students than expected matriculated elsewhere… this there are fashion trends, this happens every year.)Most will expect you to have 20-30k though, which is a huge amount in most other countries.</p>

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<p>20-30K in US dollars? That’s a lot!</p>

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<p>I know that in the rest of the world, it is enormous, but in the US, it’s not, it’s what a middle class family would be expected to pay for their child’s education. That’s what many universities consider “normal”. In order for someone to bring the cost to lower than that, they need to be out of the ordinary.</p>

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<p>Coming from Europe I’d say one of the advantages is education is pretty cheap here ( actually when I was in Australia I found out education is pretty cheap there for citiziens ) . So yeah 30k $ a year are indeed a lot , I’d say up to 17k $ a year a school may still be considered affordable but if the cost is higher , considered europe current economical situation , most families couldn’t afford it .</p>

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<p>Since you said “besides raise your SAT (or ACT) scores,” I’ll leave that part alone except to stay you should make studying a full time (40+ hours a week) job if you are not working during your gap year and want to get into an elite school.</p>

<p>Why, in my opinion, you got rejected:</p>

<p>When I saw the title of your post I knew what had happened – you were not realistic about your choice of schools. If someone has good scores and good grades, but gets rejected every single school, that means you really need to look at what it takes to get into different schools, and pick schools that you can get into. Should you have some dream schools? Sure! But it doesn’t sound like you had a lot of true safety schools either. A lot of people get this idea that there are only 20 schools in America that are worth going to, and if you do not get into those, you will be second-rate, and your life will be second-rate. It’s just not true. If (I’ll deal with that in a minute) you left aside the financial issues, you could still get into some awesome Top 100 universities (assuming everything else in your application is up to par and you improve your essay-writing skills). You said you did everything you could to get in. If you did everything to get in, then maybe it’s not the school for you. College is really a match to be made, not a prize to be won, as they say.</p>

<p>How you can deal with the financial issue:
Most people will not care where you spent your first two years. Instead, they will care where you graduated from. A lot of Americans are spending their first two years at a community college (CC), then transferring to a four-year university. It is far cheaper, and you can, if you do your research and find a good CC, you can receive a quality education. It is FAR cheaper (as in thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars, per year cheaper). You can then saved that money for your last two years when you transfer to a good four year college. A lot of international students are starting to do this as well.</p>

<p>Here’s an article about it. If you are interested in this option, please write @testadvice when your reply.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/10/04/why-international-students-should-consider-community-colleges”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/10/04/why-international-students-should-consider-community-colleges&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This is off-topic, but since it sounds like the Math and Science sections were the weak spot on your ACT, I had to ask:</p>

<p>Are you wanting to pursue science, or are you picking it because it’s the more practical option? </p>

<p>There are a lot of good options you have, but you can’t, to use an SAT word, be myopic and act is if, out of the 4,000 American universities, only the top 20 will serve your needs.</p>

<p>You asked if anyone knew of any less popular schools. Since you are an international student, I provided a list based on world reputation.</p>

<p><a href=“World Reputation Rankings 2013 | Times Higher Education (THE)”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2013/reputation-ranking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>@testadvice thanks :slight_smile: you were really helpful :slight_smile:
I did have no safeties indeed but that was due to me being inexperienced with the american college system , so I’ll definitely look up other schools when reapplying.
Regarding the science thing , I am actually good at those subjects but I didn’t prepare well enough ( I prepared 3 hours the day before ) for the test and of course the ACT science and math section are all about knowing how to approach the test more than an actual advanced knowledge , having said that I will make sure my study plan is very rigorous since I want to raise my scores :)</p>