For my entire year, I worked so hard…but oh why has this day become an utter sadness for me. oh dear. I was like the perfect candidate. These colleges should have been begging for me. But alas, they rejected me. I’m devastated. I had my Piano recital all day yesterday so I didn’t see my final college results until a few hours ago. I am crying. The results of my efforts for the past months of college app…
REJECTED:
Harvard University
Princeton University
Yale University
Brown University
Cornell University
University of Michigan
UC Berkely
UCLA
MIT
Stanford
Caltech
WAITLISTED:
Columbia University (like I would want to go here anyway…)
Emory University (ew)
I believe I should have gotten to all these places. Like really. My friends who had much worse stats than me all got into college. It’s not fair!! Why do I, who have worked so hard, studying 24 hours for the past 4 years, get the worst result. It makes me so mad. I did so many extracurriculars, many more hours than all my friends, but they get accepted to their colleges and I don’t. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Those issues aside, I truly do believe I deserved to go the universities I picked. Some might consider them reaches but for me, I considered them mostly guarantees. I am very hard working and intelligent and it confuses me to no end why I would get rejected to all of them. Sure I won’t get admitted to all, but I should be accepted to at least like 80% of them. Sorry for all this rant. I just needed to get it out of my system but I’m still so confused why a smart person like me got rejected to all my college. For the past hour I have been writing the emails I will send to the above colleges, asking why they rejected me and asking them to change their minds. I think so far it sounds persuasive and I’m sue they will change their minds. Sigh. I’m so frustrated. Below are my stats. Pretty sure they were good enough, but I would like you guys’ feedback.
Objective
SAT I (breakdown): 770 M / 650 CR / 790 W (the reading might not be as high as I would like but I’m pretty sure my high math and writing would counteract that)
ACT: 30 (didn’t send this)
SAT II: 720 Chinese, 760 Math II
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.75 (only reason not 4.0 is because I get B’s in English. Useless course for me as I only like the sciences, which I always got As on)
Rank: pretty sure top 3
Senior Year Course Load: AP Calc BC, AP US Gov, AP Physics B, AP English Lang, AP Spanish 4, AP environmental science
Extracurriculars:
Varsity Soccer Vice Captain (1 year)
Newspaper Club
Chess Club
Choir Club
Magic and Gathering Club
Lacrosse Club
Water Polo Club
Math Club
Volunteer/Community service: spent over 500 hours with the local orphanage. went to some village in kenya to help some local village for school trip.
Sorry for your rejections but your big mistake was having all Reach schools and no solid safety/match schools on your list. With acceptance rates below 30%, no school can be considered a solid match since there are thousands of applicants with the same or better stats. The best thing you can do right now is regroup, consider taking a Gap year, possibly retake the SAT and increase that CR score up into the 750+ range and reapply with a different list of schools where your stats would be above the 50-75th percentile.
Get a grip, stop whining and stop writing useless letters, stop looking at others.
You need to look forward.
Accept the places on your waitlists and deposit on one of the schools that accepted you.
Have you been accepted anywhere or do you need to find schools to apply to?
There are still good schools that you can go to this fall, but you have to get back on the horse and start doing applications again if that’s the case.
The schools you applied to want mid to high 700s in CR, and 4.0 Unweighted GPAs even for STEM students. They require many courses where superior reading skills are necessary. Unfortunately, they do not weigh the Writing score much, if at all.
You would be lucky to get in Emory and Columbia off their WLs. Once you have recovered from the bad news, focus on crafting letters to the WL schools, demonstrating sincere interest. Do you have any acceptances?
There are so many factors that play into your acceptance like your race, your ethnicity, the school that you attend, the state that you live in, etc. and you have to keep that in mind.
It is not the end of the world. There are other good schools out there; nobody should expect to be accepted to MIT, Stanford, or the Ivies because they are reaches for EVERYONE. You can find hundreds of posts on CC about kids being rejected from Ivies with 2400s, 4.0 UW GPAS, 500+ service hours, etc., yet you can also find hundred of people getting into the Ivies with stats similar to yours or worse.
MIT requires a math and science SAT2. You don’t appear to have that. I will say that your overall attitude is not very inviting. I know loads of STEM students. Many would say that humanities and especially English LIt is not their strongest subject. None would describe it as useless. I’ve known students who chose not to attend Emory or Columbia, many who would have loved to attend either school but none that would say :ew" or “like I would want to go here anyway…”. I get that you are very disappointed but if your attitude predates the admissions decisions, that may have contributed to the decisions. Many (nearly all) students would feel grateful and privileged to have the chance to attend any of the schools you list, even those you were wait listed at.
There is no “perfect candidate” for any of the schools you applied to. In fact, many of the schools you applied to try to avoid accepting the students they believe spent the last 4 years trying to carve out the “perfect application” in favor of students who would have participated in the activities that they chose and would have done as well in classes even if they never planned to tell anyone about their grades or ECs. Those are the students they seek. Not those who carefully check off their involvements to look good for college applications, as in __volunteer (check), __leadership (check). Of course, it is rare to find such students but they exist and these schools want to attract them.
Most schools are not as competitive and many are still seeking applicants. If you have not gotten into a college and you want to attend, you can work to get yourself off the waiting list, apply to other schools or take a gap year.
I wonder if your entitlement attitude showed at all to these schools. Nobody 'deserves" to get in. Admissions to college isn’t the pay for doing “well” or “working hard” in high school. Private schools select the students that they choose and nobody is entitled to be admitted.
Okay. I’ll take you seriously. You overrated yourself. Kids like you are a dime a dozen where the elite schools are concerned. 2210 SAT and 3.75 GPA was not stellar. If you were not advised to apply to “lesser” schools, you were poorly advised. If you were advised to do so and did not, you made a bad choice.
It’s up to you where you go from here. Maybe take a gap year, do something useful, and apply to different schools. Pray that you get into Emory. It’s a very good school, although I’ll admit I would not want to live there. Thinking that anything below the “top” schools is useless to you is, please forgive me, stupid. Not going to college at all with your abilities and work ethic would be stupid. Going to a place like Georgetown, Boston College, Amherst, Macalester, Bowdoin (I’m pulling these names out of the air and have not checked the common data set to see how your stats measure up) would not be a waste of your time.
I had a 2350 SAT and 36 ACT, top .1% in class of 900. played a sport. great extraccuricllars, internships. Great recommendations. Asian male. Got rejected from all ivies, i expected it…
And in reality, schools don’t care about writing score, so out of 1600, you were only at 1420…with a 3.75. Not even enough for Michigan, let alone HYP.
If anything less is a waste of your time, you should have tried harder to keep a 4.0 and 1600 to even stand a chance. And it sounds like if it is already tomorrow where you are, you are also international, so that is even harder.