<p>I have been wanting to go to Yale for a long time, and submitted my application SCEA in hopes of getting in. However, on friday, i found that I was rejected. I know, that many people say it is not the end of the world if you have been rejected, but it has hurt me deeply. I now question myself as to even being good enough to apply to some of the top colleges on my list. I'm not sure what to do to make my application better; my essays are an area that needs help. I was wondering if anyone would be willing to read my essays and give me advice or their thoughts on them. Thanks so much, and congrats to anyone's son or daughter who got in early action/decision!</p>
<p>Rejection feels awful and there's is no way around that. I feel for you iney and sympathize completely. Time should help you get past the "fallout", most importantly that you're not "good enough to apply to" other top schools on your list. </p>
<p>I would be happy to look at your essays. When you PM me, please provide your email address and let me know the deadlines.</p>
<p>There is a thread I hope someone will find for you, showing the eventual results for 2004's EA/ED rejections and deferrals and how satisfied those kids are with where they ended up. It will inspire you.</p>
<p>(I can't remember enough of the title to find it; it was started, I believe by one of The Dads).</p>
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I now question myself as to even being good enough to apply to some of the top colleges on my list.
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<p>iney0126~</p>
<p>Oh, sweetie, I am SO very sorry for your Yale rejection but even moreso for the temporary beating on your self confidence. My son applied EA to Yale a year ago, and like you, he received an ugly flat-out rejection. In addition, my son, an analytical guy by nature, decided to write to his regional adcom after the fact to see if he could get any feedback as to why his application was rejected. That gesture turned out to be a MOST unfortunate move because the adcom basically told him that he felt obligated to reject my son in order to let him know that he was not competitive at Yale or at any other elite east coast schools. </p>
<p>OOPS! He turned out to be wrong! In the end, my son was accepted to UPenn with a special invitation into the Vagelos Program in the Molecular Life Sciences (only 20 invited out of the whole incoming freshman class). He was also accepted to Johns Hopkins with its highest merit award, the Hodson Scholarship (also offered to only 20 incoming freshman), and to Duke, with a Duke Scholarship. He is now a VERY happy freshman at Duke where he is thriving, both academically AND socially. I will also add that if Duke had had EA vs. ED, he would have applied there early (it had been his dream school for many years), but there were financial constraints for our large family (six kids).</p>
<p>In retrospect, the adcom from Yale did my son a great favor. As a result of the rejection, my son tweaked some essays and redoubled his efforts. He broadened his list and went full force for the other schools. He ended up being accepted to six schools with big money from 5 of them. By April 1, he was scrambling to make a VERY difficult decision because of SO MANY excellent options.</p>
<p>Yale isn't the be all and the end all. And their adcoms speak for NO ONE except Yale (though I don't think my son's app. ever made it to the table, so in his case, he only spoke for HIMSELF). </p>
<p>YOU WILL HAVE A WONDERFULLY SUCCESSFUL COLLEGE APPLICATION PROCESS. YOU WILL BE ACCEPTED TO SOME EXCELLENT SCHOOLS. DO NOT LOSE HEART!!!!!!!</p>
<p>Seek good advice from your parents, counselors, and this forum and follow it. By April, everything will look very, very different--I promise. </p>
<p>Here's wishing you the very best. Hang in there. ~berurah</p>
<p>Iney, I second what berurah and jmmom have said. One response is not an indication of your worth or eventual success. Use this experience to look at your other applications through a fresh perspective. If you look at past threads, you'll see stories like your own, where students that ANY college would be thrilled to accept are disappointed in the results. Fwiw, my son was deferred from what he thought was his dream school last December, and is now happier than I could ever have imagined at Dartmouth. He would now tell you that it would have been a huge mistake to attend the DS. As other parents have said on different threads, what's best usually works out in the end. </p>
<p>Take another look at your list of schools -- keep some reaches on it but also make sure that you have other, more accessible, options as well. Good luck, and don't give up!</p>
<p>Even though you are very down about being rejected, I want to offer a very different twist to your predicament.</p>
<p>Life is full of disappointments among all the great things it has to offer. You have just experienced one and will most likely experience more. Now after getting kicked, dust yourself off and get back up to face life once more. You will eventually learn that you can overcome all adversity--you just have to steel yourself.</p>
<p>Many go bankrupt, lose their family and possessions. Many get sick and die quite young before they see their children grow up. It isn't fair but that's been the story long before we all ended up here. Many don't get into their first choice school but life can, does and will go on.</p>
<p>Apply to the rest of your schools and make your life terrific. Only you have the potential to live life to the fullest, not the college you attend.</p>
<p>There are many twists and turns in life and we often just can't chart them to the degree we'd like. Often the things we want the most, when we get them just don't seem to live up to expectations.</p>
<p>You can get in at many schools. In most careers, it isn't undergraduate that matters but rather graduate school. Apply to Yale then if you still want that degree and it matters so much.</p>
<p>Go get life. It's waiting for you to get up and meet its challenge.</p>
<p>There is a CC parent who doesn't post here often, but is a personal friend of mine. I'm sure she wouldn't mind my sharing the story of her daughter, who was also rejected from Yale EA, but ended up being accepted in the regular decision round to Princeton, Harvard, U Chicago and Emory (with a huge merit offer from them). She is now a very happy sophomore at Harvard and doesn't even think about Yale.</p>
<p>I am sure you will have similar happy results --- so try not to get too focused on what happened with Yale. A rejection from a school that accepts less than 1 in 10 applicants is not a personal reflection on you or your talents any more than losing the lottery is. Rather, consider this a sign that the universe has something else wonderful planned for you and look forward to the great adventure of finding out what that will be.</p>
<p>I too applaud your effort to refine your essays. Don't get mad--get better. That's the ticket to a successful life.</p>
<p>Failure and rejection, while never easy, is the stuff that fuels creativity. In order to create new ideas, the old ideas have to be destroyed. You had an idea about Yale that is now gone. By June, you will be very excited about the new path. By December of next year, you will wonder why you were so set on Yale/Schmale.</p>
<p>I promise.</p>
<p>A similar anecdote.....</p>
<p>My son had a friend who was flat out rejected from Yale last year. He was accepted at Stanford and Princeton in the RD round and is happily attending the latter. So keep some applications in at those reaches but make sure you have a safety and a few good matches as well.</p>
<p>There may not have been a single thing "wrong" with your application. And you might get rejected at Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Chicago, etc. as well. Happens all the time. It's just numbers...and has almost nothing to do with you. You are going to succeed in any case. The fact that you even thought you had a chance at any of these places speaks volumes about your abilities. You might end up at the honors college of your state university, and be showered with research and mentoring opportunities that you'd never experience at these other places. You might end up at a LAC where the personal attention allows you to develop in ways which right now you can't even imagine.</p>
<p>We have a saying: "Every window is a door."</p>
<p>What everyone else has said.</p>
<p>And, fwiw, my D was rejected EA two years ago. It hurt a lot at the time. As the Great Wheel has turned, it was one of the best things that ever happened to her as she is having an extraordinary experience where she's attending.</p>
<p>I am another parent with a kid whose only outright rejection was from Yale. He was waitlisted by Princeton, accepted by Brown, Wash U, Pomona, Swarthmore, and got big money at two schools which give merit aid. That rejection from his first-choice school was hard, but I suspect he is much better off where he is. What matters is what you do with the acceptances you get (--- make sure to look carefully for a safety or two) and what you ultimately do at the school you attend. All the best as you go into the next segment of this process!</p>
<p>I, too, feel so sorry for Yale's loss. My D fell in the Yale EA massacre last year, as well. She was deeply hurt, and thought that they would at least defer her. She had the stats, won two state competitions, and her teachers felt her essays were wonderful. Who knows why? I still say that they have so many qualified applicants that they thumb through the ones that could be accepted, throw them against the wall and the ones that fall to the right are accepted, the middle is deferred and the left rejected. My D then went on to be accepted at many wonderful, elite schools, and is currently very happy at Amherst. I asked her the other day if she would think about transferring to Yale, and she said, "No." She was offered a lot of money at other schools, as well. I think she still sees the outright rejection as a blow to her self-esteem. It too, made her feel that she was not good enough. Pooh! I write many letters of recommendation for seniors going to elite schools, and believe me, she was just as if not more qualified than others that were accepted. I still shake my head over that. But I know those kids so well, and the adcoms do not. Look at the Yale thread - many with lesser qualifications were accepted, some who were rejected make people wonder. Even after going through this for awhile, I sitll don't understand why some get in and others don't. The saying is true - you will end up where you were meant to be. You will be happy at another school, another school that is just as prestigious, and more inviting to you than Yale. Amherst went all out to get her to come there, and there will be a school that wants you just as badly. Work on those essays and Good luck! Listen to what Berurah, jmom and the rest said - we went through this last year. And andison was another head shaker. The sad thing is that the adcoms of the elites have said that they could have accepted everyone who was deferred or rejected, that they were all so qualified. God bless you. You are good enough.</p>
<p>Evitajr1: so good that things worked out so well in the end for your daughter. The only thing that I think we all have to be careful about is saying: "many with lesser qualifications were accepted". It is impossible for any outsider looking at "stats", or a list of ec's or awards, to know who has greater and who has "lesser" qualifications. The whole picture, including interview and essay, are never known to others, and those "subjective" factors, particularly at the elites where everyone typically has great stats, are often used to differentiate candidates. And then there's what a particular school is looking for in filling particular niches---to say that someone is a "lesser" candidate may not take into account what niche they are seen as filling.</p>
<p>Take heart! You will be accepted to a good school! You will meet people who got into Yale but did not get in where you did! And I expect that along the way you will meet many & make friends w/ many who have better & worse paper aps than you. But for now, it seems so hard and unexplainable because, in a way, that's just what it is! Keep in mind that every single college has these stories.... As a parent, I take heart from kids like you that care and work hard & will do well no matter what! hearts2u & please let us know next spring where you'll be headed!</p>
<p>Iney, what more can I say? The others have said it so well. The fact is that it's not about you.</p>
<p>So git back up on that horse, y'hear? ;)</p>
<p>I'll be happy to read your essays--PM me with your email.</p>
<p>Thank you guys so much for these encouraging words and stories. While this rejection has hurt me, it has hurt my mom even more. After reading your messages, my mom feels touched by all of your sympathetic responses and encouraging stories. I now understand I should not feel too disheartened by my rejection, and I have a newfound energy to go back to my application to make it better. I only hope that I get the same positive response from colleges that your own children have after first being rejected by their top school. I especially want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to respond to students that are just going through the college process when you have already finished it with your own sons and daughters</p>
<p>Berurah that is awesome that your son ended up a Duke, that is also one of my other top choices!</p>
<p>Wyogal and Jmmom - thanks for offering to read my essays!</p>
<p>iney0126 -</p>
<p>Read this thread. It deals with exactly this topic:</p>
<p>iney - Thank G-d that you didn't get into Yale. Some day - and it won't be too long from now - you'll be very thankful that you didn't get into Yale. I went to business school at Yale. Good program and top-ranked but New Haven is a terrible place to spend two years, no less four years. You'll do just fine.</p>
<p>Well, I can't speak from experience like most parents here, but I do have a few suggestions to make. I am probably about your age, also applying for next fall, and I have had my heart on USC for a long time.
I did apply, and as an international who needs fin aid, my chances of being accepted with a scholarship are ... well.. none! But I applied. I don't know how competitive I am for this school, and if I qualify for any type of award they give away.
I guess I storngly believed I should be accepted just because I wanted it so much. I thought I deserved it because I worked so hard just to afford the application fee. Only now I realize that I don't want to be appreciated by the school for what I have done, and I don't want to attend a school I am not "good enough" for, statistics wise. Admission officers only see one demension of you. Even if you do show a big picture, I don't think they can always see it the way you'd they should.
I wrore a very risky essay, about how I got over USC in a way, and this was the most genuine piece of paper I have ever written.
You think Yale was your dream school, mostly because it was dreamy when you were dreaming about it. You never attended the school, right? Maybe you heard some good things that happened to others, and you thought it will be the same for you, but reality is that you can't never know. I love everything about my dream school, the campus, the location, the film school I wish to attend, everything. I hear so much about how students love this school and are happy there, but that makes them, not me.
Bottom line, Yale may not even be as perfect as you think, so open your mind a little more. And definitely apply anywhere you have planned!</p>
<p>Best of luck!</p>
<p>I am ineys mom.
I am on this board a few times, due to the language deficiency, I never posted anything, but always like the friendly, encourage environment on this board.
My DDs outright rejection by Yale was a very big blow to me. She has wanted to go to Yale since she was 11. She was top 1% of her class of over 300 students, very well rounded and has comparable stats and ECs. While the guidance counselor from her school was very hopeful about her chance at Yale, knowing the competition, I was skeptical. However, when the rejection came, I saw her young hopeful face covered with tears. It was really painful.
But after reading these encouraging postings, I feel much better about her future now. Since I know with her determination and intelligence, she will end up somewhere good.
Just as her younger sister wrote to her on Friday, You dont know just how much I look up to you, because you are the one that has the intelligence, the beauty, and the guts to standup for yourself, Yale or not, you truly are my hero.</p>
<p>As pathetic as this is, when I post this message, I need her to correct my writing. So, yes, she is my hero too. </p>
<p>Berurah - Such a wonderful story about your son. My D is a huge blue devil fan. She is also more on the math and science side, so she will fit into Duke beautifully.
TheDad I read your daughters story from your other posting. I am so glad it worked out so well for your daughter.
Evitajr1 so good to hear that your daughter enjoys Amherst. Great school.
Cotton-Candy You are so right about Admission officers only see one dimension of you. Life is no picnic to my D, she has had to take care of her younger sister since she was 8, she made meals, did laundry, helped homework, checked all her sisters school homework, tucked her sister in bed when I was in night class (thats about 3-4 night a week). I also read your story too. Your determination is amazing.</p>