<p>If it’s a rolling admissions school, this doesn’t seem unusual.</p>
<p>The rolling admission school I applied to a week ago just finished looking at my application. I think they were waiting for my transcripts to come in. I should hear back by mail next week. So that is about a two week turn around.</p>
<p>I received my acceptance from Rose-Hulman, which has rolling admissions, about a week and a half after applying. I would think that if an applicant was someone the ad coms were definitely not looking to admit, the applicant would receive a rejection notice in about the same time.</p>
<p>I applied to a school rolling admissions, and had my acceptance letter dated 4 days after my application was sent. My (old=1600) SAT was 300 points higher than their honors college average which explains it. I know a girl who was waitlisted similarly quickly from the same school (never got off the waitlist). I figure they get a lot of applications (good but not top ranked state school) so they must have some kind of formula they use…</p>
<p>Sally, yep. Son was rejected by Georgetown after the adcoms spent less than 3-5 minutes on his application. It went like this:</p>
<p>Son’s stats: SATs 2280, Math II: 800, USH: 800, Bio:750, gpa 4.45, 8 APs (mostly 5s), Eagle scout, EMT, NMSF, nat’l debate awards, nat’l science awards, patent, EIC, and major theatre roles, plus other unique features.</p>
<p>Son got an EA application started in October last year: Part I and paid, recs and transcript sent. Interviewed in October. Then didn’t send in his last few papers by the due date because he had decided he’d prefer to apply SCEA to Stanford instead. He notified Gtown about this change, although they still sent him emails to remind him to send in his Part II and interview (eh?). He was deferred from Stanford, so he completed Part II sometime in December.</p>
<p>In January and in February, he started getting reminder emails to send in Part II. (Eh?) By now, my son sent at least 2 emails telling them they already have everything. He also called, but was told to send an email. In one email, he sent a friendly timetable explaining when he sent everything.</p>
<p>Finally, acceptances were released. I saw here on CC that students from the East coast to the West, from North to the South got their decisions, starting that Saturday. We live on the east coast. But no news for my son. On Tuesday, when I saw kids from the West coast got their letters, and knowing he should have gotten his, I called Gtown (He had lots of after school activities, and couldn’t get home in time to call, so I did). They said to wait. So, he waited some more. No news on Wednesday either. I called again. This time, nearly a week after everyone else heard, I insisted there was some mistake. Finally, the guy receptionist put me on hold for a minute, came back and said he found the application. I asked if they’ve made a decision. He put me on hold again, this time, about 3-5 minutes. Then he came back with a quick, curt, message: they’ve made a decision and my son will get his notice in the mail. Of course, he also added they spent lots of time going through his application yada-yada-yada. Even his rejection letter mentioned they spent a lot of time on his application.</p>
<p>Hey Georgetown: I was told it’s a sin to lie!!!</p>
<p>I don’t think we should view transfer applications in the same light as freshman apps because I don’t think colleges view them the same way. Not at all. Sorry to be so brutal about this, but think about it from the college’s perspective. With regard to prospective freshmen, they’re in a competitive market; they want to produce the strongest class possible, not only because that’s better for the students who eventually attend, but because it affects how they’re viewed in a competitive market for subsequent rounds of students, not least through their US News rankings. </p>
<p>But it’s a different story with transfers. Yes, other things equal the colleges would prefer to have academically stronger transfers; but because the stats of transfers don’t get reflected in US News rankings, nor do transfer applicants count toward admit rates, the colleges are freer to judge them by other criteria. That opens up an opportunity for colleges to view transfer applicants as a potential “cash cow.” The strategy then becomes to admit the largest number of full-pay (or close to full-pay) transfers who meet minimum academic standards, without sacrificing student/faculty ratios. So now there are two reasons to reject a transfer applicant: one, he doesn’t meet minimum academic standards; and two, even if he does meet academic standards, his financial need is such that he’s either a net drain on college resources, or simply a poor investment relative to some other transfer applicant who would produce a larger net revenue gain without having a negative impact on the school’s ratings. “Opportunity cost,” the economists call it.</p>
<p>I know this sounds cynical, but I’ve seen it. I certainly don’t want to attribute this strategy to any particular school. Just the opposite. Only a few schools are both need-blind and offer to meet 100% of financial need with respect to freshman applicants, The number that extend those policies to transfer students is much, much smaller; and those that do tend to admit precious few transfers. At the end of the day, colleges need to attend to their bottom lines, and transfer applicants may be among the first to suffer. This transfer applicant may have been summarily rejected on academic grounds, or on financial grounds. End of story.</p>
<p>A college professor at a large state university told me that her school’s admissions relied upon a computer program to perform an initial scan of applications, automatically weeding out all applications w/test scores below a certain point, then GPAs below a certain point. Letters of recommendation and student essays weren’t read for remaining applicants’ review. None of this is disclosed to applicants.</p>
<p>limabeans,</p>
<p>My S had a similar situation with a school on west coast. Applied EA in October. Deferred December. Didn’t hear until he called them in April. Same kind of “oh, wow, that’s a mistake. He should have been notified months ago.” By that time, he had already given his deposit for the school he chose, but was still curious why he never heard from them. </p>
<p>Clearly, it was a huge mistake in their admissions office and these things happen, but they really suck when it’s your kid and their favorite school. </p>
<p>His result was different - he got in.</p>
<p>Samurai: Whoa, how did you get 2 billions posts (I know it’s not real, but still)? That’s gotta suck though. It’s one thing if an ED or EA school does that and ends up rejecting you, but shouldn’t it be lawsuit-able if that happens and you get in? For example, let’s say I get deferred from JHU and I don’t hear from them in April. In the meantime, I get accepted at say… NYU and decide to matriculate there. I’ve sent my notice and deposit and that’s when I learn I got accepted at JHU. I’d be *<strong><em>ed. I mean, *</em></strong>ed isn’t even an adequate word to describe that kind of feeling. I’d want to burn myself. Yeah…</p>
<p>I doubt if you could lodge and win a lawsuit on that, but it does seriously blow.</p>
<p>Even in this internet age, things still get lost in cyberspace. And transcripts may be misfiled, recommendations may not be read. All kinds of things can happen in an admissions office. </p>
<p>You don’t want to call and be that person that is annoying, but after this experience, if you don’t hear back with a yes or no within a reasonable time frame, I would call to make sure everything is there and it’s in the pipeline. It’s hard to reach an admissions counselor, but my son had wished he had followed up earlier. He was trying to be respectful of their time and not bug them, thinking it would prejudice his application. </p>
<p>I love the colleges that have a place on their website where you can check to make sure that the application is “complete”. Takes the worry out of the equation.</p>
<p>Although I’m sure it stings, I think this is extremely kind of them. Far moreso than schools that create long waitlists, raise hopes, and drag the misery out (all for the college’s benefit). </p>
<p>A quick rejection doesn’t have to be read as a insult. It means someone took the time to actually read his app and respond right away and allow him to move on. How long does one think a holistic assessment has to take? A particular file does not have to take that long to process. </p>
<p>Even schools with holistic admissions may have some particular cut offs for students in general, or for transfers. I notice, for example, that virtually no student applying to Harvey Mudd has a math SAT score below 700. Students scoring say 650 can probably be rejected immediately. That is but one example. There may be other such triggers, regardless of what the marketing brochures say (designed to create the right positive imagery, and attract the most applicants to bring up their selectivity score).</p>
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<p>congrats LeMaitre1, even though it was long ago. It shows sometimes it’s better to wait until the end of the year to apply, especially if you had a bad year or two.</p>
<p>SamuraiLandshark,</p>
<p>Let me be clear about something here. They screwed up AND only gave him less than 5 minutes to make up their minds. And no, they never apologized that they lost the application. Truthfully, I doubt they really found it. Since this was AFTER all applicants received their notices, I feel they just put him in the reject pile. It would have made much more sense if they just waitlisted him, but rejection? He was accepted to schools far more selective than Gtown.</p>
<p>Here’s another twist to this story: about 30 years ago, before the days of on-line applications, my sister’s application to Georgetown also “got lost”. Like my son, she was everything they wanted. She ended up going to Columbia instead.</p>
<p>Once I saw the word transfer, I instantly thought of some colleges. I remember a few years ago when Harvard announced that it would no longer accept transfer applicants. I have a feeling it’s due to a combination of over capacity, quota on transfer students (or increased number of students who decided to stay), or perhaps other figures such as grades and the like.</p>
<p>limabeans,</p>
<p>Hmmm. Perhaps GTown has a grudge against your family. ;)</p>
<p>That seems really strange. They are a common app school, aren’t they? It’s electronic. Even if there were recommendations and counselors reports sent via snail mail, it should be in the system. </p>
<p>I am not sure Georgetown’s finaid policy - if he needed aid and they already accepted the entire class, they could have said deny based on that…perhaps his major was oversubscribed, who knows? </p>
<p>I have heard so many adcoms and college Presidents explain how painful it is to deny wonderful applicants. I think it’s more painful to applicants when they feel like they didn’t get a fair shake, like your son. He sounds awesome, and I have to say, it’s Georgetown’s loss. </p>
<p>When my son’s situation happened, he chalked it up to a learning experience. Sometimes incompetent people or systems get in one’s way and screw things up so badly. He handled it in a far more mature nd graceful manner than I did. I felt that since he wasn’t truly assessed, we should have had a refund. I didn’t push for that, but I wanted to! He moved on way faster than I did, and landed in a great school which has been amazing.</p>
<p>I had an undergraduate acquaintance who hand-delivered his application at the university’s law school on campus in the morning, and received a rejection letter that afternoon in his PO box at the campus post office, about 100 feet from the law school.</p>
<p>In answer to a question above, Georgetown uses electronic applications but refuses to accept common appl. They were just quoted as saying in the NY Times that if they accepted common appl, they would receive thousands more applications, but they wouldn’t be any better than the current applicant pool. They would just get more marginal applications they would deny and applications from people who are not really serious about the college. They are one of the rare colleges that uses their application process to make people go through extra effort to show they are serious. They also are the only college I know of that wants 3 SAT IIs. Since most people only take 2, that also can reduce the applicant pool. They also require an alumni interview, as opposed to just recommending it.</p>
<p>In answer to another question, Georgetown is one of about 30 colleges that really is completely need blind in admissions AND meets 100% of need.</p>
<p>Some very quick rejections at various colleges may also occur for people who submit towards the end of a late deadline. A college may have a priority deadline and then an absolute deadline. They may run out of spaces for average students before they get to the absolute deadline.</p>
<p>My son is not getting or applied for any form of financial aide. And ^ that’s right: Gtown is not on the common app. No, my son did not apply late. The problem is that they messed up. He initially said he was applying EA, but then changed it (in emails) to RD. They put him in one pile, but never switched him. </p>
<p>He had had an interview but weeks later, they sent him a notice about signing up for an interview.</p>
<p>He sent both parts of his application, but about 6 weeks later, he got emails telling he needed to send part II.</p>
<p>He called and wrote to clarify any problem. The (snippy-sounding) receptionist said he couldn’t take that information. But the 2-3 emails my son sent were never confirmed or answered.</p>
<p>The worst part is that you can’t check the status of your application. You don’t know if they got everything. And certainly they did not. But would they admit to that mistake? Nope.</p>
<p>In that article cited above, Georgetown says, “With our application, we know people are applying who want to apply.” Buyer beware: there may be many applicants who decide to go through hoops to get their application done–including taking extra SAT tests, but they do not guarantee they’ll actually read your application.</p>
<p>Thanks for clarifying about 100% need blind and not common app status for Gtown.</p>
<p>I remember when one of my family members came to my house to do her Gtown app because she was having trouble filling it out on her mac. I had a PC at the time. She had to retype the entire thing, including essays because it wouldn’t save correctly on her internet browser. </p>
<p>I was thinking it was common application, but maybe that is why she had to do her app for just that school at my house.</p>
<p>His application might have been defective (ie, his SAT score never arrived, his uploaded essay file was corrupted). He should definitely doublecheck JUST IN CASE there might have been a mistake (ie he got someone else’s rejection letter), but I doubt that’s the actual case.</p>