<p>My son’s acceptance to Vanderbilt somehow got lost in the mail. He assumed he was rejected and decided on another school. I insisted he call just to get the rejection over and done with. They were beyond helpful and charming about the whole thing. The admissions rep apologized and S said oh that’s okay, she said; no I’m sorry because you would have liked this letter! We went out to visit and they made a little presentation out of giving him a new acceptance packet. He still chose the other school, but I fell in love with Vanderbilt. Very classy.</p>
<p>That is a cool story. Sorry his letter was lost in the mail…it does happen!</p>
<p>Vandy’s loss.</p>
<p>Limabeans… I’m sorry about your son, but there’s one thing I don’t get. You wrote:
</p>
<p>Why didn’t your son just resubmit Part II – or fax/mail/email a copy of Part II, attached to whatever email or letter of explanation he was sending? </p>
<p>I realize you might have simply forgot to mention that part… but it seems to me that once the college notified him that they didn’t have Part II, the burden would have shifted to him to make sure they got it. Obviously, one way or another it had been lost or misfiled.</p>
<p>I once got a job rejection letter to my off-campus apartment address from General Electric that started out, “Dear Jim…” (not my name or gender). </p>
<p>The funny thing is that my boyfriend (now DH) had a roommate named Jim who was extremely eager for a GE job at that location. So the first thing I did was call them to see if there was a letter for me in their mailbox. There was not, but it was worth a try:) </p>
<p>Had I really wanted the job, I probably would have written back, “I am sorry to hear that Jim was rejected. Could you please let me know my status?” (hoping to shame them into another look)</p>
<p>People think the admissions process takes a long time, but it actually takes less than ten min for the committee to review each applicant. I don’t think officers loose sleep over an applicant, they reject/accept and move on. If the student is on the fence, they may debate over it…but it doesn’t take days.</p>
<p>Bullmarket–If you’ve ever made a follow-up call to an admission office to make sure that all your materials arrived safely, then you may have discovered that it can sometimes take a couple weeks just to get the materials off the secretaries’ desks, properly processed, entered into the computer system, and then stashed in an applicant’s folder. </p>
<p>I’ve placated many a panicked parent and student who made such a follow-up call to a college only to be told that an application had not arrived (when, in fact, it was sitting in a pile, perhaps just yards away).</p>
<p>In addition, many admission officials do lose sleep over the tough choices they have had to make. After being part of that process for more than a decade, I remember some of the students we had to deny more than many who were accepted. In most cases, we felt that the denial was a blessing in disguise because we might be setting up the candidate for failure if admitted. But it doesn’t mean that the decision was swift and painless for those who made it.</p>
<p>Really? Wow. Have admission officers ever quit because they couldn’t handle the pressure of rejecting students? I am just curious…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably somewhere along the line, although I can’t cite any specific examples. But I do remember a couple years ago that a friend who works at an extremely competitive university told me that she actually cried because they had to take a large number of “admitted” students out of the freshman class just as the list was being finalized. The class was too large so some deep cuts had to be made, and the ones who were the first to go were the “unhooked” students (i.e, those who weren’t athletic recruits, legacies, underrepresented minorities, etc. … just your “average outstanding kids.”)</p>
<p>It would be a tough job being an adcom.</p>
<p>I have a friend who was one - she said the pressure was huge and the hours long. She is currently a counselor in a high school, after a stint at a well known university for several years.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Just for the record, I have never known an admissions official who referred to him or herself as an “adcom.” My best guess is that, if there’s anyone out there who does, it’s probably someone who first encountered the term on College Confidential and then went on to pursue a career in admissions. :)</p>
<p>Rejection at college admission process is not the end of the world. Look, Warren Buffett was rejected by Harvard B-school a while back. Look who is laughing now…</p>
<p>No, she never referred to herself that way. She was an admissions counselor who travelled to schools to recruit students and then helped make decisions about who should be admitted or denied admissions to the university. </p>
<p>Just my shorthand after too many years on CC, I guess. ;)</p>
<p>calmom, you’re absolutely right. He should have sent Part II again. I say that now in retrospect, given what happened. But at the time, I think he figured he just to tell them he had already sent it, they would find it. Maybe he should have gone on another interview too, because apparently they didn’t find that record either.</p>
<p>I think that with all the thousands of apps colleges are getting, and the use of electronic databases to track everything, it’s easy enough for something to get “lost” forever. All it takes is someone miscoding an entry, or accidentally clicking a button in the database that deletes a record, or “closes” it out. When something falls through the cracks with an electronic tracking system, it really can be gone forever, or at least invisible to users of the system. I also tend to act on the assumption that the least well-educated and least capable staff members in any office tend to also be the ones assigned to the jobs of database entry, filing, photocopying, and phone answering. That’s just the way it works in offices – often there are temps or part-timers doing those tasks. </p>
<p>I think it’s a wonder that the large, highly coveted universities manage to cope with the thousands of applications as well as they do – I mean, if a college receives 10,000 applications and loses track of 10 of them, that’s means they’ve managed to keep track of 99.9% of the paperwork. That would be a pretty good achievement for quality control – I’m thinking in the real world that at least 2% of the paperwork must get messed up at some stage of processing – I mean, I just think of all the times that paperwork has gotten mislaid in offices where I’ve worked.</p>
<p>In fact, going back to the title of this thread – maybe that’s why the college in question is processing its transfer rejections quickly – if they process the paperwork fast upon receipt, that’s one less thing to keep track of.</p>
<p>I think you are dead-on, Calmom. You have explained it quite well. </p>
<p>2% margin for error is still a lot of kids who might be disappointed.</p>
<p>The problem is when there is no way to see an application is “complete”. Very few schools enable an applicant to see if the file is complete online, and they do not want to staff the phone calls or emails from students to confirm that everything is in place.</p>
<p>I realize that – but many colleges do offer some sort of online tracking, and applicants really need to be proactive about monitoring those things. The same applies to financial aid applications – students sometimes run into problems when they submitted their documentation on a timely basis, but their college did not receive it. </p>
<p>In these cases there is an imbalance of effort and motivation. The applicant really wants full and fair consideration, and has only a relatively small number of applications to keep track of (perhaps 15 or 20 at most for a student who really is maxing out on college apps, probably more typically 8-10). The college admissions or financial aid staff is deluged with thousands of applications, and does not really care about the needs of any particular applicant – and it will be much more difficult for the staff member to find the time to conduct a search for missing paperwork or electronic data. Where it is a matter of reconstituting lost electronic data, perhaps beyond the skill set of the person tasked with responding to email – so rather than one person looking for something that can easily be found, the inquiry or task get passed from one person to another, with no system in place for followup. At some juncture along the way some person gets stuck – they have been asked to do something they are unable to do – and the task/request essentially dies rather than their being a flow of information back as to status. </p>
<p>So it is simply more efficient for the applicant to take the initiative of resubmitting whatever it is that has been lost, perhaps in a way that enhances tracking ability (such as using a form of mail delivery that will result in a receipt).</p>
<p>I was just rejected from London School of Economics.
Would you guys like my stats?
I am EU resident, and I got my rejection after 2 weeks of applying.</p>
<p>Calmom,</p>
<p>We had a problem with finaid for one of my kids this year. Since returning students don’t get their aid as quickly, I didn’t think much of it. We were one of those families that they checked our income/wages, since our previous FAFSA was higher for EFC than this year’s. It was complicated by the fact that H was unemployed, but doing some consulting work. We had to provide stacks of documentation. Every once in a while we would get a notice that they were missing a key component. Thought after weeks of the back and forth we were fine - sent most of it electronically, so I had a record of sent attachments. </p>
<p>Yet, we still didn’t get an aid offer. We called - they said they were still working on it. School is just about ready to commence, and still no aid package. Called again, they said they were missing a tax document. The finaid office didn’t process one of the attachments sent. They were apologetic and quickly fixed it - they didn’t match the student number up with the file I sent. The aid officer had it on her computer the whole time. We had been diligent about it. I can only imagine what would have happened if we ignored it, figuring they were working on our financial aid package and not to worry!</p>
<p>Mistakes happen. It’s just surprising to me it doesn’t happen MORE frequently.</p>
<p>My case was a definite rejection, no mistakes in financial aid,…etc.</p>
<p>just post your stats here jozhekryx.</p>