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Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
41

<p>For anyone who wants to know what happened to Andison when he applied to college during a gap year after getting all rejections, including from HPY.</p>

<p>"The new college list One of the aspects of re-applying and doing a gap year is that the applications are due when the gap year is only halfway through. This means that you really have to put some thought toward what you’re going to do so you can put something about it on the application. Even with my son’s piecemeal approach, he had an overall game plan that he could write about—maybe not all the specific activities, but what he wanted to accomplish for himself.</p>

<p>When he created his new list he came up with schools that covered a wider spectrum of selectivity. Once this became part of the process, he realized that there were many more schools that could meet his interests than he had originally thought. Here is the new list:
Brandeis
Carnegie Mellon
Case Western Reserve
MIT
University of Rochester
Vassar
Worcester Polytechnic Institute</p>

<p>Along with two repeats:
Swarthmore
Yale ( added at the last minute due to pressure from a friend there )</p>

<p>He decided to get new recommendations from his senior year teachers since they would be more recent. He wrote new essays and did the applications from scratch. Didn’t re-use anything. Put ample time into every question and let his personality show through more. He didn’t retake any SATs or SAT IIs. He did add new AP scores (even thought they’re not supposed to count) and had some new awards he had received at the end of his senior year.</p>

<p>Results:
Accepted at all the new schools . Every school offering merit aid awarded him a generous scholarship and he received need-based aid from the others. Brandeis awarded him a full-tuition music scholarship. Case was also generous. CM, MIT and Vassar awarded him need based aid.
The two repeat schools both turned him down, but by this time he was ready to move on and with all the good news he hardly noticed the rejections.</p>

<p>In the end he’s had a fantastic year and will fully appreciate how fortunate he was to have the opportunity to go to any of the schools he was accepted at."</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/192395-no-acceptances-one-kids-story-year-later.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/192395-no-acceptances-one-kids-story-year-later.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;