<p>Should we send them a letter? An email? Call them? Ignore them?</p>
<p>Would it be appropriate to tell them WHY I'm turning them down, or is that a no-no?</p>
<p>Do NOT ignore them. </p>
<p>I'm assuming this is after you've been admitted. Didn't they send you something to respond with -- e.g., a self-addressed postcard?</p>
<p>In any event, do it in writing, by letter, and be gracious. Maybe you'll want to transfer there in a year or two. Or maybe your younger sibling will want to go there.</p>
<p>Of course you should let them know. That's simply politeness. What if they'd rejected you, but hadn't bothered to tell you?</p>
<p>Usually schools send a postcard with their written letter of acceptance. The postcard is where you get to check whether you're accepting their offer. Many colleges that students reject also follow up by sending them a quick survey asking what college the student accepted and why. It's polite to send that back, too, since that helps the colleges know about the competition.</p>
<p>write or email the school, thank them for their offer, and tell them which school you will be attending. They appreciate knowing which schools their applicants are choosing, it's a polite touch. No need to tell them why you're turning them down.</p>
<p>Yes, I sent postcards back to those schools I will not be attending. Every postcard had a spot to elaborate as to why I would not be attending. I was honest with all of them. I had different reasons for each school. This is not a huge deal, trust me, colleges are used to half of the accepted students not attending.</p>
<p>I didn't get 2 postcards from 2 colleges my son was turning down. I emailed them both (with explanation) and got responses from both of them. One was very nice in thanking me for responding and they were sorry for the missing form. Although I understand the need to want to know why a person turns down a college, I was a little annoyed at how many times Holy Cross sent papers to us to fill out. We included an explanation originally but they wanted us to fill out a longer form. They even said "reminder" ones would follow if we didn't respond which was true.This was a generic form that was at least 2 pages....and we got a phone call from an alumni. There is a blurry line between polite inquiry and just being "over the top".
Please be courtious in replying, you never know if you might be dealing with them again.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your help.</p>
<p>I found the postcard for the school in question. </p>
<p>In my disappointment over their scholarship offer, I guess I wasn't looking. </p>
<p>I'll be polite when declining, but I doubt whether I'd ever transfer there. I thought my stats (2330 SAT, 4.2 gpa, rank 4th or 5th, National Merit) would have merited more than the standard $7,500/yr discount at this overpriced $40K/yr school. I mean, I got the same scholarship offer that our head cheerleader did (she's sweet but no future premed major).
I'm sorry if I sound like some punk kid who thinks he's entitled to everything. I'm not that way, really. I would have liked to have helped out my parents by getting a bigger scholarship. In fact I have received bigger offers already from two other schools. I'm just disappointed that this particular university, which gives out several half-tuition and full-tuition merit scholarships, chose to force me to attend elsewhere. I went from loving the place to hating it in the time that it took me to rip open the big envelope. </p>
<p>I'll be polite when responding. Thanks for letting me vent.</p>
<p>If I were you I'd feel the same way because I think merit scholarship should mostly depend on merit. Your stats are certainly impressive, and if the school isn't very particular about taking in meritorious students, you are right to reject it. Care to discolse the name of this school?</p>
<p>The school in question is SMU - Southern Methodist University.</p>
<p>I never knew that you had to contact schools you wouldn't be attending! I thought you could just ignore them. Thanks for the tips.</p>
<p>Just an FYI, if enough students would reply immediately, schools might be able to go to the waitlist before May 1st. This saves waitlisted students the pain of having to deposit at one school while still waiting to hear from another.</p>
<p>Reply as soon as you make your decision.</p>
<p>In my son's case, he really won't be making his final decisiion until he gets the rest of his admission decision letters over the next month. He is waiting to hear about admissions and a couple possible merit awards.</p>
<p>He likes all of his prospects, and I reminded him that he will have to send polite thank you's to the schools he is not choosing.</p>
<p>Not only does it leave doors open with people you likely became close to during the admissions process (admissions officers, fin aid people etc.) but it allows them to contact people who are on the waitlist etc. - someone else might want your spot.</p>
<p>Dean J, et al:</p>
<pre><code>Oh, NOW I'm supposed to do the school a favor so they can go to their waitlist?
If the school burns down tonight, I'll be the one with the marshmallows.
No, seriously, I hear what you're saying. I'll do the right thing and notify them in a timely manner. I just need some time to get this out of my system.
A couple of weeks ago, they sent me a big envelope with the acceptance letter, and the entire family celebrated. I realized how excited I was at the thought of attending SMU. Yesterday I received the scholarship "certificate," realized what it meant, and I instantly lost all enthusiasm for the school.
Why do colleges play games with good students? I hate to keep bringing up my stats, but I feel like a 2330 SAT, 4.2 gpa, rank 4th or 5th, National Merit deserves an honest offer. Instead, some adult is sitting in an office, monkeying wth a student's life, trying to improve the school's "yield" statistics. It's not fair.
</code></pre>
<p>In your rejection letter state the exact reason. The feedback will perhpas help their scholarship selection process.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
I went from loving the place to hating it in the time that it took me to rip open the big envelope.
[/QUote]
I don't understand this mentality and I see it every year.</p>
<p>I would hope that students realize that we'd love to give a pot of money to everyone, but the money has to be spread around. Applications have increased almost everywhere and while SMU might have been able to hand out half-tuition scholarships to loads of students last year, they may have had to be more conservative this year, spreading the money to more people.</p>
<p>The entire university hasn't wronged you in this case.</p>
<p>uzbek please don't respond right away. You still sound very hurt and you should give yourself some time to calm down and decide if you still want this school despite the scholarship disappointment. If it was your number 1 choice before you may decide that you still want to go there.
BTW, I think that merit scholarships can be based on a variety of non-need factors, above and beyond academic stats. They may have felt that the ec's of your classmate brought certain attributes that they were looking for to the college ( which could be related to her cheering or not). It's really hard to compare your offer because you don't know what else they considerd.
Anyway, just take some time to reflect before you react.
On another note - My daughter received a letter from one of the schools she declined over winter break. They said hope you are doing well and are happy where you are, but if not we will be accepting transfer applications at this time. See - you never want to burn your bridges. : )</p>
<p>I would suggest waiting. As other students pass their acceptance more money may open up. Get all your offers, decide where you might want to go and then see if college A will meet college B's merit award. It can only benefit you to keep all your options open.</p>
<p>I'll back up my colleague from UVA on this one.... As many of us are seeing more (and stronger) applications, our yield--who will eventually choose to enroll--becomes increasingly difficult to predict. I imagine more students this year, as in recent cycles, will find themselves on larger WaitLists, on the outside looking in. If an accepted student, after careful consideration, is absolutely certain s/he will not be attending School X, please, send back the enrollment response quickly so we can get a better handle on our numbers; the sooner we can determine that we can go to a WaitList (or, the sooner we can realize that we <em>won't</em> be going, and can notify students of this), the better off everyone will be in this process. Someone in your class or down the street might be clinging to a WaitList offer from the school you know you won't attend--although offers of admission aren't transferrable, you could be doing everyone a favor. However, I also echo other sentiments posted here, that you might consider stepping away for a few days before responding.... this seems very raw for you, and the tone you might strike in an immediate response back to the school might be one you'd regret later (the "marshmallows" quip, for instance, though intended for humor, would most certainly NOT be interpreted well by colleagues, I can assure you). Besides, as other posters have noted, it's best not to burn bridges..... the college application process provides a crucible for this and other important life lessons. And who knows, perhaps near the end of the process, the offer from this school might not sting so badly, in context.</p>
<p>Another point: your self-reported stats are impressive, but perhaps there are twenty, maybe thirty others with similar or even greater profiles? -not unheard of, with many thousands of applicants to a quality school. If a school has only several scholarships to give away, and more than that many are easily qualified, what does an institution do? Some would break up scholarships so more people receive less merit aid; others would simply be unable to offer merit aid to outstanding candidates, and as my colleague notes, we would love to help all families with buckets of financial aid, but that's rarely possible. Please don't confuse your pain of "rejection" with an imagined desire of an institution to "play games" with applicants. You surely have the right to be disappointed, but please keep a healthy perspective and don't condemn us for being uncaring, unfeeling, or worse, petty and cruel. Remember, you <em>were</em> admitted over many qualified applicants--some on the CC threads won't get any offer at all.</p>
<p>Dean J:</p>
<p>You wrote:</p>
<p>"The entire university hasn't wronged you in this case."</p>
<p>Sure, I understand that. But there are so many inequities today in how colleges determine who pays what, it's easy to feel wronged. I'm surprised that someone who's a dean would try to offer the naive viewpoint that maybe SMU was just "spreading the money to more people."
Shouldn't that be the school's goal every year?</p>
<p>We read stories time and again about how colleges play tricks with their acceptances in order to produce higher yield percentages. We hear about the tuition balancing acts that they do. </p>
<p>I realize they can't give half-tuition to everybody. </p>
<p>Look, I visited the campus twice this year. I even sat through one of their crappy football games. I thought I made it well known that I wanted to go there. </p>
<p>But it's like having a crush on a girl and then hearing her say, "Oh, we're only friends." I'm going to cut my losses and move along. It would serve no purpose for me to have any further feelings for SMU other than disappointment. What am I supposed to do -- hang an SMU poster on my wall and tell everybody. "Gee, that's where I originally wanted to go to school"?</p>
<p>I applied other places. I'll wait until April 1 and see what my options are.
If SMU doesn't want good students and National Merit finalists, this good student will go somewhere where I'm wanted.</p>
<p>I just saw Colby Admissions' response. </p>
<p>Listen, I hear what you're saying, and I don't doubt that there's a measure of truth, not to mention experience, in your advice. I have tried to maintain a sense of humor about what's happened. Hence, my marshmallow remark.
My frustrations with the SMU scholarship offer were heightened only after visiting the school's own website and seeing what the academic profile of its recent freshman classes were. And then I heard one of our cheerleaders, whose GPA is a full point lower than mine and whose SAT was 380 points less, say that she got the same scholarship. I think it was perfectly understandable to be upset and disappointed.</p>