<p>Rejected at Chicago…</p>
<ol>
<li>Counselor went on maternity leave. As a result, I did not turn in the counselor form and recommendation.</li>
<li>SAT score was a bit low.</li>
</ol>
<p>Rejected at Berkeley…</p>
<ol>
<li>Who the hells knows why…</li>
<li>I heard Berkeley rejects a lot of students who got into UCLA. Is this true?</li>
</ol>
<p>OMG i wrote about my AP calc class too. I said that hard work was key to my success. Finshed calc AB and BC by jr year ! Got 5’s on both tests and thought i WOULD have such a good chance, boy did i screw up… </p>
<p>I’m an asian male too. Apparently there are way too many asians that made competetion super tough.</p>
<p>The reach schools that I applied to were too hard (rejected/wait-listed at ALL of them), and the safeties were too safe (I know for a fact I was wait listed at one because they thought I wouldn’t attend). </p>
<p>I tried to do every extracurricular activity (2 varsity sports plus orchestra and forensics) in addition to a challenging course load… Not only did it suck while I was doing it, ultimately I wasn’t able to be successful at anything becuase I was trying to do to much of everything. All that work and it didn’t pay off at all…</p>
<p>I underestimated the difficulty to get into my good match schools this year, but the record number of app’s was unforeseeable. I would have applied ED to my #1 school, and done more EA. I feel I am qualified for all the schools I applied to, but should have visited all of them and interviewed at all as well. I only visited 2(didn’t want to visit if I wasn’t going to be accepted) and interviewed at 3, and should have sent in more supplemental material(newspaper articles, CNN dvd). I think in prior years it would not have been influential, but with the # of apps this year it may have had more weight in the decision.</p>
<p>“might’ve changed the way I did some things…like maybe have done some competitions or something, but honestly, I’ve had so much fun these past 4 years that no amount of rejections is gonna make me regret what I’ve done in HS.”
elegantOdancer what a great attitude! So many have knocked themselves out taking every AP course/Ecs( even if it made them miserable) ect trying to get the ivy brass ring or top college xyz as if getting it meant life or death.In the end the journey is what life is all about not the destination. There are endless paths to a successful & happy life the least of which are what college one goes to( I’m sure many will argue this point). Whatever roads you all go down the next four years if you keep an open mind & heart and be true to your personal goals you’ll do fine.</p>
<p>Not bsing as much as my friend</p>
<p>I got mostly waitlists and acceptance rather than rejections, but I was still surprised by the waitlists. My mistakes:</p>
<p>-showed no interest. I think certain schools certainly expect you to show interest.
-didn’t update them. I got a few awards and wrote an abstract for the research I’m doing but didn’t get around to sending them.</p>
<p>When people say “show interest”, take them seriously. I am not joking. If you do research, try to send an abstract ASAP, especially if that’s your biggest EC.</p>
<p>My SAT/SATII scores</p>
<p>my SAT subject test scores…530,560, and 570 respectively!! lol I only submitted this to the 1 school that required it, and its the only school i got rejected to! It just makes me laugh, because I really don’t care and I know I’ll be happy wherever I go.</p>
<p>I marked my race as Indian lol. WHY. Also stupidly put my major as math, which didn’t hurt me at UCs, but what was I thinking trying to compete with the asians in math who applied to private ;(</p>
<p>Also, I would have gotten different counselor recs.. she didn’t even know me (my school has this problem)</p>
<p>Would not change a thing! I admit, we are absolutely going crazy about this years admissions, but I don’t think my son could have done anything different the past 4 years. Why beat yourself up when you know that you did your best? Could he have taken the Sat a 3rd time? Joined another club? Written a better essay? Cured cancer? I don’t know. All I do know is, I am proud of him for all his hard work and for every school that rejected him, it’s their LOSS!!!</p>
<p>Test scores and ECs…</p>
<p>well said, karagon7. </p>
<p>I am not sure what went wrong with me. I have OK SATs (made into 25% of many schools and 50% of some), gr8 TOEFL, gud list of ECs (My high school Ecs were great. I think it demonstrated my all round nature and abilities. the same for my outside ECs), avg. essays (I can’t change how I write essays. Even though they were last-minutes, I still believe I couldn’t have done much difference. It is how I write. I reckon my why essays were good) and very gud GPA and rank. Recos were very good and emphasized my gud points.</p>
<p>I don’t know why I got rejected. Being an international student asking for high aid (only able to pay sround 2000) must have hurt my chances. Still, guys from my country have gotten in into good colleges. I don’t think their 100 or 200 greater SAT than mine did any difference. Must have been he essays. My high school and ECs are top notch in my country (I m not bragging)…</p>
<p>if any one is willing to read my common app essay, i’d be happy to pm you. Your suggestions’ll help me know about my mistakes and make some changes in the way I write.</p>
<p>congrats to all who got in…there’s no lucky acceptance. u all deserved it :D</p>
<p>Failure and Success lies in the eyes of the beholder. 5 or 6 or more rejections doesn’t mean you have failed, my friends. Life goes on. so, learning from this experience is the best we can do.</p>
<p>Edison tried 2000 times before he succesfully iinvented the bulb. When asked about his thousands failures, he simply said, “I learned 2000 different ways how I can’t make a bulb.” Take that for an answer. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out why he became so succesful…</p>
<p>Going to the wrong high school. Seriously. I really don’t think colleges like my school, in fact, I know they don’t. My counselor has told kids here the opinions of some top colleges of my high school, and so few of them are positive.</p>
<p>Applying to Cornell in the first place. </p>
<p>Plain and simple.</p>
<p>I went to the WRONG HIGH SCHOOL</p>
<p>1) Looking past early Decision acceptance rates (Columbia ~21%) [rejected]</p>
<p>2) Not realizing reach schools are “Reaches” for a reason</p>
<p>Writing a one-focus essay to a liberal arts college (Amherst) [rejected].
Liberal arts schools would prefer a student that wrote about something other than just one passion because liberal arts is there for you to explore many things etc.</p>
<p>3) Under-estimating NYU’s acceptance rate and depending too much on NYU [rejected] Pre-college & URM status for admission.</p>
<p>4) Not studying harder for SATs</p>
<p>Overall, I’m happy that I will be attending Syracuse this fall. I have no regrets at that too.</p>
<p>Our whole family is very happy with my daughter’s acceptances and the fact that she has made her final choice, but she did get waitlisted at two colleges she was somewhat interested in and that earlier in the process she was quite interested in. I think one thing she might have done differently was to get an extra letter of reference for her exceptional leadership extracurricular - she described what she did but maybe the right letter of reference would have changed the waitlists to acceptances. Her guidance counsellor suggested at one point that this would be a good idea, but she didn’t want to be a bother to people who were not generally part of the college application/letter of reference process - she always had as few letters of reference as possible. I would say if you are serious about wanting to go to one particular place, go ahead and bother someone - get an extra letter of reference. But it’s okay - all is well, and all are very happy at our house. Not the traumatic “April of Indecision” we had been dreading.</p>
<p>Applying to Cornell in the first place. </p>
<h1>Plain and simple.</h1>
<p>I applied their too, it wasn’t even a “reach” it was more of a “grab the ladder if you wanna get it” . i initally wanted to apply Stanford but my math teacher recommended Cornell (I’m glad he believed in me !) Nonetheless I DID get an interview and am glad to have had the exp. </p>
<p>The thing that still bothers me is the fact that i didn’t try as hard in my sr year and chosen better classes. </p>
<p>I’mma work SUPEr hard so i CAN get into a grad school that i RELALY wanna go to! </p>
<p>Maybe it was the awards I put down, they were nothing special…I also wished i used my essay on playing piano, it was SO good(probaably best piece or writing EVER).</p>