<p>I just got a rejection letter in the mail from my state school, and it was one of my safeties, too. I was shocked because my SATs, APs, etc. were well above their average statistics, I'm involved in a bunch of things in HS, and my essay was pretty good. Anyways, I was wondering if I should call the admissions office and ask them why I wasn't accepted? I've already been accepted into some of my other schools (one of them with a dean's scholarship) and am waiting to hear from the others, so it's not like I'm not able to go to college just because they rejected me, it's just that I wanted to have something to fall back on as far as financial aid is concerned. Of all the schools I applied to, this one admits the highest percentage of applicants, so I thought I was going to get in unless I decided to rob a liquor store. Should I call and tell them I've been offered admission at schools that are a lot more selective?</p>
<p>Sure, call. It could have been a mistake.</p>
<p>No, don’t call. My guss, you came across as an applicant who wasn’t serious about actually attending their school, and so they chose someone with less steller stats who they knew wanted to be there.</p>
<p>Yield protection? Lol.</p>
<p>State schools don’t care about demonstrated interest. They usually make decisions overwhelmingly on applicants’ stats and state of residence, with in-state students being preferred. Call your safety. I’m guessing that they made a mistake.</p>
<p>Call! But don’t tell them about the other highly selective schools who accepted you, because they’ll know for sure it was your safety. Which is probably why they didn’t accept you in the first place.</p>
<p>However, your reasons for calling don’t make sense. If you already have a dean’s scholarship at another school you were accepted to, why do you care about this safety( unless you really want to go there)? You don’t need to compare financial aid, because you already have a scholarship at another school. </p>
<p>Whatever the reason, just call!! It won’t hurt you, since if you don’t you’ll still be rejected. If you do, there’s a small chance they’ll change their decision.</p>
<p>I’d call! Especially if there was some mistake on your app, which you could then notify other schools of.</p>
<p>You can ask if they are able to advise you on what what was your weak point, but I’m not sure they’re going to tell you anything. But…that might trigger a review, if indeed it WAS a mistake?? Like above poster said…what if your transcript was mixed with someone elses, etc. They handle a huge amount of paperwork. I’m sure stranger things have happened.</p>
<p>A parent posted on Parents Forum about a month ago that her very high stat D had gotten an EA acceptance from Case Western Reserve, but no merit aid even though it seemed that the D should have gotten merit aid. Some wise parents encouraged the mother to contact Case, and it ended up that they had inadvertently overlooked her D. Case ended up giving the D generous merit aid, so don’t be shy about calling the college that rejected you. It does sound to me like it was a mistake. Public schools care about stats, not demonstrated interest.</p>
<p>It does sound like a phone call is warranted, but I would recommend having your high school GC make the call. The admissions office may be more candid or complete in response to a call from a GC.</p>
<p>Yes, having the GC call is a good idea.</p>
<p>Please let us know what happens. I am curious if the state school just filled up faster.</p>
<p>It would help to know which state school it was. The California system is pretty unpredictable, lately, due to the institution of holistic admission.</p>
<p>Call and politely inquire about an appeal process or ways you’d need to improve your application to be accepted. Do not mention you got into places more selective than they are, because guess what, they couldn’t care less. Schools don’t admit you based off where else you could go, they admit you based on what they’re looking for in a student. It’s possible there was a mistake, or it’s possible your application wasn’t put together as well as other students since it appears you didn’t take the school very seriously. (assuming you’ll get in somewhere greatly affect the effort you put into an application, and if they don’t have the luxury of auto-admissions for qualified in-state applicants, that may have been enough to knock you out of the running)</p>
<p>When D1 applied to our state school, she was not admitted to their honors college or offered any merit aid. When we called to find out why, they said because our daughter’s school didn’t rank they just automatically disqualified her (the computer did it). Our GC had to fax over a letter to give them an approximation of her ranking (top X%). Sometimes those state schools use their computer system to filter out applicants automatically. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just made a mistake (or a bug in the system).</p>