Why Top Colleges Reject Qualified Students

Hey, guys! It’s Eric at Solution Prep and today I want to tell you a little story about why qualified students might still get rejected from their top choice colleges.

I visit a lot of colleges, and one day I found myself in the vestibule of an admissions office after hours. So the office was closed, but there was still literature in the vestibule about how to take my own self-guided tour. And as I was in there pawing over maps and brochures, a family walked in behind me; a mom, and her two teenage children who were also there to visit the college. And, you know, we’re the only ones there so we get to talking and wind up strolling through the college together.

And in the course of our conversation, this mom tells me that she is —in fact — a professor at a different college. In fact, one of America’s most applied to colleges in terms of the volume of applications, and they received so many applications that year that the admissions office didn’t have enough time in the day to read through all of those essays.

So after qualifying students based on their grades and their test scores, the admissions office passed along the essay reading to every professor and tenure track instructor there, who received a pile of 10 students worth of essays to read. And they could only recommend one of those students. And this is very interesting because this professor isn’t even an undergraduate professor. She told me that she teaches on the graduate level, that would be med school, business school, law school; beyond the bachelor’s degree. And yet she’s sitting there reading essays written by high school students for an undergraduate college that she doesn’t even teach at. She just teaches at the overall university.

And because she can only recommend one of those applicants that could put her in a bit of a spot because she might have three or four great students who’ve written great essays that make them whole, three dimensional people that she really connected with, who she can envision as great additions to their student body but can only choose one. Meanwhile, the professor in the next classroom down the hall might be reading 10 students worth of essays and not connect with any of them. Might have 10 dud students who are writing boring essays that she really doesn’t think are going to fit in here, and yet she is still going to recommend one of those applicants.

So it can come down to a bit of luck in terms of which pile you find yourself in on which day, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And that may seem very unfair, but this is why we don’t pin all of our hopes and dreams on one top college. It’s why we build a robust list of safety schools, of fit schools, of reach schools; all of which should be colleges you are interested in, that you would be happy to go to.

Because when you get that letter of rejection that says “we had a record number of applicants this year, and we couldn’t accept everybody”, it may feel like they’re telling you you are not good enough, And the fact is you may be good enough, but you may just be a little unlucky, or you may just be in a more competitive pool of students.

Whether it’s a more competitive pool for the essays this reader is reading, whether it’s a more competitive pool because you go to a more competitive high school and they don’t want to accept the entire graduating class of your high school. So they’re only going to take the top few kids in your high school and then they’ll take other — maybe less qualified than you — students who are the top applicants from a different high school.

Maybe you’re in a more competitive pool of students applying for that major, a more competitive major at that college.

Or maybe there are hooks you just don’t have. Maybe somebody else is being recruited for sports or being recruited because of their older sibling or their parent went here, or a parent works here. There are just things you can’t do anything about.

So get great grades to be eligible, get great test scores to be eligible. Write great essays to cut through the noise, but apply to that broader array of colleges to give yourself a variety of opportunities and understand that you’re going to get accepted to some colleges, and rejected from others. And that’s just the way it works.

But you’re going to pick one from the accepted list and you’re going to go on to a college you are excited about.

So get going and if you have questions, call us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.