The Right College List Can Mean More Admit Letters

We hear the horror stories every year – a student at a local private high school was rejected from every single college to which she applied.

Parents gasp, and gossip.  The student is mortified.  She has a 4.3 GPA, near-perfect SAT scores, is the student body president, and has been active in the robotics club for three years.  And she's played the flute since she was 10.  How could this happen?

The problem was her college list.  It was chock-full of reach schools – most of the eight Ivy League schools, plus Stanford, UC Berkeley and maybe UCLA.  Her parents threw in Wash U thinking it was a "safety."  Most of these schools have single-digit acceptance rates and turn away more many times more qualified students than they accept. 

Her list was wrong.

And as a result, she was rejected.  More importantly, she felt rejected.  She would go through the rest of her life thinking that she wasn’t good enough for the best colleges she knew.

Author Allison Singh, a Dartmouth alumna who was rejected from her top choice, Princeton University, has made it her life’s work to help students bounce back after being rejected from their "dream" schools."

Singh’s book, Getting Over Not Getting In, and her recent Huffington Post article remind students that the college admissions process is not personal.  “The reasons for your rejection,” she says, “are often beyond your control.”  Keep in mind that with admissions officers spending an average of 7-10 minutes per applicant file (that’s at private colleges – they spend even less time at most public universities), the process does not render judgment on the student as a person, nor even their ability to succeed in college.

Even knowing that, students have a right to feel down if they are rejected from a college they’ve dreamed about for years.  Even if students do everything parents, counselors and teachers recommend – keep grades up, dig into extra-curricular activities, show leadership in some way – it’s entirely possible that they will not be accepted to highly selective universities. [I recently had a father say to me that his son was a “shoo-in” for MIT.  There’s no such thing!]

This is where an independent educational consultant can help.  Our job is to help find the colleges that will truly match students’ academic, social and emotional needs.  Even if we don’t know all 2,000+ 4-year colleges in the United States, we are trained to help students search in the right way after the appropriate self-exploration.  A good college list won’t be just about rankings and name-brand schools, but about real fit for the student.

College rejection hurts – and the hurt can last awhile.  Allison Singh helps students get over the pain (her website is here) but as an independent college counselor, I focus on preventing rejection.  Creating a balanced and well-researched college list will ensure that students are focused on getting the right education for their abilities, expectations and desires.  With just a few months left to go in this admissions cycle, now is the perfect time to review that list and make sure it's realistic, with a few dreams sprinkled in.