Hi everyone,
College decisions are finally out and…
REJECTED:
Notre Dame
Northeastern U
UCSD
UCLA
UC Berkley
WAITLISTED:
Boston College
Tulane U
UCI
GWU
U of Michigan
U of Wisconsin Madison
And for some background info. about me:
Stats:
ACT superscore: 34 (took it twice)
Unweighted GPA: 3.8; weighted: 4.0
Have taken Precalc, AP World, AP Stats, AP Lang, AP Psychology, AP Gov, AP Econ
Not sure if letters of rec. were great because I never got close to my counselor. Due to some weird coincidence, my counselor was switched every year since 9th grade so I never got to talk more in-depth with them.
While I didn’t expect to accepted by all, I thought I had a good selection of safety and reach schools. I guess right now, I’m less concerned about why I got rejected/waitlisted, but rather what I should do now. Should I write letters of appeal/consideration to all these colleges? While I don’t have any “new or compelling information”, I feel like if I don’t do anything, the waitlisted schools will also reject me later. I know that going to community college is an option, but I just feel discouraged because it feels like everything I did in high school basically amounted to nothing.
I’ve also talked to my newest (hah) counselor and she basically said that I can’t do anything else other than accept the waitlist offers. But it just feels like I’m sitting on my butt and letting my future slip away.
In general, if you guys have any helpful info or advice I would love to hear it.
There were no safeties on your list, and you found that out the hard way.
There are a number of schools still accepting applications.
What is your home state? Budget?
Do accept the waitlist offers, and send letters of continued interest to each AO. Ask your GC to call each school on your behalf to reiterate your strong desire to attend, and find out any pertinent information.
UC’s do not accept Letters of continued interest but you can appeal your decisions only if you new and compelling information.
I not familiar with all the schools on your list but to me, you have no safety schools and only a few target schools. Your list is heavy on the Reaches.
Contact your wait list school’s early and often, telling them that you’ll come if accepted and update your application with any new information or highlight things that need greater emphasis.
Second, consult a private college counselor for professional guidance and assistance, it’s not over and you still may be able to apply to new school. I’ve seen it done successfully.
All is not lost. On May 1 the places that haven’t filled their classes will start publishing that information, and the list will get shared here. Not to mention of course that there are a whole bunch of places that are still accepting applications.
What is your state of residence?
What is your budget?
What is your major?
@MYOS1634 might have some ideas for you right now.
No safeties. Sorry you learned this the hard way. I suspect you are OOS for California and probably the other public U’s. Maybe you didn’t show any interest.
Cc and transfer.
Wait for seats to open up on May 1, or maybe June 1 this year. (Look at the NACAC list, May 1.)
Apply rolling admission to colleges still accepting apps.
Try again next year. Maybe not a bad idea given the uncertainty about how things will play out.
Write genuine LOCI to your WL colleges. Update with any new info and current GPA. State that you will attend if accepted.
You can go to your default safety of community college and then transfer to one of the state universities in your state of residency to complete a bachelor’s degree.
Thanks to everyone for replying. My home state is California. My budget is somewhere around 20k although my parents have stressed that if I get into a good school they would be willing to support me. Otherwise, I would have to do it by myself. For all of these colleges, I have said my intended major is business/international business, except for Wisconsin Madison (Cognitive Science) and Michigan (LSA-Undecided). Now, I wonder if I should have diversified more.
Hi @Lindagaf ! In my LOCI, do you think it’s wise to state that I also have an interest in other majors to increase my chances? To be honest, I don’t have many extracurricular activities that show a strong interest in business. I didn’t really know what I want my intended major was but my parents pushed me towards it.
Now I’m wondering, is it is wise to just tell the WL that I really want to go to their college, and would be willing to change my major to just Undecided? Would that help?
I’m sorry that happened. I agree that you should write a love letter to each waitlist school. Maybe try calling and talking to admissions, too, if you are a good talker. This year you might get off that wait list at at least one of those schools because of the virus. I do think you don’t have really super clear safety schools, though some have higher acceptance rates than others on your list. Those with the higher end rates may have thought you were using them as a safety school and so didn’t accept you.
It stinks that this happened but you are smart to ask for you advice. There are schools still taking acceptances. I posted some in another thread that was a person in your same situation. Northern Vermont U keeps writing to my son and Ursinus and Hampshire also have recently been writing to him and other places. I’m sure there are more schools. You could search for schools with rolling admissions as well.
as others asked, do you have a price range you need to stay within for tution?
Google a list of colleges with late application deadlines.
This is a funny year and schools might take a lot more wait listed and even later applicants.
It’s probably a good thing that you didn’t get into these schools anyway. Going out of state is triple the tuition, and the economy is in a state of crash right now. There’s a reasonable possibility that a parent could be laid off, which can make those schools unaffordable VERY quickly. I would say, if you still have your heart set on a UC school on your list, take a year at community college and apply again.
No. it’s a bad idea. It will just reek of desperation.
There were several issues with your applications:
-You don’t know what you want do.
-That indecisiveness must have come through in your essays and in your list of activities and, hence, affected your admission chances.
-You also didn’t apply to any safeties. You didn’t apply to any California State Universities. Why not? Cal Poly’s/ SDSU/ CSULB are great schools! The UC schools are never safeties.
-You are in the State of California, which has large numbers of students with UW GPA’s of 4.0. Huge numbers of those students apply to the elite UC’s and CSU’s. At 3.8, your chances were tough, especially because you weren’t proactive with your current guidance counselor. When you are applying, as a senior, it’s crucial that you interact and maintain a strong relationship with your guidance counselor. (All of my three kids all had four different counselors, yet they kept in constant contact with their counselor, via their activities, such that, the counselors knew them by name, siblings, and friends. These counselors had 700-1000 kids per person!)
your parents are choosing your major. You have no buy-in because now you’re willing to “change major”, to accommodate the universities, not because you have a passion for the major, which is a big red flag that you’re desperate.
So your options are:
-wait for May 1st to check the colleges that have openings. (You probably won’t get financial aid so, your parents are gonna have to shell out a lot of money) or
-Go the CCC route to the UC‘s and CSUs.
take a GAP year and work in a business related company and see if you like it. Earn some cash and then reapply. You can’t take any courses during the Gap year, or you’ll be considered a transfer student when you reapply.
Ooph. I’m sorry: it looks like you have been let down in several dimensions.
First step is a serious talk with your parents about $$- seriously is GW “good enough” that they will pay $77K / year for it? Is UMi “worth” $67K/ year? do that for each school before you write you LOCI! Or…by “support” do they mean co-sign loans? b/c GW is a great school, but it is not worth $300K of debt.
Did you run the net price calculator on each college to see what its price after financial aid would be?
If your parents have high income and/or assets to prevent getting financial aid, then the $20k plus federal direct loans of $5.5k plus maybe a few thousand in your work earnings may be just barely enough for some in-state publics if you have to live there (those within commuting range would be easier to fit into the budget, although commuting and food and utilities at home still do cost money). If that is the case, you may want to start by commuting to a community college to save money (i.e. spend significantly less than $20k per year) so that you can have a somewhat larger budget for your last two years at a CSU or UC.
I wouldn’t give up. Take the suggestions posted here to look at rolling admissions colleges that are still accepting applications and the NACAC list (I would start looking at it May 1, even though I think other posters are right that some colleges may not appear on the list until June). I would not turn my nose up at community colleges either. Some of them have guaranteed transfers if you do well enough. Also, it is a much, much more economical way to explore majors since you don’t yet know for sure what you want to study.
Your stats are good so I can understand why you, as someone who didn’t have good counseling, didn’t understand the current admissions landscape and went with a top-heavy list. When your parents went to college that list would have been fine.
Here are a couple of random thoughts I have, in no particular order-
You don’t necessarily have to know what you want to study in college. Of course, those applications where a student knows what they want and have the classes and ECs to show that this is an informed decision look good. But even if you don’t know what you want to study, if your application reads as someone who is intellectually curious and is spending time in a worthwhile manner, you are also attractive.
2- I think you might know some things that you aren’t interested in, right? Based on the HS classes you took, bet you don’t like STEM. So, what do each of the schools you applied to have to offer you? Once you think about that, you can think about how you can turn that around and make it about why you would be a good fit for them. This will help in your LOI, or new applications either this year or next.
3- it sounds like you got lost in the crowd with your GC due to no fault of yours. I think you may have learned a lesson the hard way that networking and making connections with people is really important. If you take this lesson to heart, you are far ahead of the game than your cohorts. So try not to be too bummed out about your results this year, and instead think about what you can positively learn from it to help you in life.
4- Take the time now to rethink everything. Be intentional with your next move.
look at finances first. Finances for most families are a lot less stable than they were a couple of months ago. Can your family still afford the $20k/year you were planning on? Or do you need to take a gap year and concentrate next year on chasing for more merit money? It should be harder next year because I bet a lot of other kids will do the same.
know that in the UC system there are good pathways to transfer from CC to UCs. Where you start is not where you end up.
if you chose to take a gap year, think about what you can do with your time that would be a growth experience for you. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I know lots of folks that ended up going into their careers because of low-level HS jobs that showed them they like the field.
no matter whether you start of at CC, or work next year, or go to a school you’ll newly apply to now or to one of your WL schools, keep your eyes and ears open. Look for opportunities, and even when you are doing drudge work, think about what skills or future opportunities you can make out of this.
Best of luck to you. Remember, this is just a bump in the road.
Would you have any interest in Cal Maritime? This CSU school is an often-overlooked gem - definitely not for everyone but a great opportunity when it’s a fit. More affordable than a UC, and great employment opportunities. They are still accepting Fall applications for their Business Administration major http://catalog.csum.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=5&poid=254&returnto=256 but the deadline is TODAY. (The CSU application is quick so you absolutely could get it done if you wanted to.)
As someone already asked, did you run the NPC’s for all the schools you applied to? It’s not clear from what you’ve said, whether you would have qualified for enough financial aid to bring the cost of attendance down to the 20K range that you say you can afford. If you do get into UCI or Merced, how much aid will you get? (Because the full-pay price will be close to 35K/year if you don’t qualify for aid.) Given that budget, it may actually be the smartest plan for you to enroll in a CCC Honors program and transfer into a UC. A gap year could also be a good plan, but the forecast for gainful employment in the coming year is unclear so it would be good to have a college option in the pipeline. As others have said, there will likely be a lot of schools accepting late applications; the challenge will be to find one that’s within your budget.