<p>I sense bitterness here, which I completely understand. You have every right to be angry, bitter, or any other emotion, and I’m not being sarcastic about that.</p>
<p>What I DON’T think is necessary is the subtone many of us are reading in your post, namely your “Well, I didn’t get in, so Chicago must not be that good a school” attitude. It’s natural for people to want to rationalize what happens to them and to try to come out of the experience with pride intact, but the way in which you’re doing it is disparaging not only of a fine institution–and yes, it is a fine institution regardless of what happened to you–but also of students who have been accepted. I’m willing to bet that most people, even those who were ultimately waitlisted or rejected, who applied to Chicago feel that the admissions office has been perfectly pleasant with them and understand that even at a supposedly more holistic school like Chicago, admission DOES have strong elements of a crapshoot.</p>
<p>In short: your cards were not right. You have every right in the world to gripe–if I were in your shoes, I would probably be inconsolable right now–but no right to use your experience to belittle the school or to generalize and assume that YOUR personal experience with the admissions office is representative of everyone’s experience and that the admissions office is therefore lazy and does not care about its applicants. Chicago has a relatively small applicant pool compared to many of its peer institutions, and the attention I received from Chicago admissions is startlingly good compared to the inattention friends with apps in at Ivies, etc. have gotten and will continue to get from those schools simply because those app pools are ENORMOUS.</p>
<p>I hope your admissions process comes out with a happy ending–good luck at your other schools! And thank you for the congratulations…I don’t think you are purposefully trying to belittle us or the school, but it does seem that way a bit.</p>