Denied instead of Deferred? Was I a Sub-par Applicant?

aristicslobe
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 06:22:04 +0000

Hi everyone.
Today I got my ED results back from Dartmouth, and was a bit surprised to see that I was flat-out rejected, and not even deferred (I don’t mean to sound arrogant). I have read that most decent/competitive applicants at schools like Dartmouth are very often deferred. So… Does this essentially mean that I wasn’t a very good applicant? I should note that my grades and test scores were all quite competitive for Dartmouth, with a 1540 SAT and an approx 96 GPA with many AP classes, and SAT II scores of 760 (Bio) and 800 (Math II). Also, I had several leadership roles in ECs and college-level research conducted at a Yale lab… Maybe I’m just freaking out and still going through the healing process from the rejection, but is it possible that there was something off-putting in my application – maybe in my Recs or essays – that led to a complete denial? I am mainly asking to see if there are some changes that I should make to my common app essay or application format for the regular decision round. Thanks.