it all started when I applied for the university honor’s program. I was convinced that I was going to get in since I had a 4.0 the highest grade average possible and from what I could tell the application only asked about your grades and your personal life. The results came out and to my surprise I was not accepted while my peers with lower GPAs got accepted. So I decided to contact them to see why I was not accepted; no response. The only possible explanation that came to my mind was that they rejected me for who I am since I had the perfect scores. I applied to different scholarships and same thing happened I got rejected. recently I got an email inviting me to apply for a math tutoring position at my university since I got the highest score in that class but again I was rejected which made me really furious because why would you ask me to apply and then reject me and basically wasting my time. needless to say these all made me really depressed since i didn’t see any reasons to try, make sacrifices and study hard while all my other peers with lower grades who; without being biased, were not as smart as me got what they wanted. I’m making this post to ask for your guys help because I cannot see a reason why I was rejected and they refuse to tell me why. FYI they did not ask about any extracurricular activities. All applications asked for Grades and personal statement. Except the tutoring position which only asked for grades.
Maybe your personal statement was lacking. Who knows? Things are competitive. There will always be someone better than you, and you don’t know that these others WEREN’T better than you in some way, because you weren’t privy to the contents of their apps.
how can they tell they are better than me if the application only asks about your grades and I have the highest grades possible?
Do not be discouraged. Life is tough. Not everyone gets the job, or into the club, or the award, etc. Life doesn’t give out participation ribbons. Also, at the end of the day, GPA is not the end all. I am willing to bet it was your personal statement that kept you out. That is where you need to let your personality and creativity shine through. It’s not all about GPA and grades. It’s about who you are as a person.
I can’t change who I am
You’re right, you can’t change who you are. I am sure you are a great person and you are clearly a hard worker, as shown by your grades! Who you are isn’t’ the problem - it might be how your present yourself. You can change how you present yourself in your personal statement.
It may have also looked at ACT/SAT. They look at your common app essay to get a sense of who you are. Maybe you are not showing your true self in that?
I don’t know you and I can only speak from my experiences with high school students, so, I’m going to try to view you by reading your statement above. Sorry if it seems harsh:
If your whole perspective is that you are the best, and you trivialize others as being less capable than you-in all areas-I can see why you have been continually rejected. (I used to read scholarship applications and we often rejected the perfect score kids because of their arrogance and disregard for others).
You really don’t know what your peers wrote. You don’t know how they presented themselves in a statement. It’s very presumptuous of you to assume that you are and were better than your peers. That attitude comes through fiercely in personal statements. Maybe they are better writers? Maybe they know how to convey their thoughts in a good way. The point is, you really don’t know what these less capable students wrote. Re read your sentences^^^^^ and listen to how you sound.
Maybe your submissions had numerous grammatical errors like your post above. I’ve starred them below. The fact that I can count at least 17 errors in your 14-line post tells me that you are either careless or not nearly as smart as you think, and that could have also come through in your applications. Writing reveals a lot about a person.
It’s also possible that your “furious” state of mind also came through – no one likes to be around or reward someone who gets “furious” when they don’t get their way. You should try to figure out why you are so angry and deal with your anger and depression – there are probably many other issues going on that just the ones you described. Maybe talking to someone in the counseling office will help.
Many honors programs and scholarship applications require recommendations, and that could also have made a difference. There are lots of possibilities. However, you gave up on finding out why you didn’t get into the honor’s program after getting “no response,” which shows a lack of commitment, energy and persistence – if you walked into the honors department office and spoke to someone, and scheduled an appointment, you would get a response of some sort. Waiting passively for a reply email or phone call doesn’t always work in the real world.
I’ve starred your errors below. *=Errors
it all started when I applied for the university honor’s program. I was convinced that I was going to get in since I had a 4.0 the highest grade average possible* and from what I could tell the application only asked about your grades and your personal life. The results came out and to my surprise I was not accepted while my peers with lower GPAs got accepted. So I decided to contact them to see why I was not accepted; no response. The only possible explanation that came to my mind was that they rejected me for who I am* since I had the perfect scores. I applied to different scholarships and same thing happened I got rejected. recently I got an email inviting me to apply for a math tutoring position at my university since I got the highest score in that class but again I was rejected* which made me really furious because why would you ask me to apply and then reject me and basically wasting my time. *needless to say these all made me really depressed since *i didn’t see any reasons to try, make sacrifices and study hard while all my other peers with lower grades who; without being biased, were not as smart as me got what they wanted. I’m making this post to ask for your guys help because I cannot see a reason why I was rejected and they refuse to tell me why. FYI they did not ask about any extracurricular activities. All applications asked for *Grades and personal statement. *Except the tutoring position which only asked for grades.
sorry my first language is not english and I wrote this really fast since I was angry.
Look you can’t win them all and if you aren’t winning anything then you have to face the possibility that you may be doing something wrong. Don’t give up. And don’t expect that just because you are asked to apply for something that it is a done deal. They will need tutors in the future so keep in touch and express your continued interest when another position opens up. Meanwhile you may want to show that you can work well with others, being the helpful one in labs, discussions, group work etc.
My son and I have attended many info
sessions and interviews for honors programs . I don’t know what school you’re speaking about, so I can’t say that these are the reasons you were rejected.
Honors programs are usually very competive programs where GPAs are only a part of the admissions process. Test scores and ECs weigh very heavy in the decision. We had an admission’s counselor tell us that “Everyone that applies to this program is smart and has great test grades, what makes you different . What do you have to offer the program ?” If you didn’t answer this question, they couldn’t answer it either . In terms of GPA , with weighted GPAs 4.0
is not the highest GPA possible for every school, so it’s quite possible that your GPA was not “the highest grade point average possible”. In terms of being asked to become a tutor, you were probably not the only person who was asked to “apply” It seems that you are under the impression that if you are “asked” to apply for a position or program
, that you are guaranteed to get that position or into that program. My son receives these requests often, but he understands that these are OPPORTUNITIES not GUARENTEES.
Apparently, (except for the tutor position) GPA isn’t all that important and what you say in the personal statement and how you say it matters a lot.
Maybe you do have extracurriculars or other interesting, positive things about yourself that you haven’t mentioned, but should. These applications should be regarded as marketing exercises. You should sound like a positive and inspiring person; there shouldn’t be any complaints in the personal statement. Make sure your English in the application is perfect.
(As far as the tutor position is concerned, maybe someone with a higher GPA applied and/or even in that case more than the GPA is somehow known and considered.)
Have you tried asking a neutral third party (like someone from your school’s writing center or perhaps a teacher or mentor who you trust) to take a look at your personal statement and give you feedback? Since you say that the application only asked for grades and a personal statement, perhaps it was your personal statement that was lacking in some way. I’ve know many hardworking, intelligent students who are terrible, terrible writers. Sometimes, it’s what they write about. Sometimes, it’s how they write it. Sometimes, it’s things like tone or style that can seem small but actually make a really big differences–especially when you have many students with great grades competing for a limited number of spots. You’ve said English is not your first language, and that might make it even more difficult to catch some of the subtleties of writing. I obviously don’t know how good or not good your essay was, but getting some advice from someone who can actually read it might help you get some perspective. If nothing else, every piece of writing can be made better! You might get some good advice on how to improve your writing, even if it’s already great.
Scholarships are extremely competitive. Amazing, spectacularly qualified students are denied them all the time. It’s not personal. There’s just not enough to go around.
As for the tutoring position, I can just speculate based on my own experience. At my school, tutoring positions (both paid and unpaid) were in high demand. It was a great job for those that could snag paid positions, and it was great and rewarding experience, regardless of whether students were paid or not. But a lot more went into picking students than just grades, even if the application only asked about your grades. For instance, at my school, undergraduates could be TAs, but graduate students often had priority for being TAs. Undergraduates could be paid or unpaid, and obviously, undergraduates who were unpaid were chosen universally over students who were paid. Professors would often also pick students they knew–students who had TAed for them in the past, students in their labs, students they knew personally, etc. Students who received good grades in classes were invited to become tutors for them, but many were not chosen, just because they didn’t have enough space for all of them. You likely received the email among many other top students in your class, and they can’t choose all of them to be tutors. There are a limited number of spots, and they can’t take everyone. There are also lots of other possibilities. Perhaps, they chose the first students who applied with a minimum GPA, and you just applied towards the later end. Perhaps, they never got your application. Maybe, you were missing parts of the application, and it really did ask for more than just grades. Maybe they had tons of applications for only one spot.
There are a million reasons why you might not be chosen for an honors college or scholarship or a job position. It’s all just speculation at this point. You can call them or make an appointment to meet with them to discuss the situation if you really want to know, but I’d recommend you just move on, especially if you think there’s ANY possibility that the attitude you have in this post might come out if you speak to them in person about your application. You don’t always get what you want. It’s tough for many students who have spent so many years being at the top of their class and likely getting very few (if any) rejections. Instead of dwelling on why someone else got something that you wanted, work on making improving your future applications. That might involve improving your writing, getting more experience, speaking to people at the career center for tips and suggestions, whatever you think will help.
They interview for tutor position at my daughter’s school. People who were tutors in the past might not get hired to do the job again base on personality, work ethic, etc.
Undergraduate TA is even harder because graduate TA has priority. So it has to be approved by department chair. It could be stressful and political. You need to have a professor that wants you badly besides having top grade.
The only thing to do is keep trying. Everyone gets rejected at some point. Nothing to do but try again and again and again until you are accepted.
As baktrax wisely suggests, you should have a third party read your personal statement to give you honest feedback. If you PM it to me, I’d be happy to review for you. When you are rejected from something, it is good to ask why, but you may never get an answer… can’t get too upset about that!
Shoot over your personal statement and I’ll give you a critique on it. 
It’s going to be hard to get specific answers without knowing where you are in school. As to tutoring, I think it’s pretty common to invite people to apply for job based on scores. At older D’s school this was done, but it only meant you met the basic criteria, not that you are guaranteed a job. I would be surprised if when you filled out actual application for job if it didn’t ask for availability, classes taken, experience, etc. Maybe they would contact your professor to see how you were in class. What would the professor say about you? Do you come off as friendly and encouraging to students that don’t pick up concepts quickly? (D2 was in classes with some brilliant students but they were so arrogant or in own littel world that they would have made terrible tutors.) They don’t do all this follow-up until you actually apply.
You say you were turned down because of who you are? Were you interviewed in person? How would they know much about you based on paper? If your first language is not English and it shows in writing, does it also hamper students understanding you in person?
If you let people here know what school you are talking about, maybe someone knows about qualifications for honors, etc. Hard for us to tell if really was suppose to just be GPA driven or if you misunderstood.