<p>I got inspiration for this thread from Lexington High School’s Wall of Rejection, a wall where people post their college rejection letters. I feel people take college admissions way too seriously, so I decided to start this thread.</p>
<p>In this thread, post things you screwed up in the college admission’s process.</p>
<p>I will rank them by major mistakes and minor mistakes.
Major mistakes:
Asking my science teacher for a rec (she took a generic rec and copy pasted my name)
Writing off topic on Rice’s personal statement
Screwing up my Duke Interview (Lady thought I wasn’t interested.)
Not applying to UC Berkely</p>
<p>Minor mistakes:
Sending in both online and paper parts of the application to Dartmouth when they wanted consistency
Sending in my apps a day before the deadline (not really a mistake, but its still ghetto)
Sending in midyear reports to schools who don’t ask for them.</p>
<p>I may not get into any colleges I applied to, but honestly I don’t give a ****. Life is all good, we should focus about the small pleasures we find in life (sleeping during a light rain with the window open, enjoying dinner in front of the television, watching porn) instead of overworking ourselves to make us “successful.”</p>
Went to a high school that’s not well known but that has severe grade deflation</p>
<p>Then:
Sent one application in a minute late online.
Sent three other paper applications late because they were due on, at various points, New Years’ Day, MLK Day, and the day commemorating Gerald Ford’s passing, and the post office was closed.
Sent in financial aid stuff late for similar reasons.
Failed to visit/set up interviews with several schools
Sprinkled typos generously throughout my applications
Spilled coffee all over the table at one interview
Left all my stuff behind at another</p>
<p>I’m sure I could go on and on for pages. So far I’ve been accepted at USC (the school to which I submitted late) and two UCs. Chin up, kids! Nothing’s irreparable.</p>
<p>Major mistake:
I quit ice skating when I was little in favor of sleeping in on Saturdays. To think I could have been a world-class skater with a definite hook… and opportunities for great volunteering (teaching little kids how to skate, etc).</p>
<p>Not working as hard as I could have for the SATs.</p>
<p>Staying in the Indian curriculum! (Stupidest thing one can possibly do.)</p>
<p>Writing crazy essays. Admissions officers don’t really want to hear my comparisons of geometry to a shady Manhattan detective from a B-movie.</p>
<p>Not applying to Berkeley. I realised somewhat after the fact that I might have liked it there. </p>
<p>Quitting the violin.</p>
<p>Getting that one question wrong on the SAT Math (yeah, I know how stupid that sounds, but it’s annoying to have a 770 when I could’ve actually been in Caltech’s range).</p>
<p>Not pestering my school sufficiently about transcripts (they sent them in late).</p>
<p>*going to a ridiculously small school that’s only 5 years old so there are literally no clubs to join
not taking ap u.s history [didn’t do so well on the sat2]
not double checking my ecs i submitted
microsoft word like edited some words on its own and made it look like I was making people up
[i.e. my music teacher’s last name is malave - and it changed it to ‘malice’]
saying the word “wow” wayy too much during one of my interviews- made me look like an airhead</p>
<ul>
<li>Procrastinated on the supplemental essays (I would have been better off not sending them at all…)</li>
<li>Took my acadmics not too seriously last semester. Stupid mid year report.</li>
<li>Did not apply to Brandeis.</li>
<li>Took too many electives Sophomore year (my only academic classes were math, physics and English)</li>
</ul>
<p>-I spent a month working on Michigan’s application (was planning to do it in a weekend) which forced me to rush my Penn and Chicago early applications </p>
<p>-I decided to apply to UCLA the day of the deadline, so couldn’t have the teacher recs, transcript, SAT scores, or anything else sent in on time on top of probably horrible essays</p>
<p>-Wrote my UChicago essays the night they were due</p>
<p>-Never requested to be nominated for Emory Scholars or Jefferson Scholars</p>
<p>-Had I not gotten into Penn, I would have done my entire Stanford application in about 36 hours</p>
<p>-At my interview at Starbucks, I never offered to buy my interviewer a drink, but drank coffee the entire time. WE also had a moment of awkward silence</p>
<p>-Not sending in an activity sheet to Penn (so they thought I had 5 ECs)</p>
<p>-For my UMD niche essay, I wrote 5 sentences and didn’t check for spelling or grammar (I really have no respect for the school which is unhealthy)</p>
<p>-Taking regular level Spanish instead of honors.</p>
<p>As a positive, I got into Penn, Chicago, and Michigan all within a week, and because I only had 4 apps submitted, all I had to do was rescind UMD (which was a free app) so I didn’t throw away hundreds of dollars on other colleges :)</p>
<p>flong:
“major mistake:
born yellow instead of a urm”
^^^^
being born black instead of Native American…the holy grail of AA admissions</p>
<p>early on:
-messed up my HS GPA by getting a 2.5 freshman year…whoa
-could’ve done a lot more to prepare myself for college admissions. My high school is crap, and the guidance counselors never offerd us any help
-Taking SAT and getting a 1940 instead of taking act and getting a 36
-working a job instead of studying harder…
-applied to West Point’s summer program (like 20% of students get in)…then didn’t go…on purpose
-was offered a fully paid college visit/vacation by Amherst, then turned them down…stupid, stupid, stupid</p>
<p>Then:
-Slacked off on FAFSA stuff…not good
-Majorly messed up first semester of my senior year…due to extenuating circumstances but, still, it suuuuuuuuuuucks to be playing catch up the last half OF MY SENIOR YEAR
-Didn’t apply to UPenn Wharton ED with said revised test scores</p>
<p>A Good Thing:
-Admitted to Williams College ED!</p>
<p>Major Mistakes: Not proofreading my Princeton ED essay… sentence made no sense ! (luckily caught it before I sent any other apps)</p>
<p>Doing my Princeton application first. I should have just done some other application so I could have polished that application better. I wanted so much to just send a new application in after I was deferred… oh well. Hopefully my update letter showed that I have the ability to write well…</p>
<p>Not applying to non-selective universities that tell you your decision before March 29! A friend made a joke the other day in our calculus (if you want to call it that) class that the valedictorian (me) is the only one not to be accepted to any universities. It’s the sad truth :(</p>
<p>General comment about my decisions throughout high school: Not finding something and pursuing it strongly. In high school I dabbed a lot (which is what I honestly wanted to do) in order to find out what I love. Now that I’m in my senior year I know what I love to do, but I wish I had known that a bit earlier in the process so I could have brought some depth to these extracurriculars. I wish I had stuck to my extracurricular math studies a bit more, I coulda done so much more… ugh. Oh well, I feel I’ve accomplished a lot in high school and I hope that’ll be enough.</p>
<p>Minor Mistakes: Not realizing it would cost me so much money to apply to 7 universities.</p>
<p>Not completing financial aid stuff until… today. I don’t doubt that I’m probably missing stuff from some of my schools too. Not to mention that my parents don’t understand why the colleges need so much information from them. My mom won’t even help me because of that fact, so my dad is the only one who can do it and he’s busy like crazy so that doesn’t help.</p>
<p>Taking 9 classes each semester of senior year… w t f was/am I on?</p>
<p>semi-major mistakes–getting the school colors wrong at an interview (black and orange, not brown and orange)…and it was for princeton so it kinda mattered. oops.
–not bugging my school enough about deadlines…
–taking too many hard classes senior year
–taking too many electives that bring down my gpa
–doing common app–all of mine required supplements, and so it would’ve been easier to just do individual apps.</p>
<p>minor mistake
–applying to all regular decision, non-rolling schools, then having to wait while everyone else hears back…being in limbo sucks.
so far, i’ve been accepted to RIT and UDel…and have a scholarship interview at SU, so that’s a pretty good sign i guess.</p>
<p>A reminder that although thinking about how you screwed up applications is upsetting, still do follow our terms of service, which prohibit all profanity including profanity that is spelled around to avoid our censors and profanity that some may regard as mild. Posts that don’t follow these guidelines will be deleted and the posters may lose their posting privileges.</p>
<p>Writing generic, not-so-good, “why” essays to Vassar and Bowdoin.</p>
<p>Applying to 10 schools.</p>
<p>Not at least trying the ACT.</p>
<p>Not doing interviews anywhere.</p>
<p>Maybe I should have gotten a more interesting, unique, EC. All of mine were basically boring school clubs. Nothing interesting, at all.</p>
<p>Not working more closer with recommendation teachers to make them better. They were all sort of generic.</p>
<p>That sounds bad, but, overall, I think I put my best effort into the whole college thing. I studied pretty hard to get my SATs to a point that satisfied me. My class rank and classes at school were all about the best I could ask for. My GPA was good. My personal essay was (I thought) quite good and interesting. And, I’ve been accepted at Brandeis, so if I don’t get in anywhere else I’ll be happy enough to go there!</p>
<p>Got a $2,500 Freshman merit award from University of Kansas in November. Forgot about the line in the letter where they said I had to notify them by Jan 29 if I wanted to accept the award or ask for a few more months to make up my mind. Woke up at 3AM on Jan 30th and got onto the award webpage. It took my acceptance. I thought I was clear.</p>
<p>Got a letter in the mail yesterday saying that “The deadline was January 29. You accepted your award on January 30. Your award has been cancelled. We hope to see you at The University of Kansas this fall”.</p>
<p>The only thing missing was a smiley face with “Have a nice Day”</p>
<p>Major Mistakes:
Being born white
Having honest, hard-working parents who teach school
Believing working hard will get you somewhere in life
Assumng my counselor was competent enough to send my transcripts</p>
<p>Minor mistake:
Being right handed
Not knowing anyone famous</p>
<p>Being a straight white male immigrant (so no ECs)</p>
<p>Major mistakes:</p>
<p>I can’t tell for sure right now. Probably submitting a few apps (MIT, UMich, Georgia Tech, UC) five minutes before the deadline. More or less, but I think average is five.</p>
