<p>You should be happy you got into Notre Dame with a full ride</p>
<p>As a the parent of a soon-to-be freshman, congratulations on the full ride at ND. You will have the opportunity to study with some superb faculty and will have many opportunities for student research. </p>
<p>Your guidance counselor’s advice about not focusing your essay on depression was probably sound advice. We heard at numerous open houses and information sessions that students should stay away from the five “Ds” – I cannot remember them all, but it included death, depression and some others. Ad reps said students think they can handle it in a way which is compelling and interesting, but they can’t. As for the supplemental explanation for the gap in your hs career, a positive essay showing how you overcame and learned from adversity would work. </p>
<p>Other than that, your list was composed of reaches that no student should expect to get into. Your credentials made you a qualified applicant, but with rejection rates of 90%, you along with many other qualified students were rejected. </p>
<p>You are in the extraordinarily fortunate position of generous aid at a top 20 school, with a phenomenal alumni network to help with job searches, great school spirit, and plenty to do besides go to 6 home football games. Count your blessings, and get in the spirit of preparing for a wonderful 4 years. Look ahead, not back. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Am I the only one that suspects this is a ■■■■■? A lengthy life story of disappointments as the first post of someone named after the villian in the new Batman movie being released this week, who gets a full ride to Notre Dame and believes that’s awful?</p>
<p>^maybe. but I’ve falsely accused others of being trolls before, and I don’t want to make the same mistake again :/</p>
<p>OP, you didn’t have any safeties. Maybe one or two matches, but your list was mostly reaches. The schools you applied to were the top schools in the country who weight EC’s, and you pretty much didn’t have any EC’s. And you still got a full ride to Notre Dame. Why are you complaining?</p>
<p>@askjeeves & @excitedforlife,</p>
<h2>Although I agree that the OP should be grateful for his full ride to Notre Dame, which I might add is a fine institution, I don’t think either of you have the right to tell him to get over himself. If you ever face the same situation as the OP and post about it, I doubt you’d want someone telling you to get over yourself.</h2>
<p>On another note, I did in fact read your entire post. I think it was an EXTREME mistake to not include the portion about your depression in your essays. It could have made a difference.</p>
<p>However, like others have said, the schools you applied to were not exactly “safeties” in the sense that you are basically guaranteed admission and that you can afford them.</p>
<p>While you may be upset and feel as if the schools you applied to did not take your situation into account, you really need to take a step back and analyze their situation as well. The schools you applied to are elite institutions with tens of thousands of applicants. It is not exactly easy to make every application a personal thing. In fact, it is arguably your job to make your application come to life and “personal.” This comes back to you leaving out portions of your essay that detail your adversities such as your depression.</p>
<p>The college admission process is not one that is perfect. However, it is up to the applicant to ensure that he/she does completes the application to the best of their ability, capturing their situation and why they would be an ideal applicant. Once again, I think you’ve failed to do that.</p>
<p>Your test scores are not bad. I do not think your ECs are bad either considering your circumstances. However, applications are considered holistically and despite your impressive writing in a College Confidential post, you show that perhaps you may not have been as organized as you should have been. It seems to me that you might have been slightly over-reliant on certain people for certain things that you could have been better off doing yourself.</p>
<p>Most importantly, you had time. Why did you not take advantage of this time to call up the colleges and explain whatever you needed to explain? Certainly you could have asked some questions and have them answered. Although I understand that you might be attempting to seek help or sympathy from posters on CC, I think you could have spent the time you used to write your gigantic post doing something else: perhaps calling the institutions and seeing if they would be willing to tell you why you were not an ideal applicant, assuming they would give this information out over the phone.</p>
<p>Good luck at Notre Dame. Don’t take your full ride for granted, not everyone gets one. Also, do keep in mind that Notre Dame is a fantastic school and even if it was a mediocre school, it is up to the student to make the most of their time in college. Anyone can be special anywhere.</p>
<p>Also, I would just like to add that as someone who has also experienced severe depression and did in fact mention it in some of my essays, I do not think you can truly peg your rejections to not including your struggle with depression in your essays. I was rejected from the majority (all but my safety) of my schools and had similar-ish stats to you. </p>
<p>While a long battle with depression is perhaps something that should be considered, I highly doubt that it would turn many of those rejections into acceptances. Not to sound harsh, but there are probably other students out there who have struggled with depression and managed to keep their AP Scores high, GPA higher, more involved in ECs, etc.</p>
<p>Also, when you cast such a wide net, it’s hard for schools to feel like you have a genuine interest in them outside of their prestige. (See the prior post about American not wanting to be used as a “safety” school by many of its applicants) </p>
<p>To close, you are attending a fine school with nothing to pay out of pocket. Many people (myself included) would love to be in your place. You should focus not on what you have been denied, but rather the opportunities that you have been given. Just because you were denied from schools doesn’t make you any less of a “qualified” person. Your worth and “success” (whatever that even means) as a human being is more than whether you’re going to matriculate at Harvard, Notre Dame or even IU Bloomington (after all Mark Cuban–one of the richest men in America went there). </p>
<p>Harvard, Stanford, UChicago, etc. do not have a monopoly on “happy lives” for their graduates, and hopefully you will realize that there are many roads to happiness in life.</p>
<p>I’m calling ■■■■■, but just in case this is actually real…</p>
<p>OP, I’m empathetic for your depression and most of your struggles. I’ve been there. (I’m sorry, but public school is NOT bad enough to be in league with mother’s death and depression.) </p>
<p>However. You come off as whiny, elitist, and arrogant. Your stats aren’t that great, and your “safeties” were matches and mostly reaches. I’m sorry you didn’t have the best guidance counselor, but this is YOUR life and YOUR education. YOU need to go out and get it and not rely on others and then blame them later. If the fatal flaw of your application was not mentioning the depression, that’s your fault. I’m fairly sure your guidance counselor didn’t write your essay for you. </p>
<p>You have a full ride to a top school, and you’re lucky that you even got that. If you came off in your essays how you did here, I would not be surprised if you ACTUALLY had not gotten in anywhere.</p>
<p>I agree with everything you said EnterNameHere, except the part about casting a wide net. I’m pretty sure colleges don’t really take into account how many other colleges you apply too. If you apply for financial aid, they do see it but I don’t think it serves as a factor in admissions.</p>
<p>Perhaps at schools like American that track interest, but not at schools like Harvard that do not.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention, there are ways around them finding out what other schools you’ve applied to from the FAFSA as well.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ah, I think I meant something a little different than I typed. It’s more of when you apply to 15 schools, it’s really hard to show legitimate interest in all 15 schools, and most of these schools at least consider “demonstrated interest” when it comes to admission time.</p>
<p>Further, at least in my limited experience browsing CC, a lot of the time when a student applies to like all 8 Ivies (a vastly different set of schools), it seems as if they’re applying to schools more for “prestige” and less for “fit.” I mean OP applied to all Ivies minus Brown. I mean, within OP’s choices there is an application to both UChicago (No greek life, “Where fun goes to die,” highly valued academics, research university, urban, “indoorsy”) and Dartmouth College (VERY Greek, undergraduate focused–small, rural, probably not considered as “intellectual” as UChicago, outdoorsy). Two schools that, at least in my mind, are marginally different. It just leads me to question in scenarios like these whether applicants truly have interest in the school, or rather an interest in the school’s name.</p>
<p>That’s not to say the OP or others couldn’t have liked both schools. But maybe the fact that the OP (presumably) showed limited interest (not sure if OP interviewed with all schools, or visited, or etc.) across a wide range of schools also had an effect on it. AFAIK, for the most part schools–like American–want to keep their yield rates up. Meaning that if you’re just going to for example, turn down Dartmouth in favor of UChicago if accepted to both, and adcoms get that impression because you’ve shown minimal interest in their school, they may reject OP over someone who was more interested in Dartmouth with similar stats.</p>
<p>But I digress, this isn’t really pertinent to the OP’s original post.</p>
<p>I see what you mean now.
I actually think I’m applying to both UChicago and Dartmouth, for the record :P</p>
<p>ah, poor thing, he’s stuck going to Notre Dame and has to pay nothing to go there. </p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>“Interest” is really irrelevant for a lot of the top schools (which the Op applied to).</p>
<p>
Funny. I’d swear that the tone of your response falls in those categories as well…</p>
<p>You have a fantastic GPA, without a doubt.</p>
<p>Now let me be blunt.
- Your SAT scores, while very good, are around the 25th to 30th percentile at most of the Ivy League schools.
- Your extracurricular activities are a tad generic. Also, you need to have stronger leadership positions and/or national awards (intel, scholastic). Or something stellar like performing at Carnegie Hall or Kimmel Center. An internship related to your intended area of study would be good too.
- You probably did not take the most rigorous course load at your school.</p>
<p>^ Terenc
I fail to see how Oceanicole’s post comes off as whiny, elitist, or arrogant.
It seems to me that Oceanicole is simply demanding a little accountability from OP. Nothing about the post strikes me as whiny or arrogant. And I’m truly flummoxed as to how the post was elitist.</p>
<p>I read all of the posts and I want to thank everyone for all of the sincere responses.</p>
<p>To the people who accused me of ■■■■■■■■, I dont know what to say and I certainly dont know what the nickname has to do with being a potential ■■■■■ (the Old English word, bana, / modern English, bane, was the inspiration rather than TDKR obviously the villains name comes from the same source).</p>
<p>I think some people seriously misunderstood what I meant to say and I hope to clarify myself better here. I wasnt trying to be arrogant or make a rant; I just wanted to explain everything that has been going through my mind and try to give you a better context rather than writing some abridged story. I very much regret some of the ways I worded my post; I didnt mean to come off as bitter and resentful or arrogant.</p>
<p>Also, I seriously hope no one thinks that Im unhappy to go to Notre Dame. Im very grateful to have a chance to go to such a great university and to move past everything that has happened to me in high school.</p>
<p>I certainly agree with everyone (and conceded this in my essay) that my SATs, ECs, and particularly my AP scores were barely even average compared to the pool of people that applied to the same schools as I did.</p>
<p>Also, I listed Cornell as a safety not because that is what I believe now, but because I mistakenly considered it one when I was preparing for my applications in Dec and Nov. Though I still think that it was completely reasonable of me to consider American University a safety.</p>
<p>The things like the rankings of my high school that some poster mentioned as evidence of my obsession with prestige was just a passing remark.</p>
<p>I really wish I wouldve been involved in this forum way before I even began my college search. The posters are very kind and insightful. I wouldve done everything differently if I had been here to consult with the other users. I especially appreciate the advice that I shouldve written about helping my brother in my essay. I also didnt consider the fact that colleges would see the other schools I applied to on my FAFSA, as magentaturtle mentioned.</p>
<p>I really had no idea how to approach my college admissions search and I didnt treat my essays as a way to show commitment to colleges, so I guess I doomed myself. </p>
<p>Random Notes</p>
<p>To magentaturtle:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thank you. I agree that my lack of organization hurt my application. I didnt follow up nearly enough and correspondence couldve showed my commitment better. Even if I didnt send in my letter about depression in my Common App, I wish I wouldve gone ahead and communicated to the colleges that I had been debating the issue with my college counselor and that I would be happy to provide more information on it. That way I wouldve been more proactive and I wouldve left nothing to chance.</p>
<hr>
<p>To EnterNameHere:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks for the response.</p>
<hr>
<p>To oceanicole:</p>
<p>You either seriously misunderstood me or youre trying to demagogue my post.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you serious? In no way was I comparing going to a public school to my mothers death or depression its incredible that you could misconstrue my post so much. Just because they were all brought up in the same essay, doesnt mean that Im conflating going to public school with either depression or my mothers death.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Writing about the turmoil of my year at a public high school does not equate to me being elitist in any way. If you bothered to put yourself in my shoes and understand the context of my post, then you never could make such outrageous statements. I didnt mean to sound like Im holding grudges against my high school, but I was simply putting it into the context of my depression.</p>
<p>As a high school freshman I had to deal with worries about being forced to leave school at any point all throughout the year. Then I had to transfer to a different high school. I struggled with the new environment, with classes, with my father, and with depression all at once.</p>
<p>I know that there are tons of people who can thrive in high schools like that my friend went on to be valedictorian of that school and won the Wells scholarship to IU , but you have to consider what kind of state I was in then and how that hindered me. At that specific time, in my case, the experience wouldnt have been what I made it, because the confluence of things that were going on simply didnt work in my favor. But there also are real, justified grievances I have about the behavior of the financial office of my freshman high school and the administration (not the teachers) of my sophomore high school (it was run like a police state).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I didnt blame my guidance counselor anywhere in my essay. I went to great lengths in my essay to show that I understood exactly where my guidance counselor was coming from when she gave me her advice and that I knew she had my best interests at heart. The fact that I said that the flaw of my application mightve been not including my depression essay was not an indictment of my counselors advice.</p>
<p>Like I said above, I wish I wouldve gone ahead and communicated to the colleges that I had been debating the issue with my college counselor and that I would be happy to provide more information on it. That way I wouldve been more proactive and I wouldve left nothing to chance.</p>
<hr>
<p>To terenc:</p>
<p>About the UChicago prompt: I wasnt under the impression that there was any rhyme or reason to the prompt other than to write an expressive and creative essay. My essay did address mythology and philosophy, but in a light-hearted and fun way rather than in a serious or academic way.</p>
<p>I didnt follow up nearly as much as I should have. And considering that I was on a gap year, theres no excuse for me being so lazy.</p>
<p>I didnt mean to sound like Im holding grudges against my therapists, advisor, and high schools. I dont hold them responsible for any of my failures or harbor any resentment towards them. It was just a way for me to detail the process that led to my depression.</p>
<hr>
<p>To lacrossemom:</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. I really have gotten over any apprehension about not liking Notre Dame and I am thankful to be able to attend it.</p>
<p>In some ways the nature of my college application process and the aftermath has been exactly what I needed. Im more determined than ever to get the most out of Notre Dame. Though if doesnt work out for some reason, I will make sure that Ive worked hard to keep up my GPA and gotten involved with a club, so that if I transfer I can show colleges that Ive matured.</p>
<p>I think what made your post annoying to some people is how you talk as if you would have gotten into one of the top schools if you made some changes in your application; that’s totally wrong. Getting rejected is actually MUCH MORE normal than getting accepted. The latter situation is when the applicant should think, ‘what was so special about my app?’ than the former. I know a lot of “what-ifs” come to your mind naturally, but letting them all out on a sensitive forum like this wasn’t really a good idea, where many many people are, sadly, overly judgmental. (Seriously, CC is where people think they know what kind of person you are with just one post.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No school that uses “level of interest” in admissions should be considered a safety – these are schools that very likely do not want to be used as safety applications, because such applicants are unlikely to attend if admitted. So they reject or waitlist “overqualified” applicants who have not shown interest above and beyond sending in an application.</p>
<p>A lot of people here are trying to tell you in a polite way, but I’ll be frank-- </p>
<p>This is an absurd post. You’re not the only intelligent person in the world working against poverty and other sad circumstances to get into a good university. You are, however, one of those few folks who, despite so many hardships, has gotten into Notre-Dame with a free ride. The fact that you are so ungrateful for this is insulting to all the people who would jump at that opportunity (and those are not a few). </p>
<p>I read your entire post, and you come off extremely arrogant. The only time you are not speaking of how over-qualified you are or what a victim you are, is when you are insulting the professionalism of people whose situations you don’t understand yourself. </p>
<p>I hope you end up having a good time at Notre-Dame, but I hope at some point you also shed some of your naivete. If you are so upset by what you seem to consider a great injustice in the college admissions world, you are probably not going to like working… anywhere. </p>
<p>The world just isn’t fair. Roll with the punches, and be thankful for the gifts you have.</p>
<p>Not that frank when you make a new account just to do this.</p>