Reed Class of 2018 RD Thread

Ghostt
Sun, 30 Mar 2014 17:12:08 +0000

Dude, don’t ever apologize for getting into college, that’s ridiculous. The adcom liked your application, you got in.

Some high school students struggle with the idea that college admissions at selective private colleges aren’t about your ‘qualifications’ but about whether your application presents a person the admission people would want to have on their campus. But that’s exactly what it is about. Your scores mean nothing by themselves. They are important because, when taken together with the rest of your application, they paint a fuller picture of who you are: smart, rich, dedicated, scatterbrained, disadvantaged, hyperambitious, well-read, unprepared, stand-out, blend-in, self-directed, over-tutored, whatever. They corroborate, flesh out or contradict the story told in the rest of your application materials. They do not ‘qualify’ you for anything.

Conversely, your test score alone cannot make you unworthy of or underqualified for acceptance. Again, that’s not what admissions is about. It’s a subjective process and the only box you need to tick in the end is “desirable candidate.”

What I’m trying to say is that the adcom liked you and that’s all there is to it. They didn’t like some people with higher test scores. It sucks for those kids–and I do genuinely have a lot of sympathy for college rejects because the subjectivity of the process means it’s almost inevitable that rejection will feel like a personal slight–but you don’t ever have to apologize for having made a better impression.