Rejected - What to do next..

Colleges & Universities Yale University
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<p>Ascendency, summer schoolshows academic ability, if I score an A, which I would plan on for certain. HS grades are what will do me in, so something with the PG year will e needed. The reality is that my new app will be SUBMITTED in a couple of months - squandering a summer without addressing my main problem of grades will be time wasted. Obviously these programs are easy to get into, thats not the point. I wasn’t born yesterday, and neither were admissions officers.</p>

<p>Please don’t post unless you have a perspective to being about my coming months, not to condem summer school for reasons I already addressed. Im looking for input on what to do, and new ideas on factors and activities I have not addressed. The desperate factor is subjective, but like I said there are frankly many more positive reasons for PG and summer school. Summer school at H might lead an officer to speculation that I’m not a good applicant (not desperate), which could hurt my decision. Stanford stands as the best choice. Even if an admission officer has a bad day, the idea of desperateness is not present.</p>

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<p>Gordon, the only constructive thing you can do at the moment is forget about Harvard. You should be working on giving yourself a Harvard experience someplace other than Harvard.</p>

<p>Showing that you can succeed in a summer program will make no difference at all. None. First off, summer programs are set up so that people succeed. If they didn’t, no parents would be prepared to pay for them. Doing great in a summer program isn’t a meaningful accomplishment. Second, even assuming you proved you could succeed at a high level, most of the other applicants have proved that they can succeed at a high level year after year, and they STILL get rejected. I don’t care what the admissions officer told someone to make them feel better, if everything about your application was perfect except your grades, and you made your grades perfect, that would give you a coin flip chance, not a shoo-in. At this point, you can’t make your grades perfect; the best you can do is to get to the starting line, not the finish line. Sorry.</p>

<p>Instead of scheming how to make meaningless improvements in your hopeless Harvard application, why don’t you go out and make yourself the kind of person that Harvard accepts, the kind of person you would have wanted to go to Harvard to become? Go where you were accepted. Knock everyone’s socks off. Lead. Use every resource to its fullest capacity. Suck the professors dry of knowledge. Follow your passions.</p>

<p>Do that for a couple of years, and you may actually have a chance to transfer to Harvard or the equivalent if you have really burned through what your college has to offer. More importantly, do that for a couple of years and it won’t matter whether you go to Harvard, because you are going to be happy, stimulated, engaged, and well on your path to the kind of success that should be your real goal in life. Harvard is just a means to an end, and it’s a means that’s going to be unavailable to you, so start giving your energy to how you’ll get to the end by some means that is actually feasible for you.</p>

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<p>Firstly, it’s arrogant to presume you’re guaranteed an A – anywhere. Secondly, HSP and SSP don’t show any more academic ability than any other summer program you can think of. Taking a full load at a local community college may be even MORE impressive. I have no idea why you’ve fixated on those two programs beyond the illusory prestige of saying “I studied at Stanford for the summer.”</p>

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<p>Forgive me if I thought you were asking about the wisdom of your course of action. That’s what your first post led me to believe. And if you truly understand the futility of going to summer school at Harvard/Stanford, why are you so insistent about spending so much money and going regardless? If you’re still caught up on the prestige, please disabuse yourself of that notion now. It doesn’t look prestigious at all. If you think it’ll demonstrate academic ability, please disabuse yourself of that notion too. Just stay home and take courses at your community college if you’re really that antsy. A semester at a prep school or full-time university should be enough. Summer school is really unnecessary.</p>

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<p>I gave you input on what to do, but my input was quickly shot down. I brought up the importance of essays, and that was quickly shot down as well. If you haven’t already figured out which activities interest you and which activities you’d be willing to dedicate a summer+semester to, you’re already a lost cause.</p>

<p>Again, to bring up a point that JHS was iterated well, even supposing you made your grades perfect the following semester, the soft factors are still the determining factor. You’re still competing with thousands of applicants who’ve had perfect grades throughout high school, and doing well for a semester won’t change that. You can’t fix your grades. What you CAN do, however, is commit yourself to something interesting, productive, and unique, something that really makes you special. </p>

<p>Moreover, I’m highly skeptical of the veracity of the admissions officers who spoke with you. I’ve been rejected just as many times as I’ve been accepted, and on each rejection letter, the schools made explicit that they do not and will not speculate as to why an applicant was rejected. They always assert that it’s usually a multiplicity of factors, and trying to find a single reason is futile. I don’t know why the admissions officers focused on your grades – maybe they’re the most concrete thing to mention – but even supposing your grades were perfect, you can’t be sure the rest of your application was good enough to accepted. Just because the admissions officer didn’t mention it doesn’t mean he’s giving you tacit approval in these other areas.</p>

<p>Lastly, I just want to say that you’re trying way too hard. Your lack of activities to fill your gap year and your uncertainty are evidence of that. The way you went about asking for advice illustrates that you don’t really care for what you’re doing; you just want to get into Harvard. And that’s precisely the kind of applicant that Harvard and its peers reject.</p>

<p>In my experience, having met a number of fellow pre-frosh at top institutions and getting to know many people here at Yale, the type of students these schools accept are the type who have at least a semblance of direction. They know what they like, what they’re passionate about, and what to do with their time. They don’t dwell on whether it’d look good for college or whether it’ll help their chances anywhere. I’m fully confident that if you put these kids in your shoes, if they’d have been rejected and were given a gap year, they wouldn’t dwell on whether HSP or SSP would look better, nor would they dwell on whether going to a prep school for a year would be a wise decision. They already have plenty of unique and productive things with which to occupy their time and, consequently, they don’t need meaningless affirmation from posters on a forum like collegeconfidential.</p>

<p>And, thus, I urge you to take the advice given to you, by myself and others, and get off this forum. Seriously, stop seeking our validation – it doesn’t mean much anyway. Stop dwelling and start acting. If you TRULY think SSP is a good idea, despite much evidence to the contrary, then just do it. Just commit to something and don’t worry about whether it’ll please the adcoms. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get something meaningful out of it beyond “I need to please Harvard.”</p>

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<p>JHS, thanks for the post. I largely agree; albeit a wonderful personal option (and looking forward, a good professional option, degree/campus wise), there are no doubt several other schools will work equally well, perhaps better, given the right networked-with people who were alum’s of such-and-such during my professional life. </p>

<p>You may be right about summer schools being an easy A, which would no doubt **** me off once I get there (having a ready-to-work attitude), however I do know students who earned B’s and B-'s as their final grade at Harvard Summer School - not sure about Stanford though. So I don’t think an A is really a total lock. Keep in mind that summer school would give me an opportunity to get professor recs, something they’re known to do for aspiring high school students they like. Not everyone who goes to summer school applies, and considering most are not undergraduates; it’s not all that common in applicants. Many people I’ve talked to went to SSP as a high schooler and stated they certainly wouldn’t apply.</p>

<p>I think your suggestion as a transfer isn’t really an option… Harvard transfers a dozen people per year, and some years, none. Besides, I will most likely be in love and dyed in the wool with whatever school I will be at, whether it be Stanford, MIT, or even Notre Dame. </p>

<p>I do believe HS grades were the problem, and I do not believe two different admissions officers were just saying that to make me feel better. It was a very professional in-depth conversation, and they were happy to help. I’m somewhat surprised they had the time, maybe not that many applicants call in.</p>

<p>Lastly, I would not call myself hopeless - not at all. :slight_smile: I also would not call the Harvard admissions a coin flip, despite the low acceptance rates. Most accepted Harvard students are excellent, personalable ‘all-arounders’ that you may or may not expect to get in. I know we haven’t met and you haven’t seen my application, but I would put myself as a viable candidate for Harvard, with vast, unique and perhaps impressive EC’s. Academics can be healed with heavy test scores after this June, along with the initiative to take a PG year. If I’m recruitable as an athlete - and although I’m not counting on it - this would be very desirable for Harvard, given their ~200 athlete likely letters. Recruited athletes, as you know, get some serious slack in their applications. They’re certainly not dumb, but there are rejected applicants who are better than them academically. </p>

<p>I may not do summer school all together, pending whether I have a good long-term summer commitment, such as performing with the local orchestra at the end of the summer. I really appreciate you taking time to post :).</p>

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<p>GordonGekko, I’m sorry but you strike me as one of the most myopic and narrow-minded posters on this board.</p>

<p>Many people here are trying to offer you sound and honest advice, but you seem so set on one track that you refuse to hear them out.</p>

<p>Fact of the matter is, TheAscendancy and JHS are right. Summer school doesn’t help at all. I did SSP the summer after my junior year – got two A’s. Rejected at both Harvard and Stanford. Of the ~20 or so students I remained in contact with, only 2 got into Harvard/Stanford. Everyone else was rejected/waitlisted. It really doesn’t help, at all. You’re wasting your time and money. Honestly, I concur with TheAscendancy on community college. I wish I’d have stayed home, took a few courses at the community college, and accepted my internship. Instead, I turned down the internship, flew all the way to Cali, and blew thousands of dollars for nothing. Don’t be an idiot and dismiss these posters because they’re telling you things you don’t want to hear. Life doesn’t always work out the way we want.</p>

<p>Also, please rid yourself of that sense of entitlement. You’re not any more special than any other applicant who’d like to go to Harvard. You don’t DESERVE to go there more than any other strong applicant. You were rejected. It’s okay, many of us were (myself included). Feel free to reapply, but like wjb and others have suggested, you need to expand your list to include safeties and matches. Stop thinking on such a one-track mind. It’ll be detrimental to your personal and professional life in the future.</p>

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<p>Personally, I can’t fathom how someone who professes to be smart enough to get into Harvard, could not have the common sense to apply to more than two schools no matter how great their stats are. With roughly only a 6% acceptance rate it is obvious that not every qualified student will get accepted even with a perfect GPA. I think it’s time to move on and look at other schools.</p>

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<p>“I’m not arrogant. I just know more than almost everyone else.”</p>

<p>GG, good luck!!</p>

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<p>This Gekko is delusional. </p>

<p>He is saying: (1) The Adcoms sat me down and told me my application was completely perfect except of this little issue with grades.</p>

<p>Even if this is true (and most all of us are sceptical), he concludes: wow, all I have to do is improve my grades and I’m a lock! So, I will get an “A” in a summer program at Stanford and get good recs from my summer professors and then do a PG year at a mid-tier boarding school and get all "A"s in AP courses there my Fall term and then submit a new application to Harvard with an “A” is summer school and all "A"s in my fall courses and, badda boom, I’m in (or really close!!!).</p>

<p>Assuming all of the above is true, assuming that a summer and a semester more of "A"s fixes all the flaws and makes you a stellar applicant . . .</p>

<p>Oppps . . . </p>

<p>5,000 more people apply next year to Harvard and your stellar, reconstituted, perfect application hits the wall of even more perfect even more amazing applications from quarters neither you nor the Adcoms ever anticipated but, gosh, there they are. And they’re better than yours, because all you have added to your story is just a “grades” story which is, how can I say this, just trite and commonplace and not at all interesting.</p>

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<p>I’m going to try this one more time: GG, your best course of action is to go to the college that admitted you. Full Stop. </p>

<p>I assume that school is your state flagship. UMass Amherst? Take advantage of every opportunity offered to you there, and there will be many opportunities offered. If you aren’t happy but do very well, you will be in the best possible position to transfer to a school you like better.</p>

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<p>So, I’m curious: How did you get the Harvard admissions person to tell you why you were rejected? Normally I don’t think that happens. It’s just “large number of well-qualified applicants” blah, blah, blah, “more than we can admit” blah, blah, blah “highly competitive.” Maybe it means that your grades were so low you stood no chance. Or maybe it means that you have some kind of connection at Harvard–such as “development” status, which could qualify you for a Z list admit?</p>

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<p>StudyStudyStudy, thanks for the post. I agree with much of what you said, and outlined it too in the post above yours. Stanford SSP is not a buy-your-way in, I never really said that was why I was doing it… it also provides an opportunity for recs, campus interview, etc. Frankly, there are other reasons to go to SSP other than to apply to that school. There are also reasons not to go…</p>

<p>I’m sorry if I come off as arrogant, perhaps for mentioning Harvard. This is a Yale forum, so really, I would expect for whatever prestigious air around a name or associated person to not be provoking. I never used the word ‘entitlement,’ nor did I imply it. This is not the case, so don’t be briefly worked up about whatever it is you’re responding to.</p>

<p>Kdog, that is moot. Yes I would of been accepted to great schools, as were others. I only wish I had the parents who would advise that, because when it came to my counselors I had little interaction :(… nor did I discover CC until this year. No doubt it is my fault, and I will at least have the opportunity to take a gap year.</p>

<p>Kei-o-lei, I don’t know if that’s a ■■■■■/provocation… I didn’t say that, so I’m not sure what you mean.</p>

<p>Kellybkk, you haven’t seen my application, and you don’t know my accomplishments. Classifying people as ‘better’ application wise is not true, people are unique and great in their own ways, and the admissions officers pick among them who they want for their class. I wish you would post suggestions on how I could go about these coming months instead of poorly bashing a dead issue - or talking to me in third person as a delusional. :rolleyes::(</p>

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<p>QuantMech, I called both schools and spoke with the officer. At Harvard, it was the one who was directly in charge of my application. I thought they were very professional, not giving a cookie-cutter answer like the “well-qualified applicants.” </p>

<p>I have a feeling Harvard is twisting allot of point of views here… yes they receive allot of applicants, but it’s still nonetheless another college. It’s one of the schools that suites me well (for lack of a better phrase), and likewise I’m at least ‘admittable,’ meaning I’m in the level of applicants who generally go there. (don’t be stupidly provoked over this :rolleyes: )With a few wonderful EC’s performed, along with perfect test scores (an edge nonetheless, despite how many have them) and the experience of already going through the application process will make my case a good one.</p>

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<p>I really appreciate your thoughts, comments and support. No doubt these have been a stressful past few week, and I look forward to the coming months, my tasks and whatever acceptances I’ll score. :):cool:</p>

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<p>You do realize that the profs who teach summer school at Harvard are not real Harvard faculty don’t you? They bring in profs from other places to teach these courses. Harvard profs have better ways to spend the summer.</p>

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<p>motherbear, </p>

<p>I’m sorry, but that’s not the case - some Harvard profs do teach over the summer. The rest of them are either retired Harvard profs, or Harvard education graduates, etc. i.e. Harvard affiliated. I appreciate your post, but please don’t jump to conclusions.</p>

<p>Check out their site for this type of info: [Frequently</a> Asked Questions | Harvard Summer School](<a href=“http://www.summer.harvard.edu/programs/ssp/faq/]Frequently”>http://www.summer.harvard.edu/programs/ssp/faq/)</p>

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<p>“s much as I’d love to spend a summer at Harvard, I am most likely going to opt for Stanford’s summer session. The thought of admissions officers thinking “Oh he was rejected then went to SSP… ha, desperate to get in… buying your way?.. an A at H-SSP is meaningless… loser” is too obvious in my opinion. Stanford’s summer school is a few hundred less, and spans two whole months, versus six weeks. Plus, Stanford is beautiful and its possible I will like it much better than H (for better or for worse).”</p>

<p>GG: I agree with the other posters who are encouraging you to think beyond Harvard as the exclusive and acceptable college option–that is just such a disservice to you and patently untrue.</p>

<p>My daughter, with a 3.8ish (it may have been slightly lower) high school GPA, unweighted, but from a known, very rigorous private high school, did the Stanford Summer program, took 3 classes, and was admitted to Stanford under EA (that said, she is headed to Tufts, her first choice, and a very personal match, for her). She got all As at Stanford and had, over the years, compiled a transcript from UC Berkeley of all As, as well. She worked hard enough in high school but wasn’t willing to kill herself (that she said she would save for college, LOL). She had a life, and it showed on her college apps. 2/3 of the Stanford summer program professors offered to write her recs, and one said that he was going to talk directly to admissions on her behalf. She used one of the recs for Tufts, as well. She also had very high SATs and Subject tests and a phenomenal and original hook (which I am loathe to call a hook because her hook was a very heartfelt passion of hers, and hook sounds so insincere).</p>

<p>A few things about college summer session programs. I think the grades earned at a university/college have more gravitas than the PG grades earned at Andover or Choate or any prep/boarding school. As well, know that my daughter had to master a quarter’s worth of physiology, stat, and neuropschology or psychobiology material in 8 weeks. The kids were very capable in her Stanford program but beset with a fast-moving and dense curriculum and the siren call of freedom, beautiful weather, and being away from home, for some, for the first time, some fell flat on their academic faces; in fact, something like 38 kids were expelled from the program for substance, despite really clear admonitions from Stanford that a first offense would be met with expulsion, and she knew a lot of kids who ended up with Cs and incompletes. </p>

<p>Doing the program was no guarantee of As for anyone, and, in fact, in my daughter’s 3 classes, very few “pure” As were given. Something to think about if you need to enhance your GPA.</p>

<p>You might consider sticking closer to home, taking some “serious” classes at your local university/college, and working. I say that about working because I am remembering that when the Wash U. rep came to my daughter’s high school and mentioned that the most impressive thing an applicant could have (provided data was high) was a job, that the applicants with real-life skills/experience were sorely lacking and that Wash U. hated the applicant whose family life was so skewed around propping the kid up while the kid had no real intercourse with the world, only the rarified environment of SAT tutors, too many ECs, first chair violin, nationally-ranked sailor, etc. </p>

<p>And for what it’s worth, Stanford and Harvard are not interchangeable–they are very different schools with different geographies, student sensibilities, politics, even. I would urge you to do some deeper digging about schools’ very subjective attributes, so you are making an informed decision.</p>

<p>Good luck to you–there are more than 8 universities in the country plus Stanford, some of which might be an even better match for you than Harvard or Stanford.</p>

<p>N.B. Most of the Stanford High School Summer session profs were not Stanford professors. I would imagine that it is a similar profile for Harvard’s summer session. Of my daughter’s classses–one class was split between two TAs, and the other two classes were taught by guest professors. Her room-mate’s classes were not taught by one Stanford profs.</p>

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<p>Gordon, in case my point was obscured; I meant to profile what my daughter did in the face of not having the highest GPA–e.g. how she compensated through the vehicle of university transcripts, lest the colleges to which she applied wavered about her GPA.</p>

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<p>If Harvard’s SSP is anything like Yale’s, then the vast majority of classes are not taught by actual Harvard profs. At our program, a very small handful are actually taught by Yale professors, and from what I understand, enrollment in at least some of those classes is limited to Yale students. Most of the rest of the courses are taught by visiting professors and graduate students. Yes, they are technically Yale-affiliated, but they’re not Yale professors. </p>

<p>This is not to say that guest profs and grad students are somehow not as good as actual Yale profs; I’m sure their classes would be very interesting and educational. However, it seems that a primary motivation for your going to summer school is getting recs from Harvard or Stanford professors, which you hope would give your application some clout. Sadly, visiting professors or grad students, who are less likely to know admissions officers since they are not as well-established in the university yet. </p>

<p>Also, at least at Yale, summer school courses are notoriously easy (at least compared to the usual classes). My undergrad friends who did the summer session said that the classes are substantially easier than our regular academic year courses. </p>

<p>Bottom line: If you’re looking for a fun, educational experience, by all means do a SSP. You’ll learn a lot and probably have a good time. But it’s not going to help your application, and you’re probably not going to get to know tenured profs. So if those are the only reasons you’re doing it, you might want to rethink.</p>

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<p>Dude, you are pathetic. Yale and Harvard look for applicants that are passionate about extracurriculars and academics - not about their school’s brand name. If you were truly a Yale or Harvard-caliber applicant, you would take your gap year as an opportunity to do something you truly cared about, or, even more likely, you would take the school you’d been admitted to and do what you cared about there. Instead, all you can think about doing is spending tons of money on a mediocre boarding school and a mediocre summer school program for the singular reason that you get accepted to Yale or Harvard. I know ONE person that was accepted to Yale after being rejected. ONE. Guess what she did? Took a gap year, travelled around Africa, became fluent in Kiswahili, then got a job at an immigrant advocacy group in her hometown. She reapplied to Yale on a whim, fully prepared to go to her local state university. </p>

<p>As a student at Yale who knows my classmates well, I can almost guarantee you that admissions officers will be able to see through your pathetic obsession with their school and will choose far more passionate, driven, perceptive students over you in a heartbeat.</p>

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<p>orchard, I would suggest looking at my application (which you haven’t) before you make conclusions like those. This thread is also not really centered around Yale, considering I haven’t applied there yet. I’m not stuck on a single school like you’re suggesting. Thanks for posting though.</p>