Top 8 Reasons You May Have Been Rejected TKG

Top 8 Reasons You May Have Been Rejected The 2017-2018 college admissions season is officially over. Yes, waitlists are pending, but the vast majority of high schools seniors know where they are going to end up come fall. All of our kids got into one of their top choices, but our results are always outlines. For many students, the last few weeks have been a wakeup call. Wanting to go to a particular school doesn’t mean you get in. With acceptance percentages continuing to plummet, that was truer this year than ever. The question remains, though: Why? Why didn’t you get into that school you thought you were a perfect fit for on paper? Why didn’t being a legacy give you the boost you needed? Or why wasn’t your full-slate of extracurriculars what got you over the lip? Here are eight reasons you may have been rejected:You had good scores, but ok grades  If you did a stellar job on your standardized tests, that’s awesome, and it certainly makes a big difference for colleges, but the tests only count for so much. In the end, grades are king. When your grades don’t match your scores, a college is making a pretty big bet. After all, your grades are reflective of four years of work, while your test scores are only reflective of a few hours in a gymnasium filling in bubbles that, if you had tutoring, you knew how to game. Pulling off an excellent grade on a test doesn’t necessarily show schools anything about your work ethic, all it shows is that you can take a test. Without strong grades, there’s nothing to back up your high scores.  You had good grades, but ok scoresThis is obviously just the reverse of the above, but it isn’t as simple. A lot of research has shown that standardized test scores are a poor judge of intelligence. SAT scores correlates astoundingly closely to family income (the higher the income, the higher the average score), which is one of the reasons that they revamped the test. However, test scores do matter. Test scores serve as an initial filter for schools that received tens of thousands of applications, or who have small application review teams. They need to start weeding people out somehow, and scores are a starting point. Is this fair? Generally no, but no part of college admissions is entirely fair. Instead of hoping they’ll overlook your scores, you should have applied to test-optional schools so that they wouldn’t even be in the mix.The school knew you wouldn’t choose themYou scored a 35 on the ACT, have 95 average, and invented a medical device when you were 16 years old. You’re a boss, so why didn’t you get into one of your safety schools? Well, you simply aren’t a good bet. Schools want to accept people that they think will actually go there. If you are way overqualified and would never enroll, why should they 1. Waste a spot on you that could go to a student who will be happy to attend or 2. Mess up their yield rate by accepting someone who will never say yes. Schools are looking for matches, and you weren’t one.You are a legacy, but you didn’t apply earlyBeing a legacy at a school can give you a serious leg up, but only if you play the card right. If you’re a legacy at a school and qualified to go there and you didn’t apply early, the school knows it’s not your first choice. If it had been your first choice, you would have applied ED or EA. Instead, you waited, which gave them a good reason to say no. Look at UPenn's data if you want to be shocked by the ED legacy numbers.  You emphasized the wrong thing in your applicationYou’re a soccer player who is also a leader of the business club...but you spent your entire application writing about soccer, drawing parallels to soccer, making soccer puns, and telling soccer stories. We hate to tell you this, but you blew it. Millions of Americans play soccer. The number who are currently the leaders of business clubs is under 20,000. That’s still a lot, but it’s a hell of a lot fewer than play soccer. Colleges want to learn about you through you r application, and, unless you’re headed to the Olympics, your soccer obsession isn’t impressive. They wanted to see something new, but you just gave them the same old stuff. Also, and we've said this thousands of times, you repeated information they could find in your activities section. Never. Repeat. Information.  A crucial part of crafting a winning college application is avoiding this reason for rejection. We do this by focusing on what truly makes a kid unique, adding a fourth dimension to every application and bringing a kids passions alive. We tell stories they don’t otherwise see, and that’s what sets us apart from other firms. We don’t follow the college essay template and stick to ‘safe’ subjects. We allow for risk, we take chances, and it pays off.You didn’t use your early decision application correctlyThe only reason not to apply somewhere Early Decision is if you absolutely want to go somewhere that doesn’t offer it as an option. The ED option is all about swinging for a school that is just at the furthest point of your reach. You are qualified, and you want to go there, but you need to give the school the assurance they need to say yes to you â€" a yes you may not have gotten had you applied regular decision. Submitting an Early Decision application is a strategy play. If you go too far outside of your suitable ‘application range,’ you’re wasting it. If you play it too safe, you may not be happy with where you end up. It’s all about hitting that sweet spot with a school you love and one that you can get an acceptance from. Yale is not a good early decision option for you if you have a 28 on the ACT. You're wasting your ED.  You didn’t write a letter after you got deferred EDWhen a school deferred you, it was testing you. They weren’t certain yet that you were right for them, and they needed a little reassurance. Does writing a letter after being deferred guarantee that you’ll get in? Hell no. But not writing one n early guarantees that you won't. (And if you are currently waitlisted, write that letter ASAP.)You applied to the wrong schoolsYou could have done nearly everything else right, from killer essays to writing a letter after being deferred, but if you started with the wrong college list, you set yourself up for failure. Too often this is the parent’s fault. Whether parents push their kid to apply to a long list of name brand schools that are out of their reach, or don’t talk a kid back to earth when they’re outside of the realm of what’s possible, parents are a key player in why college lists go wrong. Just because a kid you didn’t like and who wasn’t as smart as you got in last year didn’t make Yale a safety for you. You’re not that special.It’s harsh, we know, but the college application process isn’t a place for warm and fuzzies. We love nurturing our kids, but we’re also strategic. We look at who they are and want they want, and pair that up with what is actua lly possible. That’s why all of our kids get into at least one of their top choices.