Admissions Horror Story- No choices at all.

Today’s post is for Seniors only.

 Juniors go away, this isn’t for you, and it will only make you scared/uneasy/upset.

Juniors, really, stop reading this, come back tomorrow. Go study for APs or SATs or IB or just your normal classes. You have more important things to do than read my blog right now.

Are they gone? Seniors, is it only us now? Are we alone?
Good.

This is only for you guys (seniors) because you have at least one acceptance. Even if it’s not your first choice, you have a choice. You might be upset or disappointed. Well don’t be. Because it could be worse.

Today’s story isn’t a hypothetical. This actually happened. Last year. To a relatively intelligent, fairly high achieving student.

What happened? He got flat out rejected or waitlisted from every single school he applied to. He did not get one single acceptance. He had no choices.

Imagine that. You may not have the best options, but he had no options. He was up the creek with no paddle. It was April of his senior year, and he had nothing to show for it.

He was not a “Oh dear I hope he gets in somewhere” student. He was above average. He really should have gotten in somewhere. But he slipped through the cracks. He didn’t get into a single school.

Luckily for him, he had a whole team of our high school guidance counselors desperate to salvage our school’s 99-100% college attendance record. They went and made calls and he is now a college freshman somewhere (I don’t quite remember where).

But know that as bad as you have it, someone has it worse. Even if you only got into your safety school, or you can’t afford the school that you wanted to attend, someone else didn’t get that spot- and they might have needed it or wanted it more than you did.

Juniors (because I know some of you are still trolling around here)- here’s what he did wrong:

1.     He didn’t take his safeties seriously.
He didn’t show interest or really put in any effort, so his safeties didn’t take him.

2.      He over-evaluated himself.
He was the classic case of too many reaches, not enough matches. He only applied to lottery schools for reaches, and high matches as matches. Those odds did not play out well.

This could have been because he didn’t look at school context while applying. Out of my High School, if you were applying to “most selective” schools you needed to be more of a 75^th percentile applicant, not a “solidly in the middle 50” applicant.

So I know that April is hard. You have to make some tough calls. But never forget how lucky you are to have those problems.