The hard truth about college admissions

Dr. Linda Silbert

Dear Dr. Linda,

Our son, Kevin, was just rejected from three of the six colleges he applied to. He didn’t get into any of his “reach” schools and is devastated. So are we. Four years ago, his older brother applied to the same schools and was accepted by all of them. Have things changed that much? Did we send him to the wrong SAT Prep course? Is it possible the essay he wrote at school with his English teacher messed him up? We’re really upset and don’t know what we did wrong. We have a daughter entering ninth grade this year and don’t want to make the same mistakes. What’s your advice?

-Devastated Parents

Dear Devastated Parents,

I wish I could tell you exactly where you “went wrong,” but that’s not possible because you probably did everything exactly right, and even if you didn’t, it probably has nothing to do with why Kevin was rejected.

Over the years, I have seen a student who was third in his class rejected by a prestigious college while another student in the same school whose class rank was 15th, was accepted. I’ve seen students get into Harvard with 1400s (out of 1600s) on the SAT and others who scored 1500 or above not get in.

It all depends on what a college is looking for at the time. The school may have enough students from a particular geographical area and so they accept a student from a different area. They may need a tuba player or a topnotch lacrosse player so that student is accepted over one who spent his weekends helping the underprivileged. One college admissions counselor once told me that when they have to choose one student and have two with essentially identical qualifications, they basically flip a coin.

It’s just a fact of life — colleges can’t accept everyone who applies. After your child has spent years building their resume with extracurricular activities, studying for hours to keep the GPA high, taking every course offered to ensure that they do well on the SAT and/or ACT, and volunteering for years at the animal shelter on top of it all, it’s disappointing not to get into the college he or she dreamed of going to. It’s like applying for a job.

The best gift you can give Kevin, and your daughter, however her journey turns out, is to help them learn how to deal with rejection without feeling like failures. Rejection is a part of life; we all suffer rejection in one way or another. If you take these rejections as indications that you somehow failed, your children will feel like failures too.

Unless you know the registrar or someone familiar with the policies in force for next year’s freshmen, you’ll likely never know why Kevin wasn’t accepted at his “reach” schools. And as Princeton researcher Alan Krueger said to students who choose to apply to and attend “safety” schools: “Don’t believe that the only school worth attending is the one that would not admit you.”

There’s no point in wasting your time going over and over the disappointment. Instead, rejoice in the acceptances. Once the acceptances come in (and they will if he applied to “safety” schools, too), visit those colleges before making a final decision. If you’ve already been, visit them again. Make sure Kevin knows that if after he chooses, he feels he’s in the wrong college for him, he will always have the option of transferring to another college. And as long as he’s doing well academically, he can reapply to those “reach” schools that rejected him — and have a much better chance of getting in.

-Dr. Linda

Not sure what “reach” and “safety” schools are? These terms, along with “match” and sometimes “dream” schools, are used to rank colleges based on their admissions criteria as compared to an individual student’s “resume.” “Reach” schools are those with criteria that may be just a stretch beyond; “match” schools are those that are pretty much equal to the student’s list of achievements and activities, and “safety” schools are those whose admissions criteria are “safely” below the student’s record. And “dream” schools? They’re the ones where the chances of acceptance are very slim. Dr. Linda can be reached at linda@stronglearning.com.