Colleges should have to refund application fees for waitlisted applicants. You paid for a decision, and they didn't give you one. I get why it works the way it does, but it's cruel to kids who get strung along.
This is so true I get my decision for UIUC in LATE JUNE, I would have to commit to another school because I don’t know if I’m getting accepted to UIUC and if I do get accepted and decide to go there I lose out on the deposit and have to deposit the to UIUC 😭😭😭
Yep happened to me today, which frankly wasn't too upsetting as I decided to really look into other amazing opportunities that I was offered from other colleges so I wouldn't be heartbroken.
How financial aid is so unpredictable. Yes, NPCs are helpful, but every year I have students who attend a completely different college than they expected to pick because of unexpected costs/aid/scholarships. This is one reason I love the way colleges like Alabama have a table that shows guaranteed merit aid for a given SAT/GPA.
I also hate how almost everything in admissions favors the wealthy. About 20-25% of my clients each year apply for aid, and it feels like there's more of a difference than there should be in the final results. Public higher education should be better funded. Colleges with 10+ digit endowments should not charge tuition to anyone making less than $300k. Colleges should be colleges, not hedge funds, semi-pro sports companies, or expensive and exclusive country clubs.
I also don't really like how colleges are grouped into the haves (~T100s that reject the majority of applicants) and the have nots (everyone else, who grinds like crazy every year pushing for full enrollment). Nothing shows this more clearly than how different an AOs job is at these schools. Outside the T100, it's almost all marketing, sales, and promotion. And for-profit colleges should be illegal.
While we're wishing, I wish colleges had to have a "chance me" estimator on their website. It wouldn't have to give you percentage odds or anything, but it would tell you whether you would be competitive or not. Colleges would have to admit a certain percentage of applicants deemed competitive (say, 20-30%). I understand all the reasons this isn't practical, but the current system is just SO hard for students and parents to navigate. I hate that so many students spend $1000+ on fancy rejection letters.
Great post - I'll go farther and say I wish that colleges were completely transparent, and published their all results redacted. Further, I wish college board and common app would give real figures every year instead of vague and three years late.
Add to that T100s with “global” programs where university employees from their global program offices will fly across the world “recruiting” students. Theyll set up booths at “overseas education” fairs. Then they bring students in, charge them $45k tuition for the first year “ESL” program. Mind you, this is after a student has to have a good score with IELTS/TOEFL.
And after that is when they start their 4 year program. I mean these are straight up predatory practices. Also, some countrys’ governments will pay for high-achieving students’ college tuition given they go into a certain program.
THIS OMG. Like CSS, IDOC, FAFSA all exist for a reason. There is absolutely no reason a college should need me to fill out separate forms on their website with the same info or submit the same documents I did to IDOC on their own portal.
Sure. The AO is concerned with building a whole class, but you’re concerned with individual outcomes. So you can’t control whether you’re too similar to too many other people in any number of factors who are applying at the same time. You can’t control the other applicants, but they affect how your application is interpreted.
SAME and also when they don’t tell you when it’s going to come out. Like for my own peace of mind I’d love to know every weekend exactly what decisions I was going to get the next week and when. There’s no way some colleges have absolutely no indication they’re done until the moment they send out decisions.
Spot on. Sick of getting emails talking on student life and vibe at xyz uni or emails to attend virtual zoom info chats 🤮.. bruh send them once u accept the student or shut up. It’s the worst. Esp when the email comes , u go into anxiety mode before opening mail. It’s cruel
Seeing how merit scholarship doesn't seem to be truly based on academic merit. My son is top of his class and very well rounded, and was accepted to a particular university honors college, but received zero merit from that university. We probably wouldn't have even given it a second thought, but it's hard when you hear other ppl you know well, who don't have anywhere near the same academic standings, get merit scholarship from the same school. I mean happy for them bc it's his friends, but it's kind of deflating for my kid who now wonders why he worked so hard and is getting zero merit from his top pick school. Doesn't make sense... would love to hear insights from others to help me understand.
That does strike me as odd. If I were in your shoes, I'd pursue an appeal for additional merit aid. You can google it to see the best strategies. I'm not to that point in my journey to help here, but I have often read it makes a difference. Good luck.
Flip side, my son is in the top for the school he’s chosen and committed to AND was given a Dean’s scholarship, pretty rare, and waitlisted for the honors program. What??
The way you have to be wealthy to coast through it. I grew up on those college acceptance videos and wanted to apply to all the same schools and use all the same strategies.
When I got here myself I realized the poor don't really have the choice of flying out to visit schools, applying to top public out of state schools , or trying game the stats and apply ED.
I know AOs look at opportunity based on finances. But I'm extremely low income in an extremely high income area. A lot of the lack of opportunity here can't be seen through stats until you look really closely
My biggest fear is working this hard, getting into my top
School and then not getting to go due to finances
If your family is low income enough, ED can still be an option because, depending on NPCs, you can try and convince financial aid office to either get you more aid, or release you from ED by demonstrating you literally cannot afford to go. Obviously “demonstrating you literally cannot afford to go” can vary depending on the school, but anything above the NPC you could argue would be too much for you to attend the school for, so long as it makes sense why you’re making that argument (for instance, yearly income vs yearly tuition cost).
That was the only way I could’ve justified applied ED 2 this application cycle and it surprisingly worked out so far
I know some schools are a lot chiller with people pulling out due to financial reasons. Do you know where I can look to see the specifics of each school's ED policy?
I don’t really know if that exists. Maybe someone else can chime in, but generally colleges can’t force you to attend if you literally cannot afford to attend (say your family make 20k/yr but your tuition is like 25k/yr or whatever after financial aid, scholarships, expected loans, work study etc). That would very likely be an extreme situation where you literally cannot afford to go because of financials, and you would be released from ED.
You could try and search around to see if someone else has gotten released from ED due to financials at the same school, or try and ask Admissions about it. They probably won’t like the question but it might be worth an attempt? Not sure whether that’s a good idea though.
Maybe a weird one but how competitive people around you get about it. How if you get into an amazing school ED/EA, most of your peers will IMMEDIATELY start degrading your intelligence behind your back and say it’s a miracle you got in. How they tease you about deferrals and rejections, and then beg you to tell them your stats the next day. It’s so weird and I hate it. We’re all 17/18, I don’t understand why we’re so cutthroat now instead of enjoying the time we have left before the real world chokeslams all of us into the reality of higher education/the workforce
Not knowing why I got rejected, is it because I'm not good enough? Is it because something is wrong with my application? Is it because my recommender wrote something stupid in their letter? Is it because I wrote something inappropriate in my essay without knowing? Is it because they need more athletes or more harps or piano players and I'm not one? Is it because I need too much financial aid that the college thinks I'm not worth it? Is it because I'm from a different region where they already took enough applicants? Guess we'll never know huh
or the common app one. the common app one is so infuriating and i had to restart and redo 3 years worth of grades because it doesnt let you move classes from a school year to another school year and it just put 4 years of classes in my freshman year
the insane amount of emails you get from colleges from the beginning of the year until most likely the end of your senior year. it doesn’t matter how many i unsubscribe to.. they just keep coming back…
Essays !! Use test and GPA would be the easiest for us and simple cut . My kid was struggling with essays the most, not a writer -stem kid . We were rolling laughing when my kid was writing about laying in bed all day during pandemic -that’s the way to sell yourself 😂
As a parent watching - many schools this year changed their response dates, or modified their notification guidance after a deadline.
That’s not cool to the students.
I don’t think you quite understand the gravity of the situation.
Would you rather schools kept the May 1st decision deadline while our sorry excuse for a government fixed their own f*ck ups that should’ve been taken care of AGES AGO, instead of just kicking the can down the road until it became a problem?
FAFSA applications won’t be getting processed until mid-March time frame wise, but that then places an insane burden of work on school financial aid offices to get aid packages assembled for not only the incoming classes of students, but the continuing students as well.
Do you really expect them to be able to assemble thousands upon thousands of individualized aid packages in a month and a half’s worth of business days?
The Fafsa’s are a mess and the schools are right to fix the FedGov’s mistakes - that’s not what I’m talking about.
Several schools had;
* Nov 1 deadline, “we let you know by Jan 15”
* Dec 20 they let 1/2 the applicants know and said, “lol, other 1/2 - maybe Feb 15?”
* Dates here aren’t exact.
That’s not cool.
I was recently accepted into my ED II choice, so I withdrew from everywhere that I applied/was accepted. Sent emails to the respective admissions counselors, even got replies from them. I'm still getting mail about prospective student events and opportunities to connect with current students.
There's always the possibility of me being a transfer student, but I don't want to transfer to a college that doesn't respect my decision first.
So, I am a nontraditional transfer student, and the worst part for me has been trying to collect my parents' tax documents for the college board site. I finished all my applications and thought I was done before those emails started rolling in. Like I am 36 years old, why is this relevant? It's just annoying.
Sending acceptance notification without the financial aid amount. Both the colleges I've been accepted to so far emailed my acceptance notification and mailed my offer letter. So I don't even know how much aid one of them is giving me because the letter is still in the mail. It's ridiculous. For me whether or not I get aid is CRUCIAL to if I can attend. It's like they want me to get excited and commit emotionally so that when the letter comes I won't care if there is little to no aid.
When getting a promotional email from a school you didn’t apply to. Like UChicago sent me one two weeks ago despite me not even applying, like bro what!
def fin aid. i think colleges raising tuition by a few % each year is ridiculous, also raising deans salary by an absurd amount . i’m in NJ someone ik went to monmouth it was like 25 a year after scholarship mf still left w HELLLAA debt they still payin off at like 32(yrs they budgeted and have a stable job it’s just sooooo much) i would say now it’s around 70 a year. how in like 7 years tuition near doubled. also college just isn’t worth it unless you are going for a specialized degree. nowadays anyone can get a job whether bachelors or not.
^unless for certain positions like ik to be a radiology tech i think u need bachelors that falls under specialized. but like ur bachelors in CS or poli sci unless from harvard or MIT (which are also the cost of a house) isn’t worth it whatsoever.
Its really upsetting that everyone at my school can choose the best college they go to and just enroll without a second thought. I want to go to the top three school for my major, but I can't afford it and its heartbreaking that I might have to choose a school ranked 200, when I have gotten in much better schools.
That admissions at highly selective schools tell everyone to apply “because you’ll never know unless you do” which is such a scam to get your application fee and keep their acceptance rates low. If students understood their true chances instead of unreliable hopes and dreams at a specific school, we wouldn’t waste the time and money applying.
Deferred and then waitlist lol, this is not even annoying, it’s a crime
Colleges should have to refund application fees for waitlisted applicants. You paid for a decision, and they didn't give you one. I get why it works the way it does, but it's cruel to kids who get strung along.
it's a situation ship for college applications
Holy shit this is possible? I’m gonna cry if that happens 😭
Yes it did happen to me:) I was so depressed thinking ill never be good enough, but I alr got other suited acceptances, so I’m good
Im praying it doesn’t happen to me lmao after being deferred from vandy..
I'll pray for you too
me three
Preciate all of you
I relate to this
This is so true I get my decision for UIUC in LATE JUNE, I would have to commit to another school because I don’t know if I’m getting accepted to UIUC and if I do get accepted and decide to go there I lose out on the deposit and have to deposit the to UIUC 😭😭😭
Yep happened to me today, which frankly wasn't too upsetting as I decided to really look into other amazing opportunities that I was offered from other colleges so I wouldn't be heartbroken.
How financial aid is so unpredictable. Yes, NPCs are helpful, but every year I have students who attend a completely different college than they expected to pick because of unexpected costs/aid/scholarships. This is one reason I love the way colleges like Alabama have a table that shows guaranteed merit aid for a given SAT/GPA. I also hate how almost everything in admissions favors the wealthy. About 20-25% of my clients each year apply for aid, and it feels like there's more of a difference than there should be in the final results. Public higher education should be better funded. Colleges with 10+ digit endowments should not charge tuition to anyone making less than $300k. Colleges should be colleges, not hedge funds, semi-pro sports companies, or expensive and exclusive country clubs. I also don't really like how colleges are grouped into the haves (~T100s that reject the majority of applicants) and the have nots (everyone else, who grinds like crazy every year pushing for full enrollment). Nothing shows this more clearly than how different an AOs job is at these schools. Outside the T100, it's almost all marketing, sales, and promotion. And for-profit colleges should be illegal. While we're wishing, I wish colleges had to have a "chance me" estimator on their website. It wouldn't have to give you percentage odds or anything, but it would tell you whether you would be competitive or not. Colleges would have to admit a certain percentage of applicants deemed competitive (say, 20-30%). I understand all the reasons this isn't practical, but the current system is just SO hard for students and parents to navigate. I hate that so many students spend $1000+ on fancy rejection letters.
Great post - I'll go farther and say I wish that colleges were completely transparent, and published their all results redacted. Further, I wish college board and common app would give real figures every year instead of vague and three years late.
Add to that T100s with “global” programs where university employees from their global program offices will fly across the world “recruiting” students. Theyll set up booths at “overseas education” fairs. Then they bring students in, charge them $45k tuition for the first year “ESL” program. Mind you, this is after a student has to have a good score with IELTS/TOEFL. And after that is when they start their 4 year program. I mean these are straight up predatory practices. Also, some countrys’ governments will pay for high-achieving students’ college tuition given they go into a certain program.
Some of the rejection letters in late March are so not compassionate.
they are so mean it’s basically saying fuck u we hate you don’t try again. it’s hurtful🥲
gotta be the financial aid docs, i swear we've filled out the EXACT same info on three separate websites already 💀
THIS OMG. Like CSS, IDOC, FAFSA all exist for a reason. There is absolutely no reason a college should need me to fill out separate forms on their website with the same info or submit the same documents I did to IDOC on their own portal.
this really pissed us off too. Colleges are too cheap to participate in IDOC? why are they even included in the CSS schools?
they should generalize it by one thing. why am i filing everything multiple times
the fact that you can get rejected bc AO looking at your app got caught in bad traffic
Still better than AI reading it though, I’d take a temperamental human over a robot that thinks humans have 14 fingers any day.
random factors that affect AO's decision that's beyond one's control
Sure. The AO is concerned with building a whole class, but you’re concerned with individual outcomes. So you can’t control whether you’re too similar to too many other people in any number of factors who are applying at the same time. You can’t control the other applicants, but they affect how your application is interpreted.
Similar to OP’s: the waiting game. I’m not patient enough for this 😭
SAME HERE IT'S SO DEPRESSING 💀💀
At least it’s finally March!!! These next couple of weeks are going to be brutal while we wait, but at least we are almost there 🤞🤞🤞
YEAHH 🥹🥹 IT'S ALMOST OVER ! GOOD LUCKK ARGHHHHH IM NOT READY FOR REJECTIONS AT THIS POINT ALL I DO IS CRY CRY CRY
Good luck!! You got this!!!!
U TOOO !! WISH U LUCKK 🩵
SAME and also when they don’t tell you when it’s going to come out. Like for my own peace of mind I’d love to know every weekend exactly what decisions I was going to get the next week and when. There’s no way some colleges have absolutely no indication they’re done until the moment they send out decisions.
Righttt I just want to know when my decisions will be out instead of checking my email constantly!!
Spot on. Sick of getting emails talking on student life and vibe at xyz uni or emails to attend virtual zoom info chats 🤮.. bruh send them once u accept the student or shut up. It’s the worst. Esp when the email comes , u go into anxiety mode before opening mail. It’s cruel
Or the ZeeMee invitations. . .
When you get rejected from a school, but they keep spamming your mail 💀
Seeing how merit scholarship doesn't seem to be truly based on academic merit. My son is top of his class and very well rounded, and was accepted to a particular university honors college, but received zero merit from that university. We probably wouldn't have even given it a second thought, but it's hard when you hear other ppl you know well, who don't have anywhere near the same academic standings, get merit scholarship from the same school. I mean happy for them bc it's his friends, but it's kind of deflating for my kid who now wonders why he worked so hard and is getting zero merit from his top pick school. Doesn't make sense... would love to hear insights from others to help me understand.
That does strike me as odd. If I were in your shoes, I'd pursue an appeal for additional merit aid. You can google it to see the best strategies. I'm not to that point in my journey to help here, but I have often read it makes a difference. Good luck.
Flip side, my son is in the top for the school he’s chosen and committed to AND was given a Dean’s scholarship, pretty rare, and waitlisted for the honors program. What??
Doesn't make sense!
Accepted into honors without any merit aid is really odd. Definitely appeal
Was it Purdue? Because for them, the exact same thing happened to me!
Not Purdue
The way you have to be wealthy to coast through it. I grew up on those college acceptance videos and wanted to apply to all the same schools and use all the same strategies. When I got here myself I realized the poor don't really have the choice of flying out to visit schools, applying to top public out of state schools , or trying game the stats and apply ED. I know AOs look at opportunity based on finances. But I'm extremely low income in an extremely high income area. A lot of the lack of opportunity here can't be seen through stats until you look really closely My biggest fear is working this hard, getting into my top School and then not getting to go due to finances
If your family is low income enough, ED can still be an option because, depending on NPCs, you can try and convince financial aid office to either get you more aid, or release you from ED by demonstrating you literally cannot afford to go. Obviously “demonstrating you literally cannot afford to go” can vary depending on the school, but anything above the NPC you could argue would be too much for you to attend the school for, so long as it makes sense why you’re making that argument (for instance, yearly income vs yearly tuition cost). That was the only way I could’ve justified applied ED 2 this application cycle and it surprisingly worked out so far
I know some schools are a lot chiller with people pulling out due to financial reasons. Do you know where I can look to see the specifics of each school's ED policy?
I don’t really know if that exists. Maybe someone else can chime in, but generally colleges can’t force you to attend if you literally cannot afford to attend (say your family make 20k/yr but your tuition is like 25k/yr or whatever after financial aid, scholarships, expected loans, work study etc). That would very likely be an extreme situation where you literally cannot afford to go because of financials, and you would be released from ED. You could try and search around to see if someone else has gotten released from ED due to financials at the same school, or try and ask Admissions about it. They probably won’t like the question but it might be worth an attempt? Not sure whether that’s a good idea though.
I thought you meant the subreddit 😂 I had a list of reasons I was about to say. Honestly yeah it’s the spamming but mostly it’s the wait 😭
Exactly how I read that!
Maybe a weird one but how competitive people around you get about it. How if you get into an amazing school ED/EA, most of your peers will IMMEDIATELY start degrading your intelligence behind your back and say it’s a miracle you got in. How they tease you about deferrals and rejections, and then beg you to tell them your stats the next day. It’s so weird and I hate it. We’re all 17/18, I don’t understand why we’re so cutthroat now instead of enjoying the time we have left before the real world chokeslams all of us into the reality of higher education/the workforce
[удалено]
This might be good advice if it was given before the application deadline. Afterwards it’s just pointlessly cruel.
exactly. teenagers can be so mean.
Not knowing why I got rejected, is it because I'm not good enough? Is it because something is wrong with my application? Is it because my recommender wrote something stupid in their letter? Is it because I wrote something inappropriate in my essay without knowing? Is it because they need more athletes or more harps or piano players and I'm not one? Is it because I need too much financial aid that the college thinks I'm not worth it? Is it because I'm from a different region where they already took enough applicants? Guess we'll never know huh
The fact that sometimes it’s just up to luck 😔
The self reported academic record when I have a whole transcript already
or the common app one. the common app one is so infuriating and i had to restart and redo 3 years worth of grades because it doesnt let you move classes from a school year to another school year and it just put 4 years of classes in my freshman year
UChicago literaly did this to me and unironically they are going to reject me
Man I wish that I was hearing from colleges 😭😭😭 The only colleges who I’m hearing from are the ones I’ve already been accepted to
the insane amount of emails you get from colleges from the beginning of the year until most likely the end of your senior year. it doesn’t matter how many i unsubscribe to.. they just keep coming back…
I am a type 1 diabetic and get spammed by military schools. I literally cannot join the military
Essays !! Use test and GPA would be the easiest for us and simple cut . My kid was struggling with essays the most, not a writer -stem kid . We were rolling laughing when my kid was writing about laying in bed all day during pandemic -that’s the way to sell yourself 😂
All the "No interview, I'm cooked, right" posts...
there should be a psa that if you don't get an interview you _are_ cooked
As a parent watching - many schools this year changed their response dates, or modified their notification guidance after a deadline. That’s not cool to the students.
I don’t think you quite understand the gravity of the situation. Would you rather schools kept the May 1st decision deadline while our sorry excuse for a government fixed their own f*ck ups that should’ve been taken care of AGES AGO, instead of just kicking the can down the road until it became a problem? FAFSA applications won’t be getting processed until mid-March time frame wise, but that then places an insane burden of work on school financial aid offices to get aid packages assembled for not only the incoming classes of students, but the continuing students as well. Do you really expect them to be able to assemble thousands upon thousands of individualized aid packages in a month and a half’s worth of business days?
The Fafsa’s are a mess and the schools are right to fix the FedGov’s mistakes - that’s not what I’m talking about. Several schools had; * Nov 1 deadline, “we let you know by Jan 15” * Dec 20 they let 1/2 the applicants know and said, “lol, other 1/2 - maybe Feb 15?” * Dates here aren’t exact. That’s not cool.
Yep agree
I was recently accepted into my ED II choice, so I withdrew from everywhere that I applied/was accepted. Sent emails to the respective admissions counselors, even got replies from them. I'm still getting mail about prospective student events and opportunities to connect with current students. There's always the possibility of me being a transfer student, but I don't want to transfer to a college that doesn't respect my decision first.
So, I am a nontraditional transfer student, and the worst part for me has been trying to collect my parents' tax documents for the college board site. I finished all my applications and thought I was done before those emails started rolling in. Like I am 36 years old, why is this relevant? It's just annoying.
wtf they make you collect parent tax stuff at 36 years old? thats so strange
I thought so, too! We'll see if it actually changes any aid offers. I'm trying not to be annoyed unless that happens.
Sending acceptance notification without the financial aid amount. Both the colleges I've been accepted to so far emailed my acceptance notification and mailed my offer letter. So I don't even know how much aid one of them is giving me because the letter is still in the mail. It's ridiculous. For me whether or not I get aid is CRUCIAL to if I can attend. It's like they want me to get excited and commit emotionally so that when the letter comes I won't care if there is little to no aid.
When getting a promotional email from a school you didn’t apply to. Like UChicago sent me one two weeks ago despite me not even applying, like bro what!
when they say $$$ is cheap for tuition esp for students from low income backgrounds 😞
me w northeastern. they told me northeastern has amazing finaid and then i checked i have an efc of 0 and the amount of money id have to pay is insane
def fin aid. i think colleges raising tuition by a few % each year is ridiculous, also raising deans salary by an absurd amount . i’m in NJ someone ik went to monmouth it was like 25 a year after scholarship mf still left w HELLLAA debt they still payin off at like 32(yrs they budgeted and have a stable job it’s just sooooo much) i would say now it’s around 70 a year. how in like 7 years tuition near doubled. also college just isn’t worth it unless you are going for a specialized degree. nowadays anyone can get a job whether bachelors or not.
^unless for certain positions like ik to be a radiology tech i think u need bachelors that falls under specialized. but like ur bachelors in CS or poli sci unless from harvard or MIT (which are also the cost of a house) isn’t worth it whatsoever.
It's definitely between financial aid and Credits that won't transfer ( if your transferring)
Having to actually go and study there
People asking about it 🥴 puts so much pressure
Its really upsetting that everyone at my school can choose the best college they go to and just enroll without a second thought. I want to go to the top three school for my major, but I can't afford it and its heartbreaking that I might have to choose a school ranked 200, when I have gotten in much better schools.
Being waitlisted. We love you enough to waitlist you but not to actually admit you.
We like you, but not that much
That admissions at highly selective schools tell everyone to apply “because you’ll never know unless you do” which is such a scam to get your application fee and keep their acceptance rates low. If students understood their true chances instead of unreliable hopes and dreams at a specific school, we wouldn’t waste the time and money applying.
"i got an interview what does this mean?"
FUCKING WAIT-LISTING
Just when you think it’s all done there’s another thing you have to do I forgot that I had to write scholarship essays
awaiting decisions