You did everything you were supposed to do: You applied early, you sent in every document on time, and you made sacrifices to the college admissions gods while dancing barefoot around a copy of the Common App. (Well, you probably didn’t do that last one. Only weirdos do that.)
You waited patiently. (Ok, probably not patiently, but you haven’t torn all of your hair out yet, so that’s good.)
You finally got a response. Did you get into the school of your dreams? MAYBE.
Maybe? What the heck is maybe? You thought you went through all of this to end the stressful waiting early! You thought you’d be able to rush to school in January to gloat about your college admissions success while your peers were still rushing to finish their regular admission application!
As increasing numbers of students are utilizing early action and early decision programs, schools are finding themselves overwhelmed with strong applicants. As a result, huge numbers of students – especially those applying to elite schools – are being deferred or wait listed, essentially placed in a seemingly endless college admissions limbo.
It stinks. We know.
There are lots of things that you SHOULD do to help improve your chances of getting out of the wait list pool and into the accepted pool (check out this helpful article for instructions).
There are also a few things that you SHOULD NEVER DO if you actually want to be admitted:
1) NEVER be too optimistic. Don’t assume you will eventually get in. You don’t want to wait around hoping for admission only to find out in July that you’re not going to be admitted. Go ahead and plan to attend a backup school. It’s not pessimistic to have a backup plan – it’s smart.
2) Avoid gimmicks. “Frankly, gimmicks don’t work,” said Joe Case, interim dean of admission at Amherst College in Massachusetts. “It really needs to be something of substance.” So unless your gimmick directly relates to your application (a future poetry major writing a poem, a music theory major composing a song, etc.), you probably shouldn’t send in examples of your skills in taxidermy, a life-sized mannequin of yourself, or a risqué self-portrait.
3) Don’t be a creepy stalker. While it’s important that you find out who is in charge of your application file and remain in communication with that person, you definitely don’t want to be stalkerish. Yes, it’s a good idea to express your interest in attending; yes, it’s a good idea to update the admissions office about new accomplishments; NO, YOU SHOULDN’T BE IN DAILY COMMUNICATION WITH THE ADMISSIONS OFFICE. That gets creepy after a while. And very annoying. And admissions officers don’t generally admit annoying people.
4) Don’t drop names. Having a beloved teacher campaign on your behalf with a heartfelt recommendation letter = good. Having your dad’s business partner who also happens to be an alumnus write a generic recommendation letter that mentions his history with the school = bad. It’s just not classy to leverage alumni who barely even know you. It won’t impress admissions officers, and may in fact make them think badly about you. Only send in recommendations that are truly personal reflections of who you are and what you’re capable of.
5) Don’t let Mom and Dad get too involved. Your parents have likely been your voice when you’ve come across upsetting circumstances in the past. But while it’s okay for Mom and Dad to yell at your coach for benching you all game, it’s not cool for Mom and Dad to yell at the admissions officer for not accepting you right away. In fact, it’s not cool for Mom and Dad to talk to the admissions office at all. Why? Because colleges are looking for mature, responsible, adult-like people – people who can fight their own battles and deal with their own problems. Letting your parents take the reins won’t be a positive reflection on your maturity level.
6) No online complaining! More and more schools maintain an online presence, and quite a few of them admit to looking in on your social media pages. Even if you’re complaining anonymously (which is harder and harder to do given current technologies), you can still be caught. If the admissions office gets wind of your complaining about them, their school, or your wait listed status, they’re a lot less likely to want anything to do with you. Consider this example: “We heard about one guy who was writing [online] about how badly he wanted to go to Swarthmore, but he was waitlisted. He was saying some pretty nasty things about us. He also said we shouldn’t have listened to his teachers’ recommendations, which were, in fact, glowing. It was anonymous, but he said where he lived and we’d only put one boy on the waitlist from that state, so we knew who it was. So we just didn’t want to go there. You have to be careful what you put on the Internet,” Jim Block of Swarthmore College told the Daily Beast.
