They put you on a wait list. Now what?

I was already planning to post the annual “what to do if you’re waitlisted” post, and then Rick Clark, the Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Georgia Tech, published this really great blog post about the wait list two days ago. Take a few minutes to read it, and then come back. As Clark points out, every school has their own wait list procedure, and you may have a wait list offer from someone other than Georgia Tech you need to consider. You read it? You’re back? Great.

First, let me say I’m sorry. Getting waitlisted sucks. In some ways a Maybe is worse than a No, because it keeps the suspense going and also starts to make logistical problems for you. Take a little time to be frustrated or angry or completely freaked out, but no more than a day or two. You’ve got to figure out what to do next.

What to do if you get waitlisted to a school that’s your only option.

This may be because you only applied to one school, or you got denials from the other schools you applied to. If it’s because you got accepted to at least one other school but the financial aid offer is so bad that you can’t afford it, then you should also consider ways to ask that school for more money.

First you’ve got to demonstrate a lot of interest and keep demonstrating it. When a college starts calling people from the wait list, they’re often in a hurry. Even if they’re not in a hurry, they don’t want to waste their time. They’re more likely to call people who they know will enroll over people they’re not sure about. How do they know you’ll enroll? Just putting yourself on the wait list isn’t enough. Email—once—the admissions office and tell them: “if you accept me from the wait list, I will attend.” Open all their emails and reply when appropriate. Spend time looking on their website. Ask them questions if you really have questions, but don’t pester them. While it’s a thin line between “eager and attentive” and “annoying and desperate,” make sure you don’t cross it.

Next, you’ve got to understand that there’s no senioritis for you! It’s normal for seniors to slack off a little bit once they see the end in sight and know that they’ll be at college next year. You don’t yet know that you’ll be in college next year. If you’re hoping to get a spot from a wait list and you’re in contact with the college that waitlisted you, you need to be able to tell them that you’re doing really well and trying to prove yourself. You’re not done yet, and that’s ok.

You also need a back-up plan. You can start searching for colleges with rolling admissions or late deadlines. If you haven’t already, check out your local community college, which is a real college. You can explore gap year options. You should probably do all of these, and make sure you talk to your family about your options. The only bad option is to decide that you’re going to give up on going to college. There’s no reason to do that.

What to do if you get waitlisted to a school but you’ve been accepted to other schools.

If you get waitlisted by one college you applied to, but have affordable acceptances from at least one other, then don’t sign up for the wait list. You don’t need it. Just tell them to go away, you have a better offer elsewhere. It can feel really good to know that you’re the one making the decisions, not the other way around. You have power in this situation—use it. Thank them for their time, and then move on and let it go.

What to do if you get waitlisted from your top-choice school and you want to stay on the wait list.

Sometimes it’s not that easy to tell them to go away, and you sign up for the wait list anyway. No problem.

First, do all the same things you’d do if the wait list school is your only option. Sign up the for wait list, and contact the admissions rep for your area and let them know that if they call you, you will come. Reply to all their emails and keep checking back on their website. Keep demonstrating your interest, because it really counts in this situation. Keep working at school—no senioritis for you, either.

Choose your “backup” school from the ones you got accepted to, understanding that it’s probably where you’re going next year. You can't refuse to make other plans hoping that you'll hear back from the school that waitlisted you. Depending on the college and the year (even if you look up their statistics from last year, they will surely be wildly different this year), your chances of hearing good news later are either slim, very slim, or maddeningly slim. Once you take a spot at your backup school, you might quickly find that it’s no longer your backup and change your mind about the wait list.

Take a rational approach to figuring out your limits. You need an analytical way to think about the costs and benefits of hanging on to hope that you hear back from this school. You could make a spreadsheet. You could study up on opportunity cost and the sunk cost fallacy.

You can also think about all the extra hoops you have to jump through as extra fees that the dream school adds on to your bill.

Say you get waitlisted from Dream School, and you accept a place at Decent School and put down a $1,000 non-refundable deposit, and then Dream School calls back and gives you a spot. Think of that $1,000 as a one-time fee. Ask yourself: do I want to go to Dream School even if they charge me an extra $1,000 fee they don't charge most people? If your answer is yes then you know what to do. But as time goes on, the fees add on. If you also make a $500 housing deposit, then the one-time fee to drop Decent School and go to Dream School is now $1,500. And if you've already paid transportation costs, add those to the fees.

The really hard part is that the fees can also be emotional. Would you take a spot at Dream School even if they charged you a one-time fee of $1,500, and made you get emotionally invested in finding a roommate who you will now abandon, and made you buy t-shirts for some other school and pretend for four months that you were going to some other school? What if Dream School will also make you register late for classes and have fewer options than other first-year students for the first semester? What if they'll also take away the opportunity to use Facebook groups to seek out your own choice of roommate but instead stick you wherever they have happen to have room left? These are all real possibilities of getting pulled from the wait list, and the sanest way to think about them ahead of time is to think of them as additional fees the Dream School charges. Think about where your threshold is, how much you are actually willing to pay. Talk to your family about it, too. Then you can rationally figure out, if you do get the call, whether you say Thank You or Bug Off.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts:

   The Glossary: rolling admissions

   Dealing with denial

   Making the call before May 1

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

Seniors, it's time for thank-you notes

If you’re a senior who’s sent out all your applications, it’s a weird time. After all that working, now you’re waiting. Waiting to hear back from everyone—both in terms of acceptance and financial aid—before you make a final decision. While you wait to hear from schools and think about how to choose from your acceptances, take some time to write thank-you notes. Write a thank-you note to everyone who has done something for you along the way: teachers who wrote recommendation letters, counselors who sent off transcripts, college admissions personnel who answered questions, people who took time to interview you. Everybody. They gave some of their time to help you, and you should thank them if you haven't already.

Do it in writing. I hope you remembered to thank people along the way in person, but you should also send a written note. Many people still insist that you only send hand-written thank you notes, but for most of these email is really fine. If you have less-than-great handwriting or don't happen to have good stationary ready to go, then email is really better. Be specific in what you're thanking them for: "thank you for taking the time to write and send recommendation letters," or "thank you again for the time you spent with me in our interview." Also let them know that you appreciate their time and expertise. 

Do it individually, not in batches. No matter how alike they may sound, send every thank you note individually. Use the person's name. I can tell you from experience that being included on a "thanks to all of you" email with 11 other people doesn't particularly feel like being appreciated. And on that note, even if the only reason you're sending a thank you is because your mother is making you or you feel obligated, don't tell people that. (Yes, I’ve seen this before.)

Gifts can be tricky. You may be tempted to include a gift. You probably shouldn't. If you're sending a gift to a person at a university while your application is still being processed, it can look like an attempted bribe. Same goes for giving a gift to a teacher before they've sent out the recommendation or if you’re still in their class with more grades coming this semester. If you decide that it is appropriate to give a small gift, then be thoughtful about it. There are very few adults in the world thinking "I sure wish someone would bring me another coffee mug!" People who don't drink coffee may be tired of receiving Starbucks gift cards. People on diets probably don't want candy, and a huge percentage of adults think of themselves as on diets. While there may actually be some teachers or counselors who want a piece of leftover birthday cake or your first attempt to bake cookies, they probably don't think it's a good thank you gift. Unless you know the person well enough to really know something that they want, you should probably just stick to a note. 

Don't wait. You're thanking the person for their time and effort, not your results. So don't wait until you hear back from colleges and only send thank you notes to people associated with the ones who accepted you. (Yes, I've seen this too.)

Follow up. If a teacher, counselor, or other adult helps you in any way with a college application, follow up and let them know how it went. I've had students who I spent several hours with looking over essay drafts, writing recommendation letters, or giving advice who never told me what school they ended up choosing. Don't get people emotionally invested and then leave them hanging!

If it helps, here is an example of a basic thank you note:

Dear Ms. Washington,

Thank you again for writing recommendation letters for me to Stanford and the University of Alabama. I know you don't write them for everyone, and I'm honored you would spend time to do that for me. In this especially crazy year, I’m especially grateful that you could spend extra time helping me. Wherever I end up going to school, I know that my experience in your class will have me prepared. I'll let you know when I hear back from the colleges!

Thanks again.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts: What to do when you get waitlisted, Asking for more financial aid, how do wealthy kids get into elite colleges?

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

The best of 2019

This Thursday I’ll be publishing one last blog post of the year, but for now let’s look back at the five best posts of 2019.

If you’ve been an Apply with Sanity reader for the past year: thanks! I really appreciate it and hope you’re getting something good from it! Come back Thursday for the last post of 2019!

If you haven’t been following all along year: thanks for reading, whenever you started! Keep coming back! And here’s a rundown of what you may have missed earlier.

1. What do colleges want?

So what do they want? They want you to be you, the best you, and to let them know who that is. You can’t do that if you’re too busy trying to be what you think they want you to be. There are schools out there looking for you, so you have to tell them who you are, not what you think they want to hear. Just like in a good relationship.

2. How do wealthy kids get into elite colleges?

There are a few dozen schools that are both need blind and meet full demonstrated need. They don’t take your ability to pay into account when deciding to accept you, and they will make sure that you get all the financial aid that you need based on FAFSA. There’s a reasonable expectation that many of their graduates will have high earnings after graduating, so there’s no need to prefer one person over another based on the assumption that they might be donors. These schools ought to be the very definition of meritocracy, since almost nobody needs to worry about the cost when they apply, and the schools only look at your academic records, not your financial records, to make their decisions. And yet, those schools are all elite colleges dominated by wealthier students. Is this the proof that wealthy families game the system? Sort of.

3. The two things you need for success in college and beyond.

Today’s post is about two things you need for success in high school, college, and beyond: a meditation routine and a time management system. Maybe need is a strong word. You can get by without either of these things—many people do. But I promise that a meditation routine and time management system will never be a waste of your time or effort.

4. You’re not trying to impress anyone.

If you’re hoping to get into college by impressing the admissions office, I want you to let go of that idea right now. You’re not going to impress them. Your SAT or ACT scores—even if perfect—are not going to impress them. Your GPA is not going to impress them. Your list of activities and awards is not going to impress them. Your letters of recommendation are not going to impress them. If your college admissions strategy is to impress, rethink your strategy.

5. Three things parents should stop saying to their children.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it covered.”

“We can’t afford anything, so you’ve got to get a full scholarship.”

“We fall into that window where we make too much money to qualify for financial aid, but not enough money to pay for college.”

Also this year I began the Three Quick Questions section, where I ask admissions officers from all over the same three questions.

What would you like to see in 2020? Have you got any questions, any suggestions, any requests? Put them in the comments box below, or hit the Contact button to send a message.

Thanks for reading!

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Zoe Herring.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

Dealing with denial

It’s December, so acceptance notices are coming in for early applicants. That means, of course, that denials are also coming in for early applicants. All denials—colleges use “denial” instead of the harsher and more emotional “rejection”—feel bad, but the first one feels the worst. It especially feels worse if it’s from an Early Decision or Early Action application and you were hoping to be done with the whole process by now. I spent an entire morning reading through web pages on “how to deal with rejection,” and most of them deal with being rejected by someone you ask out on a date or being fired from a job. So here is my college admissions-specific advice about working through your first—or second, or twelfth—skinny envelope.

First, understand what you’re looking at: is it a no or a maybe? If you applied EA or ED and you don’t get accepted, then they’ve probably deferred your application and will reconsider it with the regular application pool. If you applied regular decision, you may be placed on a wait list rather than be denied. The good news is that a deferral or a waitlist isn’t necessarily a denial—you might still be accepted. The bad news is that it’s still probably going to be a denial in the long run. Take a few minutes to do some quick searches and see if you can find any stats or statements about that for the particular school. Remember, though, that the percentage of deferred or waitlisted students who were eventually accepted last year doesn’t mean that’s how many will be accepted this year. But it will give you an idea of what you’re working with.

If you applied ED, then this means you need to make sure you have other applications ready to go for regular admissions deadlines, probably around January 1st. That gives you several weeks. That’s not a whole lot of time, but you were probably working on them anyway. You’ve got time to catch up.

If you applied EA, this probably doesn’t change much. You were already working on other applications and weren’t completely sure you want to go to this one school. Otherwise, you would have applied ED. So you’ve got emotions to work through, perhaps, but you’re on track.

If you applied regular decision and got put on a wait list, I think you should just probably tell them to bug off and not think about them any more. There are other schools that want you.

If you got bad news of any kind, you may be wondering what you did wrong. It’s normal to do this, to want to know that one thing that messed things up for you: they must not have liked my essay, or my test scores were too low, or even I know someone with worse grades who got in, so there’s something unfair going on. Let go of this thinking as soon as you can. It’s normal, but it’s not useful or productive. Holistic admissions means that there’s no one thing that you did wrong. It’s just not that simple. The truth, which you may find reassuring and/or frustrating, is that you probably did absolutely nothing wrong. It may be that you did everything fine, but the school had more applicants who did everything fine than they could accept. This is why, other than politeness, they don’t call it a rejection.

If you’ve got emotions about the bad news—and you probably do—then you should work hard to name them and understand them. Work on at least one sentence that follows the “I feel _____ because _____” pattern. I feel disappointed, because I really wanted to go to that college, and they denied me. I feel discouraged, because this denial makes me question how well my other applications are going to go. I feel embarrassed, because I acted as though this was going to be my college, and now I have to find another one. You’ll probably have more than one feeling, and they’ll change over time. If you’ve got negative feelings, that’s not a problem. Don’t listen to the folks who tell you not to feel that way. You don’t, in fact, need to stay positive. But one of the most productive ways to make sure your negative feelings don’t sabotage your chances with future applications is to have a clear idea of what your feelings are and where they’re coming from. Naming your feelings is a way to help keep them from controlling you.

Remember that you planned for this. In its current form, a lot of the college admissions process isn’t based so much on people saying Yes as it is on people saying No. Colleges get a lot of credit and prestige for denying people. “Elite” and “low acceptance rate” are almost the same thing, and a low acceptance rate actually makes more students want to apply to a college. While the majority of colleges don’t operate this way—around 80% of colleges and universities accept at least half their applicants—almost all student applicants plan on being told No and also plan on telling at least one college No. If you’re hoping to have more than one acceptance so you can compare quality and/or financial aid, then you’re essentially planning to say No to someone. So it hurts to be a student who hears No and has to wonder if they’ll get into a good-fit school. And it hurts to be a school who hears No and has to wonder if they’ll make their desired yield. But being told No is part of the system on both sides, and you’re prepared for that.

The only thing left to do is take the next step. And unless you applied ED to one school and haven’t got a back-up, you already know what the next step is. Feel disappointed or frustrated or sad or embarrassed or whatever else you feel, and then finish up those other applications if you haven’t yet. Don’t decide that you need to change your list based on this one piece of bad news. Just do what’s next, and you’ll be fine.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts: “What to do when you get waitlisted” and “What are your chances of getting into your top college?”

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.