While I may still have some more things to share before the year is out, it seems like a good time for reflection and taking notes. In case you’re new to Apply to Sanity, missed anything, or want to re-visit some of the best content, here’s what was best, most popular, or both for the past year.
Dealing with bad news
It’s mid-December, so acceptance letters (or emails, or notifications on portals) 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 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.
Grace has good news!
Grace is feeling a little more relaxed these days. She sent out all her applications, and now she’s already got acceptances from two of them. Read about her “thick envelopes” and the rest of her month below. You can catch up on Grace’s earlier interviews here.
Don't submit that Mission Trip essay!
If you’re finishing up your college application essay and it has to do with a mission trip you were part of, I’m going to ask you not to submit it. At least not yet.
Some of the most common complaints against the Mission Trip essay is that it is cliché and therefore admissions officers are really tired of reading it because all the mission trip essays sound the same. To be clear: both these things are true. But I really don’t like that as a reason to avoid the Mission Trip essay. It reinforces the idea that your job is to write something the admissions officers will like, so they’ll like you and admit you—if you know they don’t like that essay topic, then you shouldn’t write about.
But your job isn’t to be a product that you’re “selling” to the colleges, and you shouldn’t change what you write about based on the idea that your meaningful experience isn’t valuable because colleges are tired of hearing about it.
Faulkner is chugging along
Faulkner had been working toward a lot of the same goals and deadlines as most other high school seniors. She’s taking the SAT one more time, finishing up her first college application, looking ahead to sending out a big batch of applications through the Common Application. On top of all that, she’s taking actual college courses at an actual college for her high school. Read all about her progress below!