If you’re reading this in the fall, before you’ve heard back from your ED/EA school:
This is a great place to be in. It’s not too late for anything. Start your other supplements today and put just as much work into them as you have into your ED/EA school. Work equally on the array of schools on your list––safeties, targets, and reaches. To find guidance about how to write the supplements for your schools, poke around the blog. We have dozens of detailed blog posts for supplements (like this one, this one, or this one).
In particular, if you’re dealing with schools that ask “Why ___?”, like this one, you might want to consider working really hard to perfect one of these first. Most of these essays will actually contain similar components. For instance, they’ll talk about what you want to do there as a student and person, what you’ll major in and classes you’ll take, and how those goals tie into things you’ve already done in high school. But they will be tailored to the specific school and based on the research you’ve done about it.
Once you’ve perfected that one essay, you can move onto a bunch of others because you’ll now know how they work and you’ll have a strong recipe for completing them. Don’t spread yourself too thin and write half-baked responses for each, which you then need to go back, scratch, and start from the beginning.
A few extra tips:
Move through your supplements methodically, setting deadlines for each.
If you get stuck on one, start a new one and circle back in a few days when your ideas have had a bit of time to “percolate.”
Try 15-minute free-writes if you still can’t think of what you want to say.
If you’re reading this in December and you’ve received bad news:
First, take a deep breath. This can be a really scary, frustrating, crushing, painful time of the college process. You’re allowed to feel angry, sad, and worried. Those feelings are all valid. Because at the end of the day, rejection is rejection! No matter how old you are, it definitely doesn’t have to feel good. Feel free to take care of yourself in whatever way you need to right now.
The main thing to know is that if you don’t get into your top early decision or early action school, it’s going to be okay. At the same time, it’s still really important that you start creating your plan of action right now. Maybe the last thing you want to do is go put yourself out there again and take a risk on a handful of other schools, but the bottom line is that’s what you have to do––it’s crunch time and you need to do the work for other places right now.
Start by approaching your list of schools. Your first choice school isn’t a real option after a full rejection, but there are still so many schools out there. What other safeties, targets, and reaches do you have in your college basket? Now ask yourself: am I actually interested in these places now that I know I can’t go to X?
For some students, it might also feel hard to get riled up about other schools at first, but sometimes deferral or rejection can also spur a newfound excitement about all the other places that might be a great college fit. That ED school doesn’t have to be everything: rejection can sometimes even open the door to opportunities and ideas you wouldn’t have considered before. It’s also not too late to nix one place or add another now that you have more information.
Just as important as these questions about excitement/interest is making sure you’re being realistic about your list. Sometimes your ED/EA school is a reach but still a school you could have feasibly gotten into, and the rejection doesn’t make sense. But in many, many other cases, students use their early option to apply to an out-of-reach school. If that’s what you did, you will need to approach the Regular Decision process differently and cautiously tailor your new, updated list with this in mind.
Once you’ve re-finalized your list, spend some time skimming those supplements and researching the necessary information for each one (especially the “Why ___?” questions!). As we wrote above, we suggest working equally on the array of schools and reading any of our dozens of detailed blog posts that talk about how to write the supplements for those schools. Check out some examples here, here, or here.
A few extra tasks and tips:
Don’t spend the next two weeks on one single supplement. If you’re stuck, try working on another one and circling back to the challenging later.
Set yourself deadlines. Believe us when we say that procrastination is not your friend right now.
Look back at your Common App essay. It might be annoying or daunting to return to that piece of writing, but most likely you’re not going to start from scratch. You’re not a new person, after all. Instead, consider printing it out, reading it aloud, and hearing how it sounds to you now. Edit based on that reread.
The last major thing to remember is to send out your scores to the rest of the schools you’re applying to––at least 3 weeks ahead of the RD deadline. You can do this online through College Board.
It’s a lot to do in little time. But even reading this post has been a good first step. So stop for a second and take another deep breath. You got this!
If you’ve been rejected from your early decision choice school and you’re freaking out, reach out to us here. We have a regular decision package (“It’s going to be okay”) that is specially tailored to support students who weren’t admitted to their ED school and need guidance about how to proceed.