We know getting rejected is the worst, and getting rejected from your early decision school can be especially rough. Carnegie Mellon is a very hard school to get into, the early decision acceptance rate is 14%, compared to an 11% overall acceptance rate. We tell you this so you know that you’re not alone in this — there are a lot of other students in the same boat as you, and we know for a fact that even if you’re not going to Carnegie Mellon, you are going to go to an awesome school and find success in your life.
If you’ve been rejected ED from Carnegie Mellon, you might feel a need to freak out a little bit, but we don’t want you to panic. In this post, we are going to detail what you can do to get control over this situation and set yourself up for the most success possible.
Step One: Take a Little Break
Yes, you heard us right. You need to slow down and take a break. Here’s the deal, you’re the kind of kid who applies early decision to Carnegie Mellon, which means that you are probably a high-achieving perfectionist who has not stopped working for months. The stress of college applications has probably made you a little bit crazy, and your friends have probably commented on your cranky demeanor. And now you have faced what feels like a very strong blow to your five-year plan.
So, instead of combusting in on yourself like a dying star, you need to take a few days to feel the feelings that you are having and rest your brain a little bit. Because you’re gonna need your brain for what comes next! But in the meantime, eat some ice cream, punch a pillow, go to an axe-throwing place, etc., and then come back here in 2 to 3 days to hear the rest of our advice.
Step Two: Strategize
The first thing you need to do is take a look at your college list. If you are anything like our clients, you have made a balanced college list of 8 to 12 schools with a healthy mix of safeties, targets, and reaches. In that case, you probably don’t need to do much work on re-hauling your list entirely. You may want to make sure that the rest of the schools you’re applying to still align with your goals, and you also need to figure out an ED2 school.
For the rest of you, especially if you only applied to Carnegie Mellon or only applied to a few other schools, you’re gonna have to buckle in for some work. You want to make a college list that has a good mix of safety schools, target schools, and reach schools, and you want them to be places that you would be happy to attend if you got in. Start by thinking about what you really liked about Carnegie Mellon. Was there a specific academic program that you were drawn to? Use that as your very first filter, because every school on your list should match your academic goals. After that, you can consider things like culture, size, location, etc., but know that not every single school on your list is going to meet all of your preferences. If you feel very strongly about not going to a large school or don’t want to go to a school where Greek life is very important, then those are your dealbreakers. But if you’re flexible on everything else, stay open to lots of different schools.
Let’s circle back on ED2 for a second. We strongly recommend applying ED2. We know that the acceptance rates are comparable to early decision in ED2, and because schools care a lot about their yield rate, they love those binding decisions. Most schools except the majority of their incoming class from early applicants, ED2 included. That’s not to say that you won’t get in anywhere regular decision, but we just like to play it safe, which is why all of our clients’ college lists have an ED2 option picked out before we even apply ED.
Step Three: Essays
Once you have your college list in place, and especially if you added a lot of new schools, you need to work on the supplements for those schools. We have detailed guides on our website on how to write most school specific supplements, and some guides on how to write those generic questions that pop up all the time. But we need to talk about something more important, the Common App essay!
We hate to break it to you, but you probably need to rewrite your Common App essay. Don’t get mad at us!! We can feel your rage through the screen! If we were betting people, we’d bet you wrote your Common App essay about something pretty cliché. If you wrote about your grandma being an inspiration, bragged about your greatest academic or athletic accomplishment, or felt like you had to write about the hardest thing you’ve gone through, then you’ve written an essay that probably doesn’t stand out too much. It’s probably very well written!! But our goal here is to help you stand out among all of the other essays.
We know you are probably a little mad that you’re gonna have to write a new essay in two weeks. But we know it can be done. We help so many students every year write amazing Common App essays in the two weeks between rejections and RD deadlines.
The hardest part of the Common App essay is brainstorming. The purpose of this essay is to show off your personality, not regurgitate anything they already know about you. You want to think about the parts of your personality that cannot be quantified in your application otherwise. Maybe you have an interesting quirk, a hobby you’re really passionate about, a unique tradition among friends or family, or an interesting outlook on otherwise mundane thing. We encourage you to think about your brainstorm in terms of a story, because if there’s one thing we know about colleges, they love a good story for the Common App essay. Stories don’t need to be big grand tales, they can be a small little story about that time you cooked with your mom. In fact, the small stories work better.
A great Common App essay tells a story, and a great story has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Your story should be full of vivid language that draws the reader in and plops them in the middle of your story.
Step Four: Ask for Help
If you’re feeling stuck throughout this process, and we know that this is a very emotionally loaded time, we are here to help you. We offer a special package every year at this time, the “It’s Going to Be Okay” package that’s designed to help you navigate the next two weeks. It is an intensive boot camp where we help you conceptualize and execute every single part of the Common App that you might need help with. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need help.
Rejected and don’t know what to do? Reach out to us ASAP.