Williams is a small, highly-selective school that attracts some of the top students in the country. Being rejected Early Decision can be a gut punch, especially if the rejection comes from a dream school like Williams. What you do now, though, can turn your application experience around. First, statistics.
The acceptance rate at Williams is only 7.5% overall, including Early and Regular Decision. The most recent Early Decision acceptance rate was much more than double the overall acceptance rate, over 23%. However, this can be a little misleading as the Early Decision application round includes a slew of students who were nearly guaranteed admission before they even submitted, like recruited athletes. It’s also important to know that Williams historically accepts very few deferred applicants in the Early Decision round, so it may be best to act as if you were rejected if Williams defers you ED. If this is making you hyperventilate, take some deep breaths. It’s going to be okay. We’ve got you.
In this post, we’ll break down exactly what you need to do next, step-by-step, to ensure that you have a successful college application experience. If you play this right, you can most certainly still get into a dream school.
If you were rejected ED, contact us. We help strong students bounce back from disappointing admissions results.
Step 1: Eat a Bowl of Ice Cream
Okay, so you don’t literally need to eat a bowl of ice cream (unless you want to, in which case go for it). However, the mentality of taking some time to sit down and doing something comforting is actually really important. It’s extremely easy to work yourself into a lather after a disappointing Early Decision result, and then to get stuck in that frenzied state, resulting in poor decisions without strong strategy behind them. That is a bad situation, so we want to avoid it if at all possible. The antidote is relaxing. Seriously.
You are a smart, hard-working, and resilient student. These are the exact same traits that will get you into a dream school. You were this person when you applied to Williams, and you are this person today. But you also deserve a bit of a break. Do something that makes you feel good. Go outside, talk to friends, and have some fun. Take a few days to reset your internal alarm clock and get back to a place where you feel confident and ready to your best work.
Step 2: Reevaluate Your College List
The first step to restarting your college application process is to reevaluate the list of schools you are applying to. A strong college list is a secret of a successful college application strategy, and the secret to a strong college list is balance. If you were a strong candidate for Williams, meaning that you had the grades and scores to be considered for admission, you weren’t off base in applying to Williams ED. If you weren’t as strong of a candidate for Williams, and maybe you even knew it was a stretch when you submitted, it’s possible that your entire college list is out of whack and needs a major adjustment.
This isn’t meant to scare you, and it shouldn’t. Rather, it’s pretty exciting. Dialing in your perfect mix of schools is the foundation of a successful application process, so let’s do it.
Every well-balanced college list should have a mix of safeties, targets, and reaches. But what is a safety? The easy answer is that it’s a school that is easy to get into, but it actually isn’t that simple. If you’re totally overqualified for a college, they may not let you in simply because they know you won’t attend if accepted. And if you consider a school a safety but your scores and grades don’t reflect that assessment, you need to give statistics precedence over emotion. Crafting a perfect college list benefits from expertise, but if you’re going it on your own you need to remember the term “Common Data Set.”
Nearly every school publishes data annually that reflects recent admissions numbers, like that average SAT/ACT of accepted and enrolled students, called the Common Data Set. These numbers can offer one metric for gauging how you measure up with a college of university. Other things to consider are whether you are an “in-state” applicant (for state schools, which offers an advantage), how competitive your academic area of interest is at a particular college, and whether there are any additional aspects of your profile that make you particular attractive as an applicant.
As you’re considering colleges, remember that academics come first, followed by things like culture, location, and size. If a school doesn’t offer what you want to study, it isn’t an option. If it is a bit bigger or smaller than you were thinking you’d want, it’s still worth considering. You should also stay open to the idea of an Early Decision II option. Ideally, a perfect EDII school is somewhere between a target and a reach.
Step 3: Essay Time
Once you have your list, you need to prep your applications for submission. Sometimes, this isn’t all that overwhelming. For schools that only have one supplement, or even none at all, submitting is a quick endeavor. For schools with many supplements, the endeavor is significantly more daunting. Either way, the application needs to be treated with care and consideration — and it all starts with the main essay.
We have only one rule with the Common App essay: pick prompt 7. Prompt 7, the ‘write whatever you want’ prompt is the only one our clients answer, and is, we feel, the only right decision. The logic is simple: you want to lower the bar. If you pick one of the earlier prompts, you’ll be judged on two things. First, your essay. Second, how well you answered the question. If you pick prompt 7, there’s only one metric for success: is it an outstanding essay? With no question to answer, there’s no question to leave unanswered.
You’ve already written a main essay, we know, and you probably want to reuse it or, at most, brush it up a bit. This is where we have bad news for you. We want you to overhaul, or even rewrite, your essay. If your application to Williams was strong, you would have been deferred. This means that there was at least one major weak point, and the most frequent place of weakness we see is the writing.
Maybe your core story is great, or the way you told it didn’t connect with the readers. Or maybe your writing is strong, but the story isn’t compelling. Find inspiration for your college essay 2.0 through the sample successful college application essays we share from former students.
Once you have a full draft of your new essay, you’ll need to start on the supplements. Each supplement is important — yes, even the super short one. A dream school won’t reject you for your response to something like “favorite snack?”, but the right answer (for you) can make them feel more inclined to read your application in a positive way. Remember, application readers are human. They want to feel like they are helping applicants find the right home, and making them feel warm and fuzzies, and even have a little giggle, can hugely benefit your application.
We recommend answering every supplement with a story. Whether it is sneaking down to the kitchen to dip Oreos into frosting at 11pm or leading a debate team to a successful season, each supplement offers an opportunity to share a piece of your life with the application reader. We write college-specific supplement guides to help you identify the right story for each prompt, and execute an exceptional response.
Step Four: Ask for Help
Asking for help isn’t admitting defeat, especially when it comes to college applications. We highly recommend seeking expertise (like ours) to guide you towards success. Having someone standing alongside who you has been there and done that gives you a massive head start, especially when you’re coming back from a disappointed Early Decision result. If you want this advantage, check out our “It’s Going to be Okay” package.
Exceptional students benefit from expert advice. Email us to learn more.