Receiving a rejection from the University of Michigan Early Action is a major bummer. It’s frustrating, but it is going to be okay. We know that you’re a smart and qualified student, you applied to Mich ED after all, so application experience is very salvageable. In fact, it can go way up from here if you play your cards right. Getting into Michigan Early Action is super hard. University of Michigan admissions is committed to not giving EA applicants preference (as compared to most schools, who prioritized ED or EA). The Michigan acceptance rate — about 18% — is also misleading if you are an out-of-state applicant. More than a quarter of students at Mich are from Michigan. In-state applicants are given preference in admissions, and benefit from a much higher acceptance rate. As a result, out-of-state applicants have a much lower acceptance rate.
We make sure that our students know that getting into Mich from outside of Michigan is much harder than statistics suggest. If you are an out-of-state applicant, it’s possible that you didn’t receive advice to account for this when picking Mich as an EA school. Either way, we’re here to help now. We are experts at turning things around after a disappointing decision. In this post, we’ll give you everything you need to know to get on your way towards a dream school.
Applying to college is stressful even without setbacks. Contact us to reset after an early rejection.
Step 1: Breathe Deeply
This may sound counter-intuitive, but you need to take some time to rest and rediscover center. An early rejection can rock you, and that’s a fair reaction — but you don’t want to get stuck in it. You’re a hardworking, passionate, driven student. You have time, and you have all the traits required to find success. Giving yourself a few days to relax will only improve your chances of getting into great school down the line, so take it. Go out to a café you like. Hang out with some friends. Eat a bowl of ice cream, or two, or five. Remind yourself of how great you are, and how lucky the college you choose will be to have you. Once you’re breathing deeply and excited for the future again, it’s time to turn your attention back to your applications.
Step 2: Reevaluate Your College List
The most important part of any college admissions strategy is the college list. If you aren’t applying to the right schools for you, you are bound to fall short. This means identifying schools that are a strong fit academically, culturally, and geographically, and that fall at varying levels selectivity — calibrated (and this is key) for your unique profile. You applied to the University of Michigan Early Action, so it’s probably safe to say that you are a very high achieving student with a strong GPA, well-developed extracurriculars, and a passion for learning. But that doesn’t mean that Mich was your best fit as an EA option, and, given that mix-up, it’s likely that there are wrinkles in your college list that really need to be smoothed out.
All college lists need three things: safety or foundation schools, targets, and reaches. It can be hard to know which bucket a school should be in for you if you aren’t a college admissions expert, so getting outside help can really set you up for success here. If you’re going it on your own, remember to follow the statistics more than your personal emotions. You may feel like you’re an absolutely perfect fit for a school with a <10% acceptance rate, but a hyper-selective school is not a safety no matter how much you may want it to be.
Instead of focusing on ‘prestige’ pay attention to the things that will determine your college experience. Is a school located somewhere you’d like to live (at least for a few years)? Do they have a culture that you would feel at home in, while pushing you to grow? Most importantly: Do they offer what you want to study? Ideally, any college on your list should have a deep program in your prospective area of study — even if you aren’t entirely set on what your specific major will be.
As you are researching schools, remember to keep your eyes out for schools with an Early Decision II option. Applying EDII can give you a strong advantage over Regular Decision applicants, boosting your chances of getting into an aggressive target, or even reach, school.
Step 3: Essay Time
Once you have your college list, there is a lot of writing to do. The obvious stuff are the supplements. As you know, each college has between zero and a bajillion supplements, and each supplement needs to be treated as a miniature essay. Supplements require drafting, editing, review, and often even more editing before they can be submitted in their most powerful form. Putting supplements off until the last minute, or treating them as throw-aways, can turn a safety school into a rejection. If they can tell you are interested in going because your supplements exhibit a lack of effort, the school isn’t going to let you in.
The less obvious writing you have to do now, though, is your main essay — most often, your Common App essay. You’ve already written one, we know, it’s how you applied to Michigan…but you also didn’t get in with it. Assuming that you are the kind of student who can get into Mich (and we believe you are), it’s likely that your essay was a weak spot for your application. It may be beautifully written, but something about it didn’t connect with the admissions officer (or officers) who read your essay. It didn’t have an “it factor” that made them excited to say yes to you.
Our advice, as painful as it may be, is a rewrite. Yes, seriously. While reworking the essay may be possible, it’s not the best strategy. We’ve found that learning lessons from your original essay, and then implementing those lessons in a new one (even a fresh take on the same topic) is the best approach.
One of the first pieces of advice we give to students when starting a rewrite is to take the idea of what a college essay “should” be and throw it out the window. If you reach these successful essays, you’ll see that they all have something in common — they are unexpected. Don’t copy what you’ve seen before, and don’t simply pursue an approach or topic because it is what you feel a college application reader is used to seeing. Instead, tell your own story your own way.
The same holds true for your college-specific supplements. Each supplement needs to be treated with care, even the 10-word “what’s your favorite snack,” type questions. While one can just slip in an answer and move on to the next one, that is the absolutely wrong approach. Each supplement matters, deeply, not because your acceptance is riding on your snack choices but because showing creativity and care in each piece of your application illustrates that you are the strong applicant that you are.
If this feels like an impossibly high bar, we have college-specific supplement guides that will help you on your way to unique, strong supplemental essays. And if you need a more engaged support system through this process, we can help.
Step Four: Ask for Help
Strong college applications don’t appear out of thin air, and a successful college application strategy benefits from expertise. We offer the “It’s Going to be Okay" package for strong students like you who experience a set-back in the Early Decision/Early Action round, but who have all the pieces necessary for an acceptance-earning application.
The most important thing to know right now, though, is that you’ve got this. You can get into a great school, but you need to play your cards right over the next few weeks to make it happen.
We are the secret weapon of top high school students. Email us to learn more.