Chasing College Dreams: Turning Universal Rejection into the Ultimate Acceptance

As a senior in high school, our son Alex stood tall at almost six foot five inches. He was, and still is, an accomplished rower. He spent the better part of his high school years on the water rowing for a premier club in Southern California and won numerous medals along the way. During that time, he managed to maintain a 4.7 GPA at a large, over-crowded public high school in Orange County, California. He took the SAT a single time and scored a 1570, putting him in the top 99th percentile nationally. Alex took on the most rigorous course load available to him at his high school, which included eleven AP classes. His high school was considered both highly competitive and extremely academic. He became a National Merit Scholar Finalist and a National AP Scholar. He was a member of his local chapter of the National League of Young Men, a nationally recognized philanthropic organization, where he was elected president in his freshmen year and went on to hold officer positions the following three years.  

In 2018, Alex applied to over a dozen highly selective colleges. In 2019, the year he graduated from high school at the top of his class, he was rejected from every single one. 

Now, three years later, Alex is in his second year at the University of Oxford in Great Britain – his “dream school” – pursuing a Joint Honours degree in Classics and English and continues to row competitively for his college. Despite the arduous journey it took to get there, the outcome was better than anything we could have ever imagined. Alex ended up where he was meant to be and could not be happier.

While in elementary school, Alex first read the Harry Potter series and instantly became a fan. A few years later, we visited London and Oxford and fell in love with both cities. Our visit to see Oxford was planned as part of a European family vacation. We were not doing an “official visit” to the university, and it was not meant to be a college tour, nor did we take one. We had no intention at the time of sending our first-born son over 5,000 miles away to obtain an undergraduate degree, and we never even considered having him apply. In our minds, having him attend Oxford was as realistic an option as having him attend Hogwarts.  

Our purpose in visiting Oxford was simply to see the oldest, and arguably most famous, university in the world, and it did not disappoint. It was breathtaking and fulfilled every expectation that we had. We were equally mesmerized by the beauty of the university’s architecture and the majestic spires that lined the town, as well as the sensation of travelling back centuries in time, where a sense of unmistakable “magic” filled the air. As much as we loved it, however, in our minds it was still Oxford – nothing more than a distant dream.

Fast forward to the end of March 2019 - decision day for the Ivy League institutions and many other selective universities in the United States. We had been waiting with equal parts anticipation and anxiety for this moment. Our son had received a waitlist spot from the University of Chicago a few weeks earlier, so we were hopeful that some of the colleges which were lower in ranking and had higher acceptance rates would extend him offers, if only for our own peace of mind. 

A few months prior, Alex had received recruitment offers from the rowing teams at Williams College in Massachusetts and Wesleyan University in Connecticut - two of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. That said, both offers were conditioned on him applying to the schools Early Decision, which would not have allowed him to apply anywhere else. Not wanting to limit his options, Alex turned down the offers and elected to apply to both schools Regular Decision instead. What we did not know at the time, however, was that those two options would end up being his only ones, and that declining them meant he would not be attending college the following Fall. 

Instead of committing Early Decision to Williams or Wesleyan, Alex chose to apply restricted Early Action to Princeton, where he had an opportunity to visit and meet with the Princeton rowing coach. His erg (rowing machine) score was a few seconds shy of securing him a recruitment spot on the team, but the coach offered to give his support for Alex’s application to the admissions office. It sounded reassuring at the time but obviously meant very little in the long run. He was deferred by Princeton in the first round of applications, only to be rejected several months later. 

That rejection was just one of over a dozen rejections which popped up on his computer screen that fateful evening in late March. With a series of simple clicks, we watched in dread as Alex’s future at college slowly slipped away. Among the myriad rejections for regular decision were notifications from both Williams and Wesleyan, whose form rejection notifications made it seem as though his recruitment offers never existed – despite repeated assurances throughout the process that his academic qualifications were of the highest caliber for consideration. I suppose looking back it made sense - he was not willing to commit early to either school, which indicated they were not his first choice. The spots would be granted to someone who showed a greater likelihood of accepting the offer, even if they were less qualified.

The collective feeling at the time for myself, my husband, and my 15-year-old daughter was pure, unadulterated shock followed by a slow, engulfing feeling of panic and fear. Our son, on the other hand, appeared to have very little emotion at all. There was a moment of silence after the final rejection opened across his computer screen. My daughter quietly stopped the recording of the video she was making with her phone, meant to capture our jubilation when one, just one, school gave our son an acceptance. Alex wore what I can only describe as a poker face - he did not express any shock, anger, or sadness, at least not outwardly for any of us to see. To him, it might as well have been just another day, another decision in his high school career. He knew it meant that he had no college options for the Fall, but he seemed completely unphased. 

We went out to dinner as we had planned to do that night when we were anticipating a celebration. Our daughter remained relatively silent. As a sophomore in high school on a similar path as her older brother, I didn’t quite see the impact those rejections had on her, nor could I predict how it would shape her own applications almost two years later. Meanwhile, my husband and I did our best to keep the conversation light and stay positive. We reassured him that we would figure out next steps. After all, there was still that waitlist offer from the University of Chicago, our last bastion of hope.

As soon as the next day, we urged Alex to do everything in his power to secure his place at UChicago. He contacted the regional admissions officer and started a rapport, sending over creative writing pieces, updates on his progress in rowing and volunteering, and forwarding any new information regarding academic achievement. He did all this even as he continued to prepare for his upcoming AP and final exams, unable to slip up for even an instant since he had no secured spot at a college. Nevertheless, we were hopeful and confident that Alex’s efforts would be enough for UChicago to recognize his potential and worth, and that just one student would turn down their place to attend another school, opening up a spot for Alex.

Unfortunately, his efforts turned out to be in vain, as the University of Chicago’s rejection appeared in Alex’s inbox only a few weeks later, truly hammering the proverbial nail into the coffin where his college dreams lay to rest.

It was the late Spring of our first-born son’s senior year of high school. A time normally filled with celebration and excitement for all the great things to come - prom, grad and senior nights, sports banquets, graduation, beginning the next leg of one’s life journey at a university. As friends were announcing their college commitments all over social media, we were frantically trying to come to grips with our reality. The same questions whirled around in our heads. How was this happening? How did our son, who did everything right, get rejected from over a dozen schools? What had we done wrong? Was there a mistake on the application? Were the teacher recommendations not good enough? Did the wrong test scores get sent in? Nobody had any answers. Not his school counselor, not the school principal, and none of his teachers. The response to the news was the same across the board – shock and disbelief. None of it made sense, but that hardly mattered. Nothing would change the fact that he was denied admission to every school he hoped to attend in the Fall. 

After hearing this story, many people ask me why Alex never applied to a University of California school – especially since, as a public high school attendee in California in the top 5% of his class, he was guaranteed a spot at one of them. To me the answer is quite simple and straightforward: He did not want to go to college in California. He was never a big fan of Orange County and always loved the idea of being on the East Coast and experiencing the seasons. I held very similar feelings when I decided to go to school on the East Coast. So, at the time, it seemed reasonable to us that he did not want to apply, as he had no intention of going to a UC school or any school in California for that matter. Still, my husband and I deeply regretted allowing him to make that decision at the time of his rejection. Alex had held strong in his refusal to apply a college he did not want to attend, and we are so happy now that he maintained this conviction. It is almost certain that, had he not done so, he would not be studying at Oxford today.

As we desperately attempted to come up with next steps, our first instinct was to turn to Alex’s high school for help. However, his guidance counselor as well as his principal had very little to say about his predicament. His counselor’s proffered solution was for him to attend community college for two years and then transfer. While I do not at all judge, dislike, or discourage this option for students who wish to take it, it absolutely infuriated me at the time. Alex was in the top of his class, a National Merit and National AP scholar, with exceptional grades and test scores. It made no sense to me that his only possible option was a community college. I was livid.

However, there was an alternative path Alex could take: a gap year. While gap years are not uncommon in other countries, very few students choose that route here in the States. We did not know a single person who took a gap year, nor did we have any idea what Alex would do for the next year and a half before going to college, if he did choose to take one. We were hesitant and skeptical at best. 

Our son, on the other hand, absolutely loved the idea. It was the first bit of emotion we saw in him since those decisions came out in March, and it was bordering on delight. I laugh when I think about it now, because it is the reaction that we were all expecting to see when he opened his college acceptance letters months earlier. Once we presented the gap year option to Alex, he never considered anything else. 

For my husband and me, it was a much harder pill to swallow. We had no idea what he would do or how it would affect his application for the following Fall. My husband received his undergraduate degree from Harvard and spent several years interviewing high-school applicants who were hoping to attend the prestigious university. He was well aware of how difficult it was to get in. Given the outcome of his previous applications, our son would have to do something extraordinary to be accepted to the type of college he, and we, hoped he would attend. 

I began researching articles and reading books that were written on college admissions. It consumed my days. The more research and information I gathered, the grimmer the picture became. I slowly began to understand the nuances of what actually went into determining whether a spot was going to be offered to a particular candidate. I spent months reading essay after essay of former applicants that were extended offers to highly selective universities. I watched YouTube videos of students who excitedly shared their journeys to their dream school. I soon came to realize that despite all our son’s accomplishments, they did little to put him in a position to secure an offer from a highly selective institution. He was an exceptional student athlete from a well-to-do suburb in California attending a large and highly competitive public high school. There were tens of thousands of similar applicants vying for the same spot. He had a loving family, was in good health, and had no financial hardships. As things stood, he did not have a unique or compelling story.

Nonetheless, our son wanted to become an author. He loved creative writing and found it to be a strong outlet for him emotionally. Ideas and words flowed naturally for him. He could describe pretty much anything with effortless ease on paper, and he brought his vivid imagination to life in the form of short stories. To start off his gap year, he resolved to dedicate the time he never could in high school to writing, hoping that by some slim chance something he produced would find its way into publication. 

We were admittedly nervous since Alex was spinning a roulette. If he did not manage to accomplish anything tangible with his writing, then he would be in no different a position than he was when applying to schools a year prior, having wasted the precious few months his gap year gave him. Yet, in less than three months after he graduated high school, Alex managed to receive his first publication in a literary magazine, his name and work displayed alongside many seasoned and accomplished veteran authors. It was a beautiful moment, one that I will never forget. That day was the first time since March that we could see a glimmer of hope for Alex’s future. 

He did not stop there. Right after his publication, Alex inquired with various nonprofit organizations about founding and running a creative writing program for their youth. By some miraculous stroke of luck, a local chapter of the Boys and Girls Club – a national charity devoted to supporting children from challenged backgrounds – responded to Alex’s email, informing him that they had just received a grant to begin a creative writing program and were looking for someone to run it. It was an ambitious program whose end goal was to publish stories written by the organization’s elementary school students in children’s book format. 

We knew our son was an exceptional student and a gifted writer, but he was only eighteen and fresh out of high school. We had doubts that he would get hired for the job, thinking the Boys and Girls Club would opt for someone with more age and experience to adopt a teaching and administrative role with so much responsibility. Alex decided to apply anyway, and he was given an opportunity to interview shortly after. Then, to our joyous surprise, he was hired for the role. We were beyond thrilled for him. It was an amazing opportunity, and we all knew it. So, from the start of that next school year until its end, Alex would spend several hours a day at multiple school sites teaching young students a curriculum he designed that would help them find their voices and express themselves creatively – the only opportunity for many of them to do so. He was in his element – writing, teaching, working with children – and he loved every minute. It was a remarkable year for him, one that far surpassed any of our expectations. 

That Fall of 2019 during his gap year, the time came for Alex to go through college applications again. Having spent the previous six months obsessing over the application process, I sat down with him to create a plan. In terms of college programs and goals, not much had changed for him since the previous year. His grades and test scores were obviously still the same, as well as all his other qualifications from high school. However, in this round there would be an additional year to account for, which included his publication and newfound role with the Boys and Girls Club. Like the previous year, Alex chose only to apply to highly selective universities in the U.S., excluding the ones he had applied to the year before, but he also extended his consideration to schools in the United Kingdom, which of course included the University of Oxford. Once again, it was a relatively risky strategy, but having watched Alex grow and progress over the course of his gap year and seeing how determined he was to attend the school he wanted to attend, we could not help but be excited for him and fully supported his decision.

We were very uncertain how to navigate the university application process in the United Kingdom. There are significant differences between the U.S. and UK system that are worth noting here, especially as many U.S. students are unaware of the UK as a viable, and sometimes better, option for them.  In my opinion, these differences highlight the emphasis and focus of each country’s respective educational system. The argument over whether one is better than the other could be an entirely different article, as some of the differences have a profound impact on how applicants are viewed and what needs to be considered when applying. 

Let me begin by stating that all students in the UK are required to submit applications through a single centralized portal known as the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, or UCAS. While students here in the U.S. are permitted to apply to as many universities as they like (many through the similar Common App portal), the UK limits each student to a maximum of five universities to which they can apply. In addition, students are not permitted to apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, the country’s two most prestigious and selective schools, in the same year. Unlike here in the U.S. where many students apply to and enter college without declaring a major, students applying to schools in the United Kingdom must apply to a particular course of study and are not allowed to change subjects once admitted. In addition, UK universities have explicit minimum entry requirements for exam scores that students are aware of before applying. The application fees also differ significantly.  In 2022, an application to a UK university was £22 for one university (around $28) or £22.50 ($29) for a maximum of five schools. In the U.S., application fees are charged by the individual institution and can run upwards of $80-$100 for each school. 

According to the latest data coming from a January 21, 2022 report from the Common Application, over 1.1 million applicants applied to 853 colleges that use the Common App. The total number of applications has increased by 10 percent each year over the last two years. While some might find this to be good news, particularly the institutions on the receiving end of the application fees, the sheer volume of applications alone can only mean that each one gets a cursory review at best, just enough to see what information ticks the boxes of what they are looking for. Given the time frame between admissions deadlines and decisions, admissions officers lack the time and resources to provide a meaningful and holistic evaluation. A limit on applications would encourage prospective students to spend more time researching the universities and the programs they are interested in. Enforcing minimum entry requirements would also eliminate tens of thousands of unqualified applications, helping students determine which schools are actually viable options while granting admissions officers the breathing room they need to make more informed decisions. Students would be encouraged to apply only to the colleges that they are most interested in attending, and universities would arguably spend less time focusing on protecting their yield (a tactic used by some institutions by which they reject or waitlist highly qualified or exceptional candidates because they believe those students will ultimately choose to go somewhere else). 

Comprehensively evaluating the application processes of both countries only demonstrated to our son that the UK was the right place for him. Applying to UK schools requires a very different approach: a single personal statement for all five of the schools. No endless barrage of supplemental essays asking applicants to contrive reasons why they wish to apply to a particular school or to reflect upon extraneous personal experiences. One essay with a distinct academic focus, meant to demonstrate an applicant’s qualifications for their desired course. Of course, the caveat is much less of a focus on extracurriculars; UK universities are very much places of learning first, with nonacademic pursuits – while still valued and encouraged – taking a backseat. Having researched the process in depth, Alex was adequately prepared to draft a proper application to universities in the UK. 

Soon after, on Halloween Day in 2019, Alex received his first ever college acceptance: an unconditional offer from University College London, which made us all ecstatic. After all, this was the first time we experienced the celebration that was deprived from Alex in March. Not long after that, he received additional offers from King’s College London, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and—to our greatest thrill—was invited to interview with the University of Oxford. This meant that Alex would get to fly out to Oxford and spend three nights on campus, interviewing with the professors (or tutors, as they are called at Oxford) in the Classics and English departments. The interview process at UK universities is quite unlike those in the U.S. They are not character evaluations made by volunteering alumni, but rigorous experiences that give tutors a comprehensive picture of an applicant’s qualities, strengths, and potential, as well as offering the applicant a glimpse of how their education would take shape at the university. Not only that, but it is the tutors themselves who make the admissions decisions, not hired officers completely divorced from teaching as is the case in the U.S. This makes complete sense to me, given that the tutors are the ones actually teaching the students admitted to their programs. They are undoubtedly in the best position to determine which applicants have the best chance of succeeding in the program at the school to which they applied.

By the time Alex had finished his interviews at Oxford, he had only fallen in love with the school more. The process gave him a chance to experience firsthand what the school would offer him, and it gave him the opportunity to demonstrate to Oxford why he deserved to study there in a way that no U.S. application ever could. Clearly, such an opportunity was all that Alex needed, as the University of Oxford – his newfound and unequivocal dream school – extended an offer of acceptance to him in January.

By the time Spring of 2020 rolled around, our son had received offers from almost every school he applied to, including a wide spread of American universities. Interestingly, the only two schools he did not receive direct offers from (one a waitlist and one a rejection) were schools that were ranked significantly lower than the ones to which he had already been accepted. Arguably, he may have been a victim of “yield protection,” but we will never know for sure. Needless to say, Alex accepted his offer from Oxford as soon as he received it, unable to imagine spending the next four years of his life anywhere else. Altogether, it was a harrowing journey and a true test of our resolve, but it ended in triumph and happiness with Alex having found the only school that was truly right for him. 

That Fall of 2020, after we sent off Alex across the Atlantic to Oxford, our daughter Haley – then a senior in high school – applied Early Decision to her own dream school: NYU’s Stern School of Business. In 2020, NYU Stern was ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the number two business school in the country and had an acceptance rate of 5.6%. Haley’s test scores and grades were virtually identical to our son’s. She, too, was a National Merit Scholar, a National AP Scholar and had won numerous academic awards at her high school. However, we knew better than to rest on those laurels. 

When Alex was rejected two years prior, we made the decision to pull our daughter out of the public high school she was attending, which was also where Alex had graduated from. The classes there were overcrowded, and the students had zero support from their school counselors. We transferred Haley to a smaller, private high school, where she continued to excel academically and began focusing on developing her narrative for her college applications. She focused on activities and projects that would allow her to tell a story about herself and her goals in the hopes that she would be able to distinguish herself among the many other applicants vying for the same spots at the highly selective institutions she hoped to attend – something Alex was unable to do for his first round of applications, having lacked the experience of rejections across the board as a critical learning experience. 

Naturally, after having witnessed what her older brother went through two years earlier, Haley was under no illusion that attending her dream school was going to be an easy, or even possible, task. Nevertheless, she thoughtfully crafted her resume and judiciously chose how to spend her free time outside of her studies. In addition to getting a part-time job, she focused on projects that were important to her and ones that she could thoughtfully write about when submitting her application: founding a club charity devoted to supporting animal shelters, self-publishing a book of photography promoting dog adoption at her local rescue, leading various entrepreneurial efforts at her school. It was her hope that these projects would distinguish her from other applicants and make her an appealing candidate, exhibiting the various qualities outside of academics which U.S. colleges look for. 

Finally, in December of 2020, our daughter was accepted Early Decision to NYU Stern’s School of Business, achieving her dream and fulfilling the journey we initially envisioned for her brother when he first started applying to college. While the journey crossed multiple paths, encountered significant obstacles and required a great amount of devoted effort, my children’s college-application stories both end with them fulfilling their college dreams at two institutions in the world that were truly meant for them. In the end, I cannot say that I regret a thing.