BRITTANY MASCHAL CONSULTING

UGA continued to serve up a competitive EA round, especially for out-of-staters. Look for other public flagships to do the same again this year (we’re looking at you UF, UNC, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and of course the more selective UCs).

The UGA admissions blog is a must-follow, but if you want to make even more sense out of data they shared, head to Edison Prep’s website.

It is crucial for students to maintain excellent grades in rigorous classes, raise their GPA if possible, and consider the impact of test scores; at schools like UGA, and we would argue MANY other schools—even those that are test-optional—they matter.

Academic rigor continues to be far more important than extracurricular activities, with the average EA applicant (not admitted student!) having 9+ AP/IB classes by graduation.
Senior Associate Director of UGA Admissions David Graves posted a quote on the UGA Blog that we still sincerely wish were included at the top of every UGA mailer: “When parents or students say that their schedule is already so busy with other activities that it is tough to handle challenging courses…instead of dropping rigorous courses, maybe an activity could be dropped.” We tell students daily that no one has ever been ever rejected for having too low of a “play practice score,” but millions of applications are rejected each year for low GPA, low rigor, and/or low SAT/ACT scores. Activities matter if and once your core academic metrics are in the right ballpark.

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With the amount I post on how to deal with failure, rejection, and disappointment, you’d think all of your students rack up a long list of denials! That’s not the case, and since this blog is widely read outside of our client base, I post what’s on my mind around this process broadly. I know this time of year is tough on families with high hopes in this process, so I post about the tough parts.

A want to share a wonderful ar ticle by Adam Grant. As someone who has been rejected an appropriate amount, How to Bounce Back From Rejection is something I believe I know well. However, it is not something you can really teach or prepare a student for when it comes to the college process. There will be some disappointment and it hurts. Sometimes it comes before you submit apps, for example, hearing that you don’t have a competitive profile for a certain school. But often it comes later, once that sentiment is cemented by a deferral or rejection.

What Grants points out that I hope all students can keep in mind is rejection often happens because of a lack of fit. In college admissions, you don’t control what a school decides is the fit they need at any given moment in the process. It is not entirely personal or a reflection of your whole self as a student, person, friend, classmate, son, daughter, etc. Students, please remember:

We are more than the bullet points on our resumes. We are better than the sentences we string together into a word salad under the magnifying glass of an interview. No one is rejecting us. They are rejecting a sample of our work, sometimes only after seeing it through a foggy lens.

And I hope parents also do not take a college rejection personally. I know many of you who were/are deep in the process; where your student goes to college has nothing to do with and says nothing about your success as a parent.

“When someone rejects you, it helps to remember that there’s another you.” Hang in there!

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early action decisions

Public Flagships Are Hard to Get Into!

Rejection and Lack of Fit