It’s early decision season, and emails are going out across the country, some fulfilling your greatest dreams, and others dashing them. Early rejections bring about despondence, and doubt, and often hurt students’ motivation to continue particularly. There are a few short weeks before regular decision applications are due, what can you possibly do to improve your chances of admission?
In this article, we’re going to cover one such approach. Colleges do not tell you why you were rejected, but by going over and revising the materials you submitted with your Common App, you can improve your odds for the regular decision round. This doesn’t have to be a laborious process, and should only take you a few hours, but has the potential for major benefits. Let’s get started!
Revisiting Your Personal Statement
It has likely been a while since you last looked at your personal statement, so we recommend going over it again. As you read it with fresh eyes, try to answer the following questions:
- What does it tell the reader about you?
- What values do you display?
- What is the core message of the essay?
- What feelings does the essay invoke?
Once you have answered these questions, you can determine if your personal statement is doing what it should. A good personal statement should demonstrate who you are to admissions officers: your passions and values, your struggles and successes, and your story overall.
We generally don’t recommend scrapping your entire personal statement and writing it anew, but doing another editing pass to tighten the language and make sure you are saying everything you want to say. Check out our editing article for advice on how to revise your essay efficiently.
You should only rewrite your personal statement entirely if the themes or message are entirely counter to your purpose. If you are not the main subject, if the essay does not demonstrate your best traits, or if the essay doesn’t tell admissions officers anything about you, then you should consider actually rewriting major portions of the essay. We have another article on starting and ending your statement, since this is often the hardest part for students.
Reworking Your Activities List
The most common place we see students leaving points on the table is with their activities list. This is often the first thing admissions officers read, and gives them the first impression they have of you. A great activities list immediately elevates your application, while a lesser one can make your entire profile more forgettable. Here’s how to up-level your activities list.
First, make sure the order of your list makes sense. Your most impressive and time intensive activity should come first, and be grouped with related activities. If your biggest passion is robotics, for example, all of your extracurriculars involving robotics and computer science should be grouped together on your list.
By grouping similar activities together, they make more of an impression on readers, and are more likely to stick in their minds when shaping a class. Instead of a mass of activities, themes emerge. This student really likes robotics, but takes time for physical activity with track.
The next thing to rework is the descriptions of the activities themselves. The Common App allows you 150 characters, which is not a lot of space. You need to make sure you make the best possible use of the space allotted however. Here are our fast tips:
- Don’t repeat information. If your position title is president, don’t repeat that you’re the president in the description.
- Use active verbs to describe your roles and contributions in the position.
- Use concrete numbers whenever possible. How many people were you in charge of? How much money did you raise? These give a sense of the scale of your accomplishments.
- You can be flexible on grammar in order to meet the character count, so long as your description is still intelligible. This is not an essay, and does not need to meet the same standards.
- Avoid reusing descriptions and words within an entry.
This can be complicated, so here is an example of a poor entry for an activities list, and what that same entry can look like once it is revised. Which tells you more about the author? Which student seems more impressive, and better prepared for a college experience?
Example Activity Descriptions
As president of the robotics society, I ran meetings and organized competitions.
Ran meetings, delegated responsibilities. Raised $500 through bake sales and sponsorships to host school wide competition of 6 teams. Will repeat annually.
These are covering the same activity, but the second does a far better job covering what the student actually did as a member of the organization, and the concrete contributions they made to their school as a result. We recommend going back over your own activities list, and updating any descriptions that do not fully encapsulate all that you have accomplished.
Awards
The awards section is quite similar to the activities list, and should be optimized in the same way. Make sure your most impressive accomplishments are listed first, and that your descriptions of the awards fully capture your circumstances.
Remember that the Awards section does not need to be limited to academic achievements alone. Other official recognitions you have received can be included here, including scholarships, sports victories, and all other commendations.
Additional Information
The additional information section trips up many students, and we recommend what you have included there (if anything) while reviewing your Common App. The additional information section is not an additional essay, and is truly optional. You should use it if one of the following applies to you:
- Your schooling and academics have been majorly impacted by circumstances outside of your control, such as an illness.
- Your ability to participate in extracurriculars was impacted by needing to work or help out around the house to support your family.
- You have extracurriculars to describe that do not fit on the activities list.
- Other outside factors have significantly impacted your application or educational experience.
Note that there is currently a separate section for any disruptions Covid 19 caused in your education or extracurriculars.
You should not fill out the additional information section unnecessarily, and should limit yourself to only relevant information. Admissions officers already have a lot of reading to do in application season, and won’t thank you for adding to their workload unnecessarily. That said, if you do need additional context for your achievements, the additional information section is the place to provide it.
Other Details
The Common App is long, and it is possible to make careless errors, especially if you put off filling it out until the last minute. We recommend briefly going through the whole of it for a final check. See our guide to the Common App for specific advice on how to approach and fill out each section.
While it is unlikely there are any errors here which may have impacted your application, we find it is always better to be safe than sorry. Doing a final check through won’t take long, and it can give additional peace of mind.
Final Thoughts
Getting rejected sucks, no two ways about it. That said, this isn’t the end of your college journey. See our articles on what to do after getting rejected early, and whether ED II is right for you for more information on what you can do now to improve your chances of getting into a great school.
Applying to college is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone. If you want help, even now, you should know that it isn’t too late for Ivy Scholars to give your applications a boost. Schedule a free consultation today to learn how we can help. We have a depth of experience assisting students, and are always happy to hear from you!
