If you are a fan of podcasts like Serial, documentaries like Making a Murderer, and the billions of similar wrongful convictions stories that have been chronicled across various mediums in recent years, then you are already somewhat familiar with the concept of an appeals process. Fortunately, if you are reading this article, it is more likely that you find yourself rejected by your first-choice college than incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit (silver linings everywhere!). Jokes aside, getting rejected from your dream schools is a legitimately painful emotional experience. It’s a lot to process, and while adults can tell you that “Everything happens for a reason” and that “Your backup school would be a dream school for many” (both true, by the way), you may still wish to take one final Hail Mary which brings us the subject of how to write an appeal letter for college.
Can you appeal a college rejection? At some schools, the answer is “Yes”–at others–the answer is “No.” Let’s dive in and discuss whether this is the right choice for you and, if so, the logistics of penning and filing an appeal.
If you’re going to appeal, you’ll want to do so within days of receiving the rejection. Upon releasing admissions decisions, colleges are already shoulder-deep in the creation of their freshman class. As such, schools often put a limit on how late they will accept an appeals letter. For example, Georgia Tech, UCLA, and the University of Maryland all have a deadline of April 15. Even if a school doesn’t publicly state a specific date, try to expedite this process as much as possible.
Not all schools consider appeals letters from rejected applicants. Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton do not allow the submission of an appeals letter under any circumstances. It is much more common for public schools to offer a formal appeals process. However, many private schools do offer some level of guidance on their website as well. A simple Google search of “appeals letter _____ University” will get the job done.
The basis for appeal should be clear and able to be presented in a concise manner and should be made by the applicant, not their parents. Further, the basis for appeal has to be substantive and should not include any of the following all-too-common arguments/actions:
This is pretty obvious, but we know from experience that this next nugget of advice still needs to be stated explicitly: Don’t accuse the admissions committee of being unfair or not doing their due diligence the first time (e.g. “I know how overworked admissions officers are and this may have caused you to rush through my application review…”). Be humble, polite, gracious, respectful, and extremely grateful for their time in reviewing the appeal.
Keep in mind that the chances of a successful appeal are less than 1%. Therefore, while spending time crafting a quality appeals letter can be worthwhile if the core of your case for admission is strong, don’t forget the statistical reality of this pursuit. Getting overly bogged down in appeals can end up being detrimental to other areas of your life. This includes working on deciding which of the colleges that you have been admitted into is the best fit. Also continue to finish out your high school career on a strong note, enjoy your extracurriculars, and savor your final months living with family and hanging out with your friends.
As applicants and as the parents of those applicants it is perfectly normal to, upon word of a college rejection, exclaim, “This must be a mistake!” While it likely isn’t an actual error, the rejection of many highly-qualified applicants from the nation’s top schools is an unfortunate phenomenon of modern American society. When you review the Hardest Colleges to Get Into, you notice more and more prominent schools with 5-10% acceptance rates. Each year, those schools reject 90%-95% of those who apply, the majority of whom can make a sincerely terrific case that they should have been accepted.
In sum, if you have a genuine case for an appeal, go ahead and write an appeal letter to college. However, the more important action will be evaluating which prospective college can do the most for you.
If you are looking for advice on how to write a financial aid appeal letter, visit this previous post. If you’re looking to appeal a homicide conviction, we recommend reaching out to a podcaster or documentarian near you.
Dave has over a decade of professional experience that includes work as a teacher, high school administrator, college professor, and independent educational consultant. He is a co-author of the books The Enlightened College Applicant (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) and Colleges Worth Your Money (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).
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