College Admission Officers Are Sharing 29 Of The Worst Reasons Why They Didn't Accept A Student

A close friend of mine works admissions at a prestigious University. His latest story that he told me was of a application that he denied where they got a perfect score on the SAT, but submitted 2 essays with 5 sentences total between the two. My friend considered it a waste of his time and portrayed a lack of effort.

I know for a fact that many universities go on Facebook/Instagram and look at applicants profiles.

This one kid wrote a letter about volunteering at hospital and then didn't get cookies one day and said it sucked.

An admissions officer at W&M once told me about this student who had submitted a beautifully written essay. It was not only well written but emotional, and spelling- and error-free – overall, a fantastic essay. The admissions officer was just about ready to accept her right there when she saw that at the end of the essay, the student had written, 'And that's why I want to go to UVA.

My cousin* attended sports science. His grades where all very good. But on the physical exam, it was stated that branded clothes weren't allowed. They had to wear a white T-shirt and black shorts without a brand. He didn't know and was wearing a nike t-shirt, with the logo showing very small on his shirt. He got send away for disregarding the rules. My aunt was there and would get another t-shirt in the store immediately, but they didnt approve. So he didn't attend that universitiy

Watching medical school applicants come through my school has been very interesting. I'm not on the admissions team but have been a student interviewer. It's really interesting to see what people will do, even at that high level.

Seeing someone fall asleep during a presentation on the curriculum. Seeing someone get up during a 15 minute talk by the Dean of the school, and go to get things out of their bag. Hearing someone ask if they have to attend the whole interview day.

You would think you wouldn't see these rookie errors at such a high level.

Worked in a graduate admissions office in college. We once turned away a woman who would call the office every day, to ask us questions about the program that we were not able to disclose (average gpa/gmat of class accepted so far, job placement rate - this was a brand new program. the first class hadn't even graduated yet. - for this year, etc.)

Eventually, we rejected her because her resume wasn't as built out as some of our other applicants (I guess this is different for grad school), though we did look at her application with a slight bias...

She flipped a switch and actually came into our office to scream at us.

I know some schools will reject people if their grades are too high, they have too many extra curriculars etc. The thought being that these students are basically perfect and will probably get into an Ivy League school; what is the point of accepting them if they aren't likely to attend?

A variety of felonies, from armed robbery to manslaughter. On the application is a check box question: "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" What it doesn't tell you is that not only are you unlikely to be admitted if you check yes, but felony convictions are an automatic disqualification by the "review committee". But the other half of the story is, if you check the no box, it's not like we run a background check on you. So I'm confident there are quite a few convicted felons walking around our campus right now.