If you recently received a rejection from Tufts in the Early Decision round, we know that it can be a punch to your stomach. Tufts is one of those interesting schools that has had a rapidly shrinking acceptance rate that mirrors the plummeting percentages at Ivies. As a result, Tufts, which was once a great target or even safety school for strong students with high scores and well-expressed passions has become a reach — even in the ED round — for many of the best and brightest. The overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was only .
Applying to Tufts Early Decision remains a way of accessing a slightly elevated acceptance rate. Their gift to applicants, one could say, for committing to them in advance. This isn’t because it is easier to get in, ED, though. Rather, it’s because you are being seen first and all of the seats in the class are open, whereas RD applicants enter the theater with many of the seats already filled.
What happens next, though? You weren’t accepted, and you weren’t deferred. Below, we’ll think through what may have gone wrong with your application and give you the best next steps for turning disappointment around into a dream school.
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Step One: Take a Break
First, you need to take a deep breath. Ideally, more than one. Being rejected ED, whether you knew Tufts was a far reach or you thought it was a solid target, can feel earth-shattering. Before you can rebuild and plan your next steps, you need to recover. Take a few days to re-find center. Go on a long walk, binge watch a fun show, eat a favorite treat. Do something just for you — and, ideally, share it with a friend. Then, you are ready for the next step.
Step Two: Strategize
We can’t know why you were rejected from Tufts. We don’t know you, and we haven’t seen your application. There are, however, a few key possibilities.
The first is quantitative: your grades and scores. Tufts sets , and the academics they expect are Ivy-caliber. A strong SAT for Tufts is 1540+, a strong ACT is a 35. You can get in with lower scores, but it’s harder to wiggle through the grade window. Tufts expects your grades to be super strong, especially in the subjects that you want to pursue in college.
If your grades or scores were low for Tufts, that’s a good signal towards why you weren’t deferred. Quantitatively strong applicants with uncompelling writing and activities regularly secure a deferral, so a rejection tends to point to a mismatch between what Tufts wants to see academically and what your application offered.
If you had scores and grades that were undeniably strong for Tufts, something else went wrong — and it was probably your writing.
In college admissions, how you tell your story is, ultimately, as important as the story you have to tell.
Doing a ton of fancy stuff and having a long list of awards means nothing if you can’t convey those successes in a compelling way. Even if you don’t have a high-octane activities section, and you have never won an award in your life, you can write an application that makes admissions officers swoon. But your application didn’t deliver on that potential, so now it’s time to fix it.
Before you can start writing a fresh essay and diving into supplement, though, you need to finalize your college list. Maybe you had a college list before, or you may have dreamed of being “one and done” with Tufts. If you don’t already have an EA acceptance that you are happy with, you need to rethink your college list to ensure that you have a great school to attend come spring.
A well-balanced college list needs 3-4 safety options, 3-4 targets, and 2-3 reaches. If your grades were a strong match for Tufts, you don’t necessarily need to focus on less selective colleges — you just need to tell better stories. If your grades were below the thresholds Tufts looks for, though, you need to adjust what you are considering a target. It may be that schools you conceptualized of as targets are actually reaches. This can be frustrating, but the best next step is to process it, accept it, and adjust accordingly so that you can get to the fun part: the writing.
Step Three: Essays
As we’ve said already, words are game-changers in the college admissions process. The most perfect applicant can be completely ruined by bad writing, and a weaker applicant can soar to an acceptance through story storytelling. We work with our students to do just that, creating written work that helps their applications rise up out of the mass of applications.
If you are going it alone on your applications, there are a few things to keep in mind as you rewrite.
First, the only person worth being is you. You need to silence any mental noise questioning whether you are smart enough or impressive enough and focus, instead, on being you. When students begin trying to sound ‘intellectual’ or write to appeal to colleges, it nearly always comes off completely the opposite. Focus on representing who you are, not some idea of what colleges want to see.
Next, remember that story is what sells. If a supplement starts something like, “I want to go to X because,” that is bad. Toss it, and start over. Capture the reader’s attention with short opening stories that lead to impactful exploration of a theme or focus, whether it’s your passion for biological research or contemporary Canadian literature.
Finally, keep it simple. We are hearing a lot of students express anxiety over wanting to sound smart that runs parallel to fear that it’ll look like they used AI. Use words that you know and use in your normal life and writing. Structure sentences in ways that are logical, employing punctuation that truly helps the sentence communicate its purpose (you don’t get bonus points for semi-colons). Most importantly, do your own work. You are the best equipped person on planet earth to represent you, and certainly far more qualified than a computer program.
Step Four: Ask For Help
As you dig into the Regular Decision process, remember to look up every now and then and look around you. Noticing when to ask for help, and who to ask, can be crucial to attaining admission to a dream school after an ED rejection. We support students through doing their best work to get into many of the best schools. Other places you can look for help include at school, working with a trusted teacher, at your local library, where they often have college essay workshops, or from a family friend whose employment revolves around the written word.
Do not, however, make big decisions based on the assertions of a kid who got in last year, a sibling who applied to college at the height of COVID, or a parent who did four applications 20 years ago. While they are often enthusiastic about sharing what they think to be true, they aren’t the best resources for expertise.
As you approach the next set of deadlines, remember the being you is your superpower. An ED rejection does not define you, and there are great things to come if you do the work.
Recovering from an ED rejection benefits from a team. Get yours.