If you applied to Barnard Early Decision, you know what you want. As an all-women’s college, it has built in filters that guarantee that every ED applicant has thought long and hard about their collegiate future. What you didn’t want, though, was a rejection.
Historically, Barnard heavily prioritizes Early Decision applicants. They aim to accept (and sometimes ) of the first-year class ED, despite only receiving of applications in the Early Decision round in the most recently reported year. The expectations aren’t lower for ED applicants, but one’s chances are higher in the ED round. This tells us that something in your application didn’t match up with what Barnard wanted to see.
In this post, we’re going to break down what may have gone wrong with your Barnard application and lay out your best next steps for success in the Regular Decision (or ED II!) round.
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There are four steps you need to start taking now to ensure strong outcomes in the Regular Decision (or ED II) round.
Step One: Take a Break
This may sound silly given the stress of college admissions, but we are very serious about slowing down — for a moment, at least. The college application process is not a chill time. It’s stressful, it’s grinding, and we can’t blame you if you are completely over it. The problem is it isn’t over yet. You have to apply to schools Regular Decision, now, and you’ll also need to rethink a lot of the approach you employed for Barnard (more on that to come). To prepare yourself to do your best work, you need to rest. Take two or three days to do things that you love, connect with friends, and get good sleep. Then, it’s time to dig back in.
Step Two: Strategize
Before you can start your applications, though, you need to finalize your college list. Maybe you have a college list already that was supposed to serve as a Barnard back-up, or perhaps you never put a list together because you didn’t think you’d need to anyway. Either way, a Barnard rejection ED suggests that you may need to reassess what truly is a target, safety, or reach for you.
To determine this, the first step is to do an application autopsy. Why, we want to explore, didn’t you at least get deferred? The most obvious potential possibility is quantitative. Barnard expects impeccable grades and SAT or ACT scores to match. The middle 50% for SAT scores of was 1470-1540, and on the ACT it was 32-35. That means that, yes, 50% were within that range, but 25% were above it.
If you submitted an application with the grades and scores to measure up to Barnard’s expectations, the problem is in how you told your story. The truth is that there is no perfect activities list, or leadership resume, that gets you into a school like Barnard. What makes the difference is how you tell your story. This is also where we most frequently find an application has gone off the rails. You can be the most amazing applicant in the world, but if your application doesn’t tell that story it simply won’t work.
In Step 3, we’ll get into fixing the written parts of your application. First, you need to right-size your college list. That means adding schools, and making sure they are the right ones. You need 3-4 true targets where you are firmly at the top end of the middle 50% of recently accepted students on GPA and scores. Then there should be 3-4 safety schools, where you are above that middle 50%, and 2-3 reaches. The thing with reaches, though, is that you should still be in the middle 50%, just towards the lower end. A school where you are below the middle 50% and don’t have a major connection or ‘in’, is not a good reach to have on your list.
That may be a major bummer, and a hard pill to swallow. We get it, but it’s also the way the game works.
Step Three: Essays
Whatever the issue was with your Barnard application, the writing needs work. Applying to Barnard is very specific, and much of the work you didn’t won’t cross over to schools that aren’t all-women’s. So, it’s time to write.
We advise students to start over from scratch after an ED rejection. This can be painful, but it’s also necessary. Getting outstanding results requires bold action, and starting with a blank page is one of the boldest things you can do in this moment.
As you begin to brainstorm, remember that what will get you into a top choice school is really, at its heart, one thing: story. Telling compelling stories that force the reader to connect with you as a human is critically important. This is because application readers work really hard, like really hard, to not care that much about the person behind the application that they, in most cases, have to reject. If they care, saying no is hard. If they don’t, it’s simple.
But we want them to care. That means connecting with the reader on a human level that they can’t coast past.
We aren’t just talking about the main college essay here, either. Every single supplement, from 500 words all the way down to 50, should tell a story. Sometimes it’ll be fully developed, and other times it’ll simply hint towards something in your activities section.
Step Four: Ask For Help
If all this talk about rewriting your essays and rebuilding your college list is overwhelming, we get it. It’s a lot to pile on your plate when you also need to be keeping your grades high and continuing with your activities and leadership roles. That’s why this is a great moment to ask for help. Maybe your college counselor at school gave you feedback on your Barnard application, or a teacher let you know what they felt wasn’t working. But if you didn’t get hands-on and on-going support, you are missing out on the personal touch that can push an application from a maybe to a strong yes.
Applying to college is stressful, especially after an ED rejection. We make it easy. Learn more.