You had a plan. You would apply to Johns Hopkins Early Decision, get in, and be done with the college application process. Or, if you didn’t get in ED, you’d at least be deferred. A deferral is far from an acceptance, of course, bouncing you into the Regular Decision pool, but Johns Hopkins would still be in the mix. However, that isn’t what happened. Now you are grappling with a rejection ED and trying to figure out what comes next.
In this post, we’re going to break down what you need to be doing now, following a rejection from Johns Hopkins in the Early Decision round, to set yourself up for a dream school acceptance.
We help strong students bounce back from ED rejections. Learn more.
There are four steps that you need to be taking now to get into a top-tier school in the Regular Decision (and EDII, if you choose) cycles.
Step One: Take a Break
First you need to find time to slow down. Yes, senior year is crazy busy. You have classwork, leadership, commitments, and now a pile of writing to do. However, we’re going to ask you to do something a little wild: Stop doing anything. Giving yourself a day or two to slow down is extremely important if you want to do your best work on the applications still to come. Go on a long walk, gossip with good friends, or binge watch a show you’ve had on your list. Then, it’s time to get back to work.
Step Two: Strategize
Before you can start submitting Regular Decision (or EDII) applications, you need to finalize where you will be applying to. Of course, you probably have an idea of what schools you’d like to prioritize after your earlier college search work, but that doesn’t mean that your list is really calibrated for who you are.
Johns Hopkins accepted students in the Early Decision I round for the Class of 2029, and continue to prioritize ED applications for admission. Receiving a rejection from Johns Hopkins Early Decision tells us that there is something (or multiple somethings) in your application that didn’t work. The most common issue is quantitative. Your application may have been compelling narratively, but perhaps it didn’t hit the mark academically. The average GPA of recently accepted students, after all, is nearly impeccable at . There is not much room, then, for a dip during sophomore year or an outlier in junior spring. They expect excellence across the board.
The same holds true for . If your grades were on the cusp, scores that proved your academic chops were critical. Submitting an ACT under 34 or an SAT under 1540 would have put you in the bottom quarter of accepted applicants, which is not a great place to start when making your case for admission.
So, when re-approaching your college list, you need to keep this in mind — and you may need to recalibrate your list to reflect the realities of the quantitative facts of your application. A target is a school where you are squarely within the middle 50% of recently accepted students in regard to grades and scores. For a reach, you should still be within that middle 50%, but towards the lower end. And for your safety schools, you should be above the middle 50%.
All this may mean removing some schools from your list and adding others. Instead of mourning what isn’t a great fit, celebrate the opportunities and set yourself up for success with your next most important tool: the writing.
Step Three: Essays
In our years of working with students in an everchanging college admissions landscape, there is one thing that we have found holds true: great writing creates outstanding outcomes. The written pieces of your application are the most important parts still within your control. You can’t change your grades, scores, or activities, but you can hone the stories you use to tell the application readers about what you love and why you want to pursue a certain subject in college.
We work with students to tell these types of stories that make a difference, but you can also get started on your own. Put aside what you think sounds ‘impressive’, and refocus on showing who you truly are. It is less important that the application readers think you’ve done a lot of fancy stuff, than that they want to get a coffee with you after you move onto campus. If you aren’t likeable, they won’t let you in. And if you pull together writing that connects with the reader, they’ll look for a spot for you in the first-year class instead of looking for a reason to say no.
Start this process by tossing what you’ve done already. That isn’t because it’s all bad — we haven’t seen it, after all. However, starting fresh is a powerful move. Use it.
Step Four: Ask For Help
The final step is the hardest for a lot of students. You want to get into college on your own effort, and asking for help can feel like relenting ownership of your college application experience. Let us be really clear here: asking for help is one of the bravest, boldest, and smartest things that you can do in this moment. We can help you, of course. You can also seek out assistance from trusted teachers and school counselors. We do not, however, recommend workshopping your essays with friends or asking parents who last worked on an application two decades ago for college advice. They are fabulous for support and encouragement, but not experts in the college admissions field.
Getting into an outstanding school is possible after an Early Decision rejection from Johns Hopkins, but you need to thread the needle of school fit, storytelling, and where you feel you can thrive. So reset, relax, and get back into it!
With the right team in your corner, you can get into a dream school after a rejection. Learn more.