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.

Any rejection is upsetting, but college rejections — especially in the Early Decision round — have a particular sting to them. There is so much hope, optimism, and hard work wrapped up in college applications, that having a dream school like Northwestern shut down that potential future is frustrating, to put it lightly.

If you recently received a notice of rejection from Boston College in the Early Decision round, that is a major downer. It wasn’t the plan. You picked Boston College for Early Decision because it is a dream school that seemed feasible. You didn’t assume you would get in, but you also thought that you had a solid chance to at least be deferred. Unfortunately, this ED rejection tells us that Boston College didn’t assess your application as “.” In this post, we’re going to break down what this means, why it may have happened, and what you need to do next to get into a dream school.

Receiving a rejection from Williams in the Early Decision round is more than frustrating. For many, it is devastating. Williams is a highly-selective school, and it is also a self-selecting one. Students who apply to Williams want Williams, even more so when they decide to apply ED. We’ll go into some numbers in a moment, but the chances of getting into Williams are low enough that it isn’t a safe ED option for anyone. So, what does a rejection tell us and what should you do next?

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.

Being rejected Early Decision from Middlebury stings. Yes, it’s a super competitive school, but you didn’t apply thinking that you’d be rejected. Using your Early Decision I for Middlebury was probably a measured choice. You thought hard about it, and it didn’t work out how it was supposed to. What you do next will determine whether you move into a dorm at a dream school in the fall.

If you received a rejection from Amherst’s Early Decision round, you are probably feeling pretty frustrated. You did all the right things. You took advanced courses, pursued leadership roles, and worked to craft a strong application. And yet, it didn’t work. For first-year students entering in the fall of 2024, the Early Decision acceptance rate was just under .  

If you recently received a rejection letter from Columbia College or the Fu School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) in the Early Decision round, you are in your right to be quite upset. You worked hard, you did the ‘right’ things, and you took a big swing — and it didn’t pay off. An ED rejection can be deeply upsetting because it also used up your most powerful tool in the college admissions process. Early Decision offered your best chance of getting into a top school, and you can’t get that back. In this post, we’re going to dig into what may have gone awry with your Columbia application and what you can do now to improve your chances of getting into a dream school. First, let’s break down what may have happened with Columbia.