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 30%.
Remember, though, that the pool of applicants applying Early Decision includes students who know that they are probably in even before applying, such as recruited athletes, children of employees, and others who have very strong ties to Amherst that go far beyond a standard applicant. So, while the ED acceptance rate is elevated far above the overall 9% acceptance rate for the Class of 2028, that boost in odds isn’t applied evenly across students who submit their applications Early Decision. This doesn’t lessen the string of the rejection, of course, but hopefully it provides some useful context. What matters most now, though, is what you do next.
In this post, we’re going to break down the steps that you need to start now to ensure that the rest of your college application process is smooth sailing with exceptional outcomes.
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After an Early Decision rejection, it can be easy to go into a tailspin. Students and parents freak out trying to figure out what went wrong, and what comes next. The best approach, though, is calm, cool, and collected. It’s about assessing where weak points may have been without obsessing to the point of distraction. We break your next moves down into four steps.
Step One: Take a Break
First, sleep. Seriously, get a ridiculously long night of luxuriously deep sleep. Staying up late scrolling on TikTok or watching 90s sitcoms does not actually recharge your brain — it’s a drain. In this moment, you need to recharge. So, sleep. Eat a bowl of ice cream or a big salad with all the expensive veggies. Do something that feels decadent, like a long walk with your dog and your phone of “do not disturb.” And give yourself 3 days.
Three days really is the sweet spot for processing disappointment, resting, recharging, and preparing yourself to launch into the next chapter of your college admissions process. You will make your best decisions, and do your best work, after a rest. Don’t let this period drag on past those three days, though, as there is a lot to do in not much time.
Step Two: Strategize
Step two is creating a new strategy for getting into an amazing college. You had a strategy before, but it probably rode on the idea that you would get into Amherst early. You didn’t have to think too much about what others schools were on your list, because you wouldn’t have to submit them anyway — right? But now you do, and that means reevaluating what is possible and practical.
You do not know, after all, why Amherst rejected you. You can guess. Maybe it is a quantitative problem, like that your grades or scores were below the middle 50% of recently accepted students. Or maybe the issue is how you positioned yourself, like if you said you wanted to major in something that you haven’t pursued beyond normal course offerings.
Whatever you think the reason might be, you can assume that you aren’t able to figure out the whole picture. College admissions isn’t a mathematical formula; it is personal. This is why a student can get into a school like Amherst with a really low acceptance rate, and then be rejected by a bigger school with a higher acceptance rate. Getting in requires more than simply checking the right boxes.
That is really important to remember as you take a fresh look at your college list. Don’t wipe everything off with an acceptance rate close to the Amherst acceptance rate. But do strive for balance. Unless you have an Early Action acceptance under your belt to act as a safety net, you need to have a list that is heavily weighted towards targets and foundation, or safety, schools.
You should also seriously consider an EDII option. The list of schools that offer EDII is much shorter than for the first round of Early Decision, but EDII is still a powerful way of emphasizing your interest in a college. If you love Amherst, strong EDII options include Bates College, Bryn Mawr College, Colby College, and Dickinson College. There are over a dozen more that are worth considering if Amherst was your ideal, and we help student navigate disappointment, pivot to a new dream, and execute on a successful EDII application.
Step Three: Essays
In addition to grades and scores not being up to Amherst expectations, it is possible that a reason for your rejection lies in the stories that you told in your application. When students come to us after an ED rejection, the first thing we want to see are their essays. We can’t change their transcript, but we can help rethink and reshape the stories they are telling to amplify what is awesome about them.
The job of an application reader is hard. For Amherst, they have to say “no” to far more students than they accept. To do this efficiently, they need to stay in their heads, thinking logically and pragmatically. We want to shake up their day a bit, though. Instead of reading from their head, we want application readers to be compelled to read from their heart.
As you rewrite your main college essay — which, at minimum, definitely needs an overhaul — and tackle new supplements, remember that this whole application process is really an exercise in storytelling. If your story really works, a rejection is rare. We find that even students who are on the cusp academically can achieve a deferral or waitlist decision with a powerful story, so a rejection ED does signal to us that there is something not working in the story. Now is the time to fix it.
Step Four: Ask For Help
Maybe you had loads of help on your Amherst application, so step four sounds a little unnecessary. The truth is, though, that you need to be getting the right help for you. All feedback is not good feedback when it comes to college applications, and we frequently work with students who felt super confident in an application that we (gently) let them know needs to be completely redone.
We highly advise that students rejected ED from Amherst branch out to bring in new, expert ideas and perspectives that will help them create college applications that work. Using the same essays and approaches for EDII and RD sets you up to receive the same results. So, something needs to change.
Every year, students come to us after a disappointing ED decision wishing that they had known better and done better. We help them get back on their feet and into a dream school.
Applying to college can comes with bumps in the road. We smooth them out. Learn more.