If you recently received a rejection decision from Carnegie Mellon in the Early Decision round, you probably don’t feel too great. It’s frustrating when plans don’t work out, and you almost certainly thought you’d at least have the gentle reassurance of a deferral. Instead, you’ve got a letter of rejection in one hand and the need for a plan in the other. If you feel frustrated or overwhelmed, that makes sense. Don’t let yourself get wrapped up in that feeling, though, because we can help.
The acceptance rate for Carnegie Mellon has plummeted in recent years, dropping from 15.4% for first-years enrolling in the fall of 2019 to less than 12% for students enrolling in the Fall of 2024. Yes, this was only a 3%ish drop, but it’s actually a massive deal. Carnegie Mellon has been a great school for a long time. But with an acceptance rate at, or above, 15%, it was a strong target for outstanding students. It wasn’t a safety school for anyone, but there were students who could nearly count on it. Now, with an acceptance rate in the sub-12% realm, it’s shifted into a different world. Instead, it’s only a target for a tiny fraction of applicants, including the Ivy League and Ivy-adjacent-minded students. Those students are applying to Carnegie Mellon in larger volumes as those schools report acceptance rates under 5%. This is driving the acceptance rate for Carnegie Mellon even lower.
This may not make you feel better, but it is important information as we figure out what you need to do next. In this post, we’re going to break down what may have happened with your application that led to a rejection, and what you need to do now to still get into an outstanding school.
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There are four distinct steps that you need to start taking today — seriously — to improve your chances of strong acceptances in the Regular Decision and EDII round. So, let’s get into it.
Step One: Take a Break
This first one is also the hardest for many highly-motivated students. We need you to slow down. We are not joking here, and if you’re response is “I don’t need to do that,” it’s actually even more important for you than for students who don’t require convincing. We’re about to tell you to toss a lot of hard work and start over. Doing that isn’t as simple as deleting drafts. You need to reset your mind. So, take a few days. Relax, sleep, and read something just for fun. Then, it’s time to get back to work.
Step Two: Strategize
The next step is to craft your strategy for the remainder of the college application process. Before you can do that, though, you need to have an understanding of what happened with Carnegie Mellon. Of course, we haven’t seen your application so we can’t offer specifics on your case, but there are some big picture possibilities.
If you chose not to submit SAT or ACT scores with your Carnegie Mellon application as part of the test-flexible policy, you aren’t alone. For the fall of 2024, 75% of accepted and enrolled applicants submit an SAT or ACT score — so 25% of accepted students didn’t submit scores at all. Some accepted students do not submit scores, but having the choice over whether to submit scores has driven the average scores of accepted students up. As of the most recent Common Data Set reporting, the 50th percentile of accepted and enrolled students who submitted scores reported an SAT of 1540 or an ACT of 35.
What you couldn’t choose whether to submit or not, though, were your grades. As mandatory pieces of your app, these are highly reflective of the bar Carnegie Mellon is expecting strong applicants to meet. For students entering in the fall of 2024, 96.8% were in the top tenth of their graduating class and 85.2% had a GPA over 3.75. Importantly, though, more than half that group had a GPA of 4.0 on a 4.0 scale. The average high school GPA of first-years was an impressive 3.89.
If your grades did not measure up to these averages, that is an obvious culprit in the hunt for “why rejection?” With such steep competition for spots in the first-year class, Carnegie Mellon does not have a need for accepting students who aren’t exceptional academically. But if you do have the grades and scores, something else went sideways.
Most often, we find that the additional issue can be found in the essays. Basically, you weren’t convincing. Let’s fix that.
Step Three: Essays
If you have the grades and scores to get into a school, there isn’t a recipe for the perfect activities list to get you into a school. Often, students who don’t get into a college Early Decision think that it is that they didn’t have a certain activity or leadership role, or even award. That actually isn’t what makes a difference, though. We’ve had students get into the most prestigious colleges in the country with every type of activities list. What makes the difference, then, isn’t what you do as much as how you write about it.
Winning college essays tell compelling stories. They don’t brag or boast. Instead, they illustrate who you are and what characteristics you’d bring to Carnegie Mellon through imagery-heavy stories that truly draw the application reader into your life and dreams for the future. Writing this kind of essay isn’t hard, but it also isn’t easy. Most high school writing assignments are the opposite of a personal essay. This poses a problem when a senior tries to write a college essay or supplement, because the type of writing that makes for a strong supplement isn’t the kind of writing that you’ve been doing.
We work with our students to not just craft strong essays for the college application process, but also to build the muscles to write this type of work when we aren’t there cheering them along.
Step Four: Ask For Help
The last step is often the hardest for highly-motivated students. You need to accept that, while you are an expert on yourself, you are not a college admissions expert. There are things that you are absolutely the best at when it comes to representing yourself, but having someone in your corner to help can make all the difference.
Basically, let’s get you into a great school.
When it comes to college admissions, we know what we are doing — especially after early disappointment. Learn more.