If you recently received a rejection from Bowdoin in the Early Decision round, you aren’t alone. The ED acceptance rate for Bowdoin is quite low, and admissions is extremely competitive. That doesn’t make it hurt less, though. An ED rejection is always gutting, as a dream school rejection is, to put it bluntly, the rejection of a dream. But it isn’t the end of your college dreams. You can still get into an exceptional school. To pull that off, you need to figure out what to do next.
In this post, we’re going to break down what may have gone wrong with your application and what you need to do next to increase your chances of admission to a dream school. First, though, let’s talk numbers.
Bowdoin received 14,000 applications for the Class of 2029, a record high. In the ED I and II rounds, though, they received about 2,000 applications each (meaning 10,000 or so were received Regular Decision). The resulting acceptance rate for Early Decision I and Early Decision II was 14.8%, more than double the overall acceptance rate of 6.8%. This didn’t make getting into Bowdoin easier ED, though. The acceptance rate was higher because the pool of applicants was smaller, not because the bar was lower.
This tells us that not getting into Bowdoin ED does not necessarily mean that you can’t get into an equally — or even more — competitive college. Pulling it off, though, is the tricky part.
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A rejection ED is a useful data point, but it doesn’t tell us everything about what’s possible next in your college admissions journey. Below, we’ll break down what you need to do now to make sense of your rejection, create a strong strategy for the Regular Decision, or even ED II, round, and execute on that strategy. First, step one.
Step One: Take a Break
What we call “Step One” may feel like a step backwards. It isn’t, we promise. You need to slow down for a moment, pause, and reset. Getting your ED application together and in was probably stressful. “At least it’s done,” you thought. But it isn’t done. Now you know the journey is continuing, and it doesn’t feel awesome. So, you need to do some self-care. Eat a bowl of ice cream, go for a hike, or spend hours at a local coffee shop with a close friend. Give yourself a day or two to not think about college stuff. This small pause will pay off big time when you get back to work.
Step Two: Strategize
Once you have had a chance to reset, it’s time to craft your ideal strategy for the Regular Decision/EDII round. That strategy does not need to be driven by your Bowdoin rejection, but it does need to be informed by it. Bowdoin could have deferred you. They didn’t. This tells us that they saw a significant mismatch between your application and what they are looking for. In order to get into a top-tier school, you need to address the underlying issues that can be fixed and create a plan for those that can’t.
Something that both can’t be fixed and is a frequent reason for an ED rejection from Bowdoin are grades and scores. Bowdoin is test-optional, so you may not have submitted scores. If you did submit scores and your SAT Reading and Writing section was below 750 or your math section was under 760, that’s an easy thing to point to as a potential culprit. Both of those numbers are the medians of accepted and enrolled students, and so the minimum of what Bowdoin looks for without extenuating circumstances. For the ACT, they have not published the most recent numbers, but they would really want to see a 34 or higher.
Whether or not you submitted scores, Bowdoin saw your grades — and they expect exceptional grades. Bowdoin is a community packed full of young people who truly love learning, and they want to see that in your transcript, not only in the grades you earned but also in how hard you pushed yourself.
If your application had the scores and grades, something else came into play. And, really, this other factor played a role regardless of the quantitative aspects of your application. What we are talking about here is your writing. We’ll break down the moves you need to make writing-wise in a second, but first let’s talk college list.
It’s possible that you had a back-up college list planned, but you probably didn’t think that you’d need to use it. Or, at least, it wouldn’t be so urgent as you’d have a deferral to follow up on. But you don’t have that, and you do need a full college list. This list needs to be recalibrated, too, to align with your grades and scores. We guide our students to listen to the numbers when finalizing their college list. If you don’t have the grades and scores for a school, it isn’t a reach. It’s an impossibility. Aim, instead, for 3-4 target schools, 3-4 safety schools, and 2-3 reaches. Do not add schools to this list that you would not attend if accepted. Applying to school you would not go to is a waste of time. Instead, focus on identifying schools at differing levels of competitiveness that you would actually attend.
Step Three: Essays
The next step is to actually write the applications, including rewriting your main common app essay for schools that accept it. You can’t change your grades or your scores. You can’t augment your activities list, and you can’t add awards. What you can control is how you tell your story.
College application readers have to say no to so many more applicants than they accept that they really need to stay in a “prove me wrong” headspace. The decision is “no” unless your application does something special for them. That’s exactly what we want your writing to do. We want to shift the admissions official from looking for reasons to say no to enthusiastically hunting down reasons to say yes.
The key to pulling this out is story. Telling compelling stories leads to stronger admissions outcomes, and we work with our students to create work that makes application readers pause and savor. If you are starting in on supplements alone, make sure that every piece of writing presents a new fact or feature about yourself.
Step Four: Ask For Help
The last step is to accept that there is a lot you don’t know about college admissions. You know yourself, and you know what you want. That is not the same, however, as knowing how to navigate college admissions for your best possible outcome. We highly advise that you speak with a trusted mentor, teacher, or school counselor to get an outside opinion on how you are positioning your application. Even when you don’t take their advice, having that additional perspective can be extremely helpful.
Every year, students come to us after an ED rejection looking for assistance. They want to know what went wrong, and to find a way into a dream school. We know from experience, then, that it is possible to get into an exceptional school after an ED rejection. What you do next, though, makes all the difference.
Getting into a dream school requires a strong strategy. Get yours.