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Appeal A Rejection Decision
Started by BasesofHumanity
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Not me. I appealed, but no interview. My own state school, too. Actually I never even got a reply to my appeal. 🙁
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i just got rejected by UCSF after being put on hold for an interview. i don't think i can appeal, can i? the guy at the office said the last interview would take place next thursday...
N
njbmd
BasesofHumanity said:
Hi there,
At my institution, successful appeals have been the result of: mistakes in documents submitted to the school or mistakes made by the committee based on documents submitted to the school. In one case, the GPA was transmitted incorrectly. In another case, one applicants file was mixed with another's file. You need to be sure that all of your documents are correct and that no clerical errors occured in your case.
The successful appeal has almost been uniformly characteristic of applicants that have been interviewed. I know of no appeal from an applicant that was not granted an interview. This is not to say that this circumstance cannot occur.
If you were rejected, you need to find out the basis of your rejection and make sure that you correct the problem. I have known one person with a 3.9 undergraduate GPA and a 41 MCAT that was rejected from all of the schools that he applied to albeit after interview. The reason was that he was a very poor interviewer. He did get in the next year but he had to learn how to interview successfully.
njbmd 🙂
BasesofHumanity said:
Schools necessarilly make it a very difficult to successfully appeal, as they don't want to redo the admissions process again for every rejected candidate. As njbmd suggests, perhaps sometimes a clerical error could result in a rejection, in which case a school would likely be willing to revisit an application; However this is probably an excessively rare situation, and unless the error was really obvious, I suspect a school would want to hold its ground and stand by its decision. You certainly have no grounds for appeal just because you don't like the results or because you feel that your stats were better than others. Admission is not exclusively number driven, and lots of nonnumerical factors in this process can result in rejection, both pre and post interview.
I would go forward with the appeal if only to elicit further information about the particular school's admissions process if you think you may re-apply. I appealed a pre-interview rejection at the suggestion of the Admissions Office...discovered that my appeal was not noted in my file a month later during a follow-up call...and got a reply dated weeks before the post-mark which was the day after my call.
The appeals process at the school I have experience with is really nothing more than what was presented already in this thread...and an investigation into whether or not the file screeners made extraordinary internal policy errors in the scoring of an application. However, it might be worth knowing that the screeners often work with the appeals person and that the appeals person is probably also a screener, so it is extremely unlikely that genuine merit would be found in an appeal unless there is a transcription error.
I did learn about this schools particular pre-interview scoring policy though and how the presentation of my EC's could be improved. 😱
2 Boys!
The appeals process at the school I have experience with is really nothing more than what was presented already in this thread...and an investigation into whether or not the file screeners made extraordinary internal policy errors in the scoring of an application. However, it might be worth knowing that the screeners often work with the appeals person and that the appeals person is probably also a screener, so it is extremely unlikely that genuine merit would be found in an appeal unless there is a transcription error.
I did learn about this schools particular pre-interview scoring policy though and how the presentation of my EC's could be improved. 😱
2 Boys!
2 Boys! said:
Although it is totally school dependent, I would think that an appeal by its very nature is adversarial, as you are in effect trying to tell a school they goofed. If your goal is to apply again in the next cycle it would probably be much smarter in most cases to request a meeting with a dean to discuss your application and how it could be improved for the following year, without getting the appeal wheels rolling. (i.e. There is no point learning about the schools scoring policies if you create a negative impression on them by virtue of appealling. Some people/adcoms take "criticism" better than others).
Law2Doc said:
Yeah...I wouldn't write an adversarial appeal if hoping to re-apply! I would take into account the Admissions Office's suggestions too. As I implied though, the appeals process at the school I am familiar with doesnt really go beyond looking for a transcription error or an inconsistent score from a screener. My experience was the opposite of adversarial and negative. The appeal person, and the Admissions Office, did not take it as such at all, but as heart-felt and thorough. They were more helpful and encouraging about re-applying after my appeal than before! My appeal ended up being a very informative review of my application, the notes provided by the screeners, and the scoring system used by the screeners...all stuff which could certainly be achieved with a meeting. I plan to go and meet too should that be necessary.
2 Boys!
