Anyone ever take advantage of the SAIS feedback on rejected applications?

[The Mark]

I just called SAIS, and they said that I should contact them in June, and that I could set up either an in-person or phone meeting with an admissions counselor to go over the reasons why my application was rejected. Had anyone here ever taken advantage of this, and how blunt are they?

 

On the one hand, I think I should just take the offer I have at GW. On the other hand, it's going to annoy me every time I have to walk past SAIS and know I could/should be there. If they can offer me specific reasons A, B, and C why I didn't get in—and if they're reasons that are easily fixable (i.e. GRE, lack of math background)—then I may just fix the issues and reapply. 

[Sonic Youth]

If you're willing to wait a year to reapply then go for it.

[Revolution]

If your GRE quant score was weak, study harder and retake the test. Good thing about the GRE, as opposed to the GMAT, is that you can cancel your scores once you have already seen it, and the school will never know that you even took it. So take it as many times as needed if that's what's holding you back. Also your statement of purpose should be very specific with respect to your goals and how SAIS can help you achieve them. The analytical essay doesn't need to be particularly insightful or brilliant; just pick a topic that you care about and discuss how it relates to your experience and interests and give your personal interpretation of that issue.

[MollyB]

You could always put down a deposit at GW, talk to SAIS in June, then make a decision about re-applying after you hear what SAIS has to say. Sure, you'll probably lose your deposit, but what's $500 here when you're talking about a much more expensive education slash the psychic cost of wondering what-if for the rest of your life. 

 

And if it is because of your GRE, then you need to study and retake. There are legitimate reasons why some people don't ace the GRE and it has nothing to do with smarts. But (!), the GRE is a particularly coachable test: if you study in the right way, you will raise your score. I've tutored SAT and ACT and I've gotten kids 10 percentile point increases -- this wasn't b/c I'm some magic tutor or b/c they were secretly brilliant, but b/c these tests are predictable and can be gamed. I'm lazy as hell, so I understand not wanting to study for a test that will take 4 hours of your entire life; but, if you don't want to kick yourself every time you walk SAIS, then struggle through GRE studying. Enlist the help of friends / family to pester you and harass you into studying. It can be done. 

 

On the other hand, taking GW's offer very likely won't adversely affect your career in the long run, so the cost at this point is mostly psychological.   And it's only two years out of a lifetime, so when you're 80 and reflecting back on your awesome kickass career, I bet you won't mind so much that you went to one school instead of another. So you could also get over the rejection (much easier said than done, I know; I've been rejected from plenty of things in my life), and make GW work awesomely for you. Good luck! 

[The Mark]

You could always put down a deposit at GW, talk to SAIS in June, then make a decision about re-applying after you hear what SAIS has to say. Sure, you'll probably lose your deposit, but what's $500 here when you're talking about a much more expensive education slash the psychic cost of wondering what-if for the rest of your life. 

 

And if it is because of your GRE, then you need to study and retake. There are legitimate reasons why some people don't ace the GRE and it has nothing to do with smarts. But (!), the GRE is a particularly coachable test: if you study in the right way, you will raise your score. I've tutored SAT and ACT and I've gotten kids 10 percentile point increases -- this wasn't b/c I'm some magic tutor or b/c they were secretly brilliant, but b/c these tests are predictable and can be gamed. I'm lazy as hell, so I understand not wanting to study for a test that will take 4 hours of your entire life; but, if you don't want to kick yourself every time you walk SAIS, then struggle through GRE studying. Enlist the help of friends / family to pester you and harass you into studying. It can be done. 

 

On the other hand, taking GW's offer very likely won't adversely affect your career in the long run, so the cost at this point is mostly psychological.   And it's only two years out of a lifetime, so when you're 80 and reflecting back on your awesome kickass career, I bet you won't mind so much that you went to one school instead of another. So you could also get over the rejection (much easier said than done, I know; I've been rejected from plenty of things in my life), and make GW work awesomely for you. Good luck! 

 

Thanks, MollB! I like your perspective. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I didn't study for the GRE last time around. I took it completely cold. Considering that, my verbal was actually pretty respectable (69th percentile), but the quant, arguably the most important part, was dismal (17th percentile). No clue how I got into GW at all, let alone their international econ program. I am in no way bitter about the fact that a four hour test can invalidate 15 years of personal, professional, and intellectual growth and achievement........yeah. 

[MollyB]

Thanks, MollB! I like your perspective. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I didn't study for the GRE last time around. I took it completely cold. Considering that, my verbal was actually pretty respectable (69th percentile), but the quant, arguably the most important part, was dismal (17th percentile). No clue how I got into GW at all, let alone their international econ program. I am in no way bitter about the fact that a four hour test can invalidate 15 years of personal, professional, and intellectual growth and achievement........yeah. 

 

Oh wow, you should've said this in the beginning. In this case, I take back my prior advice about going to GW. You need to forget about a fall 2013 start, turn down your offers, and make a plan for how you're going to retake the GRE. On the bright side, since you didn't study and did fairly abysmally the first time, your quant score has nowhere to go but up! So, take heart, from here on out, it's pure improvement. 

 

I get the bitterness. But you should also consider that one four hour test did NOT invalidate 15 years of achievement: You did, after all, get into a program. But you got lucky, good sir. You got lucky and, while so much of success is luck, you also have to show up prepared in case luck is looking for you, as the old timey advice has it. 

 

Okay, allow me to talk about myself for a moment to make a point. When talking to one of my letter writers, I whined for about 90 seconds about how unfair and stupid it is that I had to freakin' study for a test that would take all of four hours of my entire life, and where I'd be tested on things like right triangles. "Will I ever have a use for congruent angles in public policy?" I asked my advisor. She wasn't impressed with my lazy butt.

 

Instead, she pointed out that grad school, and any subsequent career, could be successful only if I learned to do the really unpleasant things. You know, the boring and stupid and irrelevant crap like studying geometry for the chance to get a degree in public policy. She pointed out that, if I couldn't get it together enough to do the unpleasant, but totally manageable, task of studying for the GRE, I had no business going to grad school or expecting any success in the future.

 

I'm no booster of the GRE or of the standardized testing industry in general, don't get me wrong. My attitude now is one of benign indifference towards the test itself, but one of annoying and persistent cheerleading of anyone studying for it (like you, random person on the Internet!). I've changed career direction almost half a dozen times in the almost five years I've been out of undergrad. I thought that yeah I probably was mostly sure, I guess, about public policy and getting an MPP. But it wasn't until I bored myself to tears studying for the GRE that I realized that yes, this is really what I wanted to be doing. I could've winged the GRE and done fine, maybe gotten lucky as you have with admissions. But until I proved to myself that I was willing to do the boring (study for the GRE) in order for the chance to study something exciting and work helping people as I've always wanted to do, I would never have confidence in my new career path. 

 

Okay, I'm done with the digression about myself. But you should consider what my advisor said and how it might apply in your situation. If you didn't study because you had literally no free moment because you were working every single second to provide for a family, etc., then that's different (and is probably something that would've come up in your application). But if you didn't study because the GRE is boring and irrelevant to life, that's less excusable. Consider grad school. Many parts of it, including homework assignments that mean nothing in the real world and will help no starving child find food or get an education, will be boring. Many parts will suck. If you can't get through one boring test in the GRE, can you really get through two years of constant boring busywork? (Many parts of school will of course be very interesting and useful; that's why we're all going. Many other parts though will suck.) 

 

Good luck!