Applying to college is stressful even if everything goes right. When you hit a roadblock, especially when dreams are involved, it can be downright painful. And if you’ve been rejected from Tufts in the Early Decision I round, you’re probably somewhere between stressed and heartbroken. No matter how you feel, you are completely valid in those emotions. But there are also actions you need to take to turn things around for your best possible outcomes in the next application round.
Tufts received nearly 34,500 applications for first-year admissions to the Class of 2028. Of that pool, they only accepted 11.49% of applicants. This is 6% lower than a decade ago, and is unlikely to reverse its downward slope. Not getting into a particular school doesn’t mean that you aren’t amazing and brilliant, and sure to have a spectacular future, but we definitely want to make sure that you have a college to attend come fall that is perfect for you.
Now, let’s make that happen.
We help outstanding students get into exceptional schools. Contact us to learn how to turn things around.
Step 1: Slow Down
When you got your rejection letter, your world may have started spinning. Or everything slowed down, like running through pudding. Or words turned to gibberish, and the email was suddenly unreadable. That’s okay, but let’s get back to normal. You are a smart, passionate, and hardworking student. You are capable, and you will go to an amazing college because of that. So, cut yourself some slack.
Give yourself a bit of time to be upset — that’s normal. Eat a few bowls of ice cream, vent to your friends, or binge a really stupid show. Then, it’s time to get back on track.
Step 2: Reevaluate Your College List
We can’t tell you why you didn’t get into Tufts without seeing inside of your application, but there are a few “big buckets” of options (and it could be more than one of these):
It could be your grades, which we can’t fix.
It could be your standardized test scores, which we can’t fix.
It could be your essays, which we can fix (and we’ll get into that further down).
But the most likely scenario is that, in addition to one or more of the above, you also picked the wrong horse. Tufts wasn’t a great fit, or you would have been deferred. Instead, they decided to reject your application, which means that something critical was missing. This is harsh, we know, but it is also important to know as you approach a new college list.
A core piece of building your new college list is identifying the type of school that will work best for you. Academic goals are the most important, followed by culture, location, and size. And, of course, you need to be able to get in.
Before you applied to Tufts, you may not have looked at their recent admissions stats beyond the acceptance rate. At Tufts, most accepted students for the class of 2028 had an SAT-ERW 730-770 and an SAT-Math 750-790, or an ACT of 34 or 35. If your submitted scores fell below that range, it’s likely that your scores played a role in why they rejected your application. So, when you are picking schools for your new college list, you need to make sure that you are calibrating your list for your grades and scores before you let your emotions come into it.
Remember to stay open as you identify 3-4 Safeties, 3-4 Targets, and 2-3 Reaches, all of which should have recent acceptance statistics that you measure up well alongside. The best place to find these numbers is the “Common Data Set” for nearly any college, and the best way to find it is to search the internet for “NAME OF COLLEGE Common Data Set.”
You should also seriously consider applying Early Decision II to a school that is somewhere between a Target and a Reach. This is the best strategy for admission to a dream school.
Step 3: Essay Time
Once you have your revamped college list, you need to write the applications. There may be pieces of your Tufts application that you can reuse, but assume that you need to start completely from scratch.
First, make a master list of supplements. When writing supplements, we tackle them one school at a time, addressing the application as a “package.” However, it can be really helpful to see all the essay prompts in one place. Then, try to pair stories from your life to each prompt. You don’t need to answer them, yet, but simply knowing what story will go where is important.
This is because you don’t want to repeat anything in your applications. You only have a small amount of space to impress an application reader, and repeating stories is simply wasting space. Figuring out what stories will be useful for your supplements can be tough, so we recommend starting out with some free-writing, or unstructured writing to generate stories. If you need prompts, check out .
Then, it’s time to go back to your Common App essay (or another main essay). Yes, you already wrote one. But you probably need to rewrite, and we want you to at least try starting from scratch. That likely sounds extremely unpleasant, but please stay with us. We’re not saying that you wrote a bad essay for Tufts — we haven’t seen it — but it didn’t get you a deferral. So, it’s time to write a new one.
You’ve already done a bunch of work to rule out stories, and you have freewriting to pull ideas from. We also have a guide to the Common App essay for 2024-2025 that will give you a fresh start, along with sample successful essays.
Once you have a draft, circle back to that master list of supplements with stories assigned. Each supplement should be treated carefully, and approached as a mini-essay — yes, even single-sentence supplements. We have guides for dozens of schools to give you the best possible foundation for a successful supplement.
Step Four: Ask for Help
A successful college application strategy benefits from expertise, and it’s unreasonable to expect any student to ace their first application without guidance. Your parents and siblings are often not the best sources of feedback on essays and application details. They love you, and they see the best in everything you do. As a result, they are, most likely, not able to objectively analyze your application and identify room for improvement.
This is why we offer the “It’s Going to be Okay” package. Top students find their most successful outcomes through expert guidance and expertise. That’s where we come in.
We help outstanding students gain admission to equally outstanding colleges. Email us to learn more.