Can you "appeal" a denial from college?

[Lorix2]

hi everyone, OP here.

I can't answer posts right now, have to go...as soon as we receive the letter, we'll know more - I do want everyone to know though, I do realize there are alot of factors to consider when deciding on an applicant...I'll come back later tonight. Thank you all for every reply

 

[Cindy B]

Truth be told I was denied to the only university I applied for.

I applied for a specific teaching program (Special Ed/Language Arts collaborative) and got a thin letter.

I met all the other parameters for a transfer student: Associates degree, courses from the university at the community college (dual agreement), 3.45 GPA, older non traditional student, female , 1st generation of college/university.

I found out that they only admitted 12 people into the collaborative program and it was transfer students with 3.5 GPA or higher (yes, only a 1/2 point off).

So initially I got a denial letter for the entire university. I then called the admissions director and asked

1) why I was denied -then I was told about the 1/2 point GPA difference)

2) why didn't I get placed in my 2nd or 3rd choice teaching programs since the transfer application stated that I may not necessarily get into my first choice of teaching programs.

The admissions director wasn't sure why I wasn't placed in my 2nd or 3rd choice program immediately. She said she would make a phone call and get back to me.

So, true to word, I got a thicker envelope in the mail a few days later--success! I was placed in a different program minor than specified with my application but another phone call straightened that out. (I produced my copy of the application papers-- someone coded the minor incorrectly)

For someone who they rejected initially, I wound up earning two Bachelors degrees, summa cum laude and at the top of my class for my program (top 5!)

 

[momrek06]

I had no idea you could appeal college/university decisions.

My 23yo DS applied in the late Fall to several law schools for Sept 2010. He took the LSAT's, did all the research on colleges/universities and started applying.
Law school application fees are ridiculous. After weeks of working on all the applications sent them off. In less than 5 days, he received a no from a college he thought for sure he would get into. He felt as though this college just took his $75.00 eek application fee and then sent him a no. He did nothing more about it as I doubt he knew you could appeal a decision.

When applying for undergrad, DS was accepted at all the colleges he applied to, picked one and went and that was that.

Anyway, within 3 weeks, he started to receive woohoo yes' woohoo from the law schools he had applied to ... but that makes more sense ... these review boards appeared to have actually read through his entire application and then made their decision.

That first college that sent the no in less than 5 days ... hmmm ...! DS has no desire to go there at this point so he will not appeal it but I just never knew you could. Interesting.

Good Luck, OP, to your DD! I sure hope everything works out for her.

 

[Quiksilvr]

I had no idea you could appeal college/university decisions.

My 23yo DS applied in the late Fall to several law schools for Sept 2010. He took the LSAT's, did all the research on colleges/universities and started applying.
Law school application fees are ridiculous. After weeks of working on all the applications sent them off. In less than 5 days, he received a no from a college he thought for sure he would get into. He felt as though this college just took his $75.00 eek application fee and then sent him a no. He did nothing more about it as I doubt he knew you could appeal a decision.

When applying for undergrad, DS was accepted at all the colleges he applied to, picked one and went and that was that.

Anyway, within 3 weeks, he started to receive woohoo yes' woohoo from the law schools he had applied to ... but that makes more sense ... these review boards appeared to have actually read through his entire application and then made their decision.

That first college that sent the no in less than 5 days ... hmmm ...! DS has no desire to go there at this point so he will not appeal it but I just never knew you could. Interesting.

Good Luck, OP, to your DD! I sure hope everything works out for her.

Law school admissions are a little different than undergrad admissions. Most good law schools focus heavily on the LSAT/GPA numbers as a minimum qualification to be considered (unless you fit into an underrepresented minority classification, in which case you often get a boost from that factor that can overcome 25th percentile LSAT/GPA scores).

If the LSAT/GPA are solidly in the school's acceptance range, they consider a lot of soft factors in deciding who to accept. Law programs are smaller, so they tend to be pickier on who they select (for example, at a top 10 law school, if there are two candidates with a 3.8/170 split and one is a computer engineering major and the other a political science major, the CE major will often get the slot, because there are 35 other polisci majors with the exact same scores). Law schools also have to worry about yield and the other factors that go into their US News ranking.

So, what most of them do, is use a waitlist system for candidates that they like, but who they only want to admit if their yield from the first round of accepted candidates is smaller than they expected. This happened to me for a couple of my apps to really highly ranked schools.

One school kept me on the waiting list for a long time but then finally rejected me right before classes started. It was rather amusing since I had already enrolled elsewhere at one of their competitors. Their loss.

Anyway, the point of all that is that appealing a denial for law school admission is probably a dead-end. If your candidate is anywhere remotely in the neighborhood of someone they wanted to admit, they would have waitlisted him/her.