http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2009/04/29/admission-denied-dealing-wit...
APRIL 29, 2009, 1:52 AM ET
Admission Denied: Dealing With College Rejection Letters
Many members of this spring’s record-large U.S. high-school class of 2009 applied to a longer list of colleges than ever – about 8 to 12 per student, estimates Seth Allen, president of the Common Application, a nonprofit group of about 350 colleges and universities, and dean of admissions at Grinnell College.
Some critics say today’s kids have never learned to deal with rejection. “This is a generation of kids where everyone on the soccer team gets a trophy. You show up and you’re rewarded,” one admissions dean says. A college denial letter may be the first significant rejection the teen has received.
At least one other factor is at work, in my opinion: A change in the admission process. As college applications have become more competitive, colleges have coached applicants to include more personal stories, more markers of individuality, more evidence of heartfelt desire, to help their application stand out among tens of thousands. Many kids respond by
pouring themselves “heart and soul” into their applications, as one teen told me.
“Colleges tell you not to take their decisions personally,” says Isaac Chambers, 17, Champaign, Ill. “Yet throughout the whole admissions process, they tell you to make your application personal and pour out your life stories to them. It’s easy to feel like you failed.”
In fact, you may not even need to go to college in order to succeed: Famous college dropouts
College Dropout
Hall of Fame
http://www.collegedropoutshalloffame.com/
http://www.onlinecollegedegrees.org/2009/07/29/10-most-successful-a...
10 Most Successful and Famous College Dropouts
By Emily Thomas
While a college degree is heralded as the only way to get a solid, profitable career in modern society, there’s no rule that you need to graduate to make it big in the world. In fact, there are lots of examples of successful, famous individuals who simply felt that college couldn’t satisfy their ambitions and dreams. And if anyone asks you to prove it, just point to these incredibly successful and famous college dropouts.
Brad Pitt: Brad Pitt is one of the most famous movie stars on the planet. People around the world have seen his movies and recognize his face, though he’s a college
dropout, he’s also supremely rich. Pitt was born in Shawnee, OK,
and attended the University of Missouri the early 1980s, studying
journalism. Two weeks before he was set to graduate, Pitt dropped
out of school and moved to Los Angeles to take acting classes.
Today, he has two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe, and a
career that doesn’t seem like it will ever end.
Woody Allen: Writer, comedian, film director and actor Woody Allen is an American icon and a New York legend who has been influencing art and cinema since the 1960s. Known as a neurotic intellectual, Allen began his comedic career at
just 16, when he began writing with Sid Caesar. He attended New York
University, but was eventually expelled.
Bill Gates: Bill Gates has been named the richest man in the world, and in 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates’ net worth had reached an estimated
$40 billion. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, was a promising
student with a very high IQ and even enrolled at Harvard. Gates had
already started a company with Steve Allen as a teenager, and at
Harvard, he continued to grow his network of the computer scientists
and professionals who would eventually run Microsoft. Gates
eventually dropped out to start his career, but in 2007, Harvard
awarded him an honorary degree.
Tom Hanks: Tom Hanks is one of the most respected men in Hollywood, and is an Academy Award winning actor, as well as a director, producer and writer. Hanks’ career box office totals reportedly exceed $3.3 billion, thanks to films
like Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, Philadelphia, and Forrest Gump.
Hanks, who is distantly related to Abraham Lincoln, attended Chabot
College and California State University - Sacramento, though he
dropped out to intern for the Great Lakes Theater Festival in
Cleveland.
Ted Turner: Outspoken media mogul Ted Turner has founded multiple TV stations including CNN and TNT. He is considered to be one of the richest Americans and even donated $1 billion to UN causes. Turner, who was born in Cincinnati, OH, in
1938, attended a prep school as a boy in Tennessee and attended
Brown University, studying classics, and later, economics. Turner,
ddhowever, was eventually expelled after getting caught with a girl
in his dorm room.
Steve Jobs: As co-founder and CEO of Apple, Inc., Steve Jobs is one of the most successful and respected executives in business and in the computer science
industry. Steve Jobs grew up in California and attended Reed College
in Portland, though he dropped out after one semester. Jobs
continued to audit classes at Reed, and even credits a calligraphy
class he attended as the inspiration for all of the fonts on
Macintosh computers. Four years after enrolling at Reed, Steve Jobs
and Stephen Wozniak founded Apple.
Michael Dell: Dell CEO Michael Dell actually started his first computer company as a student at the University of Texas at Austin. His grandparents helped fund the
company, and Dell dropped out of college to run his company, PC’s
Limited. PC’s Limited ultimately became Dell, Inc.
John Glenn: John Glenn is the first man to orbit the Earth and has enjoyed a successful career in the Navy, Marine Corps, space exploration, and U.S. politics. Glenn is also one of the most famous astronauts in U.S. history and was
awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978. As a young
man, Glenn studied chemistry at Muskingum College in Ohio, where he
earned his pilot’s license.
Marisa Tomei: Academy Award-winning actress Marisa Tomei has enjoyed a successful TV, film and stage career since she started acting on soap operas in the
1980s. Tomei has appeared in and starred in My Cousin Vinny,
Seinfeld, In the Bedroom, and The Wrestler, as well as many Broadway
productions. The Brooklyn native attended the elite Edward R. Murrow
High School in Midwood, NY, and went on to Boston University and
then New York University, though she ultimately dropped out of
college to pursue acting on As the World Turns.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896311,00.html
If staying longer to learn more is a wholesome trend at U.S. colleges, it is not necessarily the only path to real achievement. Fame and success can also come to the 60% of all
U.S. collegians who quit the campus where they started. Case in point: Scott Carpenter.
Astronaut Carpenter twice flunked out of the University of Colorado. Yet last week, when Colorado gracefully gave him his B.S. in aeronautical engineering, President
Quigg Newton aptly explained: "For years to come, his example of courage and character, and of what a man can make of his life if he wills to do so, will serve as an inspiration to thousands of young people in this university." Carpenter's fellow astronaut John Glenn failed to finish at Ohio's Muskingum College. In the same flight pattern was Charles Lindbergh, who quit the University of Wisconsin after two years to learn flying.
In fact, a list of famous dropouts could well begin with John F. Kennedy, who dropped out of Princeton in 1935 before he crashed through at Harvard (cum laude) in 1940—along with Jacqueline Kennedy, who deserted Vassar before eventually graduating from George Washington University. Woodrow Wilson dropped out of North Carolina's Davidson College, later went on to Princeton. Robert Frost quit Dartmouth and William Faulkner the University of Mississippi. Architect Edward D. Stone dropped out of the University of Arkansas. Henry Ford II left Yale; his fellow auto tycoon, George Romney, spent only a year at the University of Utah. Psychiatrist Karl Menninger quit Kansas' Washburn College after two years; California's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike left the University of Santa Clara after his
sophomore year. Oil Billionaire J. Paul Getty failed to finish at U.S.C., Berkeley or Oxford—and went on to become "the richest man in the world."
College psychiatrists by no means disapprove of all dropouts. If dropouts lack "motivation," it may be a healthy reaction against too many rules and goals that—for them—are momentarily false. Adolescence is by definition a struggle to create a self. Sometimes an intelligent retreat is the best way to win. Says Stanford Psychologist Nevitt Sanford: "Leaving college may leave a student with a sense of unfinished business that will, in some cases, provide motivation for learning for the rest of his life."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896311,00.html#ixz...
In fact if success is why you want to go to college, you may not need to go:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Famous-College-Drop-Outs-Who-Became-Successful
Famous College Drop-Outs Who Became Successful
Something that really surprised me when I began to study business is the lack of connection between business success and formal education.
Fortunately he has no shortage of inspiration. Did you know these famous business owners were also college drop-outs?
1) Bill Gates-founder of Microsoft; billionaire
2) Michael Dell-founder of Dell Computers; billionaire
3) Steve Jobs-co-founder of Apple Computers; billionaire
4) Steve Wozniak-co-founder of Apple Computers
5) David Geffen-co-founder of Dreamworks, SKG
6) Larry Ellison-founder of the database company Oracle; billionaire
7) William Hanna-of the cartoon producers Hanna-Barbera
8) Sheldon Adelson-real estate and casino owner; billionaire
9) Jack Taylor-Enterprise Rent-A-Car; billionaire
The more I've continued to look into this, it's nearly the same story with most industrialized nations around the world. There are a lot of billionaires that dropped out of high school and college for various reasons, from Li Ka-Shing in Asia (net worth of nearly $12 billion) to Roman Abramovich (richest man in Russia at $18.2 billion) to Amancio Ortega (Spain's richest man at $14.8 billion). There is a pattern to all of this, and it's interesting to me. For all the famous people out there, there are thousands of successful people that aren't as well known but have similar circumstances.
I think the message you can take away from all these businessmen is that you have your success in your hands. The lack of a formal education does not have to be an excuse not to succeed in life unless you want it to be. In my case, I better not let my college degree be an excuse not to succeed!
Success without a college degree
POSTED: 9:12 a.m. EST, November 3, 2006
By Kate Lorenz
CareerBuilder.com
Adjust font size:CNN.com has a business partnership with CareerBuilder.com, which serves as the exclusive provider of job listings and services to CNN.com.
(CareerBuilder.com) -- Many think the only way to succeed is through education. While piling on the degrees can earn you piles of dough -- and debt -- it's not the only option.
Some of today's most successful people don't have a college degree. But what they lack in academic credentials, they make up for in tenacity, brains, guts and strong business sense.
Richard Branson -- In 1970, Richard Branson founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer, and not long afterward he opened a record shop in London. Two years later, the
first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, recorded "Tubular Bells." Since then many household names, including Ben Harper, Fatboy Slim, Perry Farrell, Gorillaz, Lenny Kravitz, Janet Jackson and The Rolling Stones have helped to make Virgin Music one of the top record
companies in the world.
Branson sold the equity of Virgin Music Group -- record labels, music publishing and recording studios -- in 1992 in a $1 billion deal, but he remains chairman of Virgin Group,
which today includes Virgin Atlantic, Books, Games, LifeCare, Limousines, Megastores and Hotels.
Janus Friis -- Named to Time Magazine's 2006 list of 100 most influential people, Janus Friis holds no formal education. He worked at the help desk of CyberCity, one of Denmark's
first ISPs and later worked at Tele2, the leading alternative consumer oriented pan-European telecom operator. It was at Tele2 where Friis met Niklas Zennström, with whom he co-founded the file-sharing application KaZaA and Skype, the peer-to-peer telephony application. In early 2006, Friis and Zennström sold Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion.
Anna Wintour -- Best identified by her trademark sunglasses and pageboy hairstyle, Anna Wintour is an icon of the fashion world. She reportedly attended North London Collegiate
School, but never graduated. She started in 1970 working in the fashion department of Harpers and Queen in London. In 1976, she was named fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar, followed by a brief stint at New York Magazine, three years as creative director of American
Vogue, and finally named editor of British Vogue in 1986.
In 1998, she became editor-in-chief of American Vogue. Wintour's work style is so notorious, the novel "The Devil Wears Prada" and its subsequent motion picture are said to
be based on her. In recent years, she's focused on many philanthropic endeavors including raising more than $10 million for AIDS, putting Vogue's support behind women-owned businesses in Kabul, Afganistan, and promoting various post-9/11 campaigns.
Barry Diller -- Barry Diller started his career in the mail room of the William Morris Agency after dropping out of UCLA after one semester. He was hired by ABC in 1966 where he created the ABC Movie of the Week, pioneering the concept of the made-for-television movie.
At age 32, he became president of Paramount Pictures, which produced a string of successful television shows (Laverne and Shirley, Taxi, Cheers) and feature films (Saturday
Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Beverly Hills Cop) under his helm. From 1984 to 1992, he was chairman and CEO of Fox Studios and was responsible for creating the Fox Broadcasting Company. Today, Diller is the chairman of Expedia and the chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which includes Citysearch, Evite, Home Shopping Network, Lending Tree, Match.com and Ticketmaster .
Sources: Virgin Group Web site, "Tavis Smiley" on PBS, FoodTV.com, Washington Post Company Web site, Museum of Broadcast Communications, Time.com, BusinessWeek.com,
Hispanictrends.com, Skype.com, Vogue.com.
© Copyright CareerBuilder.com 2007. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the
prior written authority
Hall of Fame
http://www.collegedropoutshalloffame.com/
http://www.onlinecollegedegrees.org/2009/07/29/10-most-successful-a...
10 Most Successful and Famous College Dropouts
By Emily Thomas
While a college degree is heralded as the only way to get a solid, profitable career in modern society, there’s no rule that you need to graduate to make it big in the world. In fact, there are lots of examples of successful, famous individuals who simply felt that college couldn’t satisfy their ambitions and dreams. And if anyone asks you to prove it, just point to these incredibly successful and famous college dropouts.
Brad Pitt: Brad Pitt is one of the most famous movie stars on the planet. People around the world have seen his movies and recognize his face, though he’s a college
dropout, he’s also supremely rich. Pitt was born in Shawnee, OK,
and attended the University of Missouri the early 1980s, studying
journalism. Two weeks before he was set to graduate, Pitt dropped
out of school and moved to Los Angeles to take acting classes.
Today, he has two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe, and a
career that doesn’t seem like it will ever end.
Woody Allen: Writer, comedian, film director and actor Woody Allen is an American icon and a New York legend who has been influencing art and cinema since the 1960s. Known as a neurotic intellectual, Allen began his comedic career at
just 16, when he began writing with Sid Caesar. He attended New York
University, but was eventually expelled.
Bill Gates: Bill Gates has been named the richest man in the world, and in 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates’ net worth had reached an estimated
$40 billion. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, was a promising
student with a very high IQ and even enrolled at Harvard. Gates had
already started a company with Steve Allen as a teenager, and at
Harvard, he continued to grow his network of the computer scientists
and professionals who would eventually run Microsoft. Gates
eventually dropped out to start his career, but in 2007, Harvard
awarded him an honorary degree.
Tom Hanks: Tom Hanks is one of the most respected men in Hollywood, and is an Academy Award winning actor, as well as a director, producer and writer. Hanks’ career box office totals reportedly exceed $3.3 billion, thanks to films
like Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, Philadelphia, and Forrest Gump.
Hanks, who is distantly related to Abraham Lincoln, attended Chabot
College and California State University - Sacramento, though he
dropped out to intern for the Great Lakes Theater Festival in
Cleveland.
Ted Turner: Outspoken media mogul Ted Turner has founded multiple TV stations including CNN and TNT. He is considered to be one of the richest Americans and even donated $1 billion to UN causes. Turner, who was born in Cincinnati, OH, in
1938, attended a prep school as a boy in Tennessee and attended
Brown University, studying classics, and later, economics. Turner,
ddhowever, was eventually expelled after getting caught with a girl
in his dorm room.
Steve Jobs: As co-founder and CEO of Apple, Inc., Steve Jobs is one of the most successful and respected executives in business and in the computer science
industry. Steve Jobs grew up in California and attended Reed College
in Portland, though he dropped out after one semester. Jobs
continued to audit classes at Reed, and even credits a calligraphy
class he attended as the inspiration for all of the fonts on
Macintosh computers. Four years after enrolling at Reed, Steve Jobs
and Stephen Wozniak founded Apple.
Michael Dell: Dell CEO Michael Dell actually started his first computer company as a student at the University of Texas at Austin. His grandparents helped fund the
company, and Dell dropped out of college to run his company, PC’s
Limited. PC’s Limited ultimately became Dell, Inc.
John Glenn: John Glenn is the first man to orbit the Earth and has enjoyed a successful career in the Navy, Marine Corps, space exploration, and U.S. politics. Glenn is also one of the most famous astronauts in U.S. history and was
awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978. As a young
man, Glenn studied chemistry at Muskingum College in Ohio, where he
earned his pilot’s license.
Marisa Tomei: Academy Award-winning actress Marisa Tomei has enjoyed a successful TV, film and stage career since she started acting on soap operas in the
1980s. Tomei has appeared in and starred in My Cousin Vinny,
Seinfeld, In the Bedroom, and The Wrestler, as well as many Broadway
productions. The Brooklyn native attended the elite Edward R. Murrow
High School in Midwood, NY, and went on to Boston University and
then New York University, though she ultimately dropped out of
college to pursue acting on As the World Turns.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896311,00.html
If staying longer to learn more is a wholesome trend at U.S. colleges, it is not necessarily the only path to real achievement. Fame and success can also come to the 60% of all
U.S. collegians who quit the campus where they started. Case in point: Scott Carpenter.
Astronaut Carpenter twice flunked out of the University of Colorado. Yet last week, when Colorado gracefully gave him his B.S. in aeronautical engineering, President
Quigg Newton aptly explained: "For years to come, his example of courage and character, and of what a man can make of his life if he wills to do so, will serve as an inspiration to thousands of young people in this university." Carpenter's fellow astronaut John Glenn failed to finish at Ohio's Muskingum College. In the same flight pattern was Charles Lindbergh, who quit the University of Wisconsin after two years to learn flying.
In fact, a list of famous dropouts could well begin with John F. Kennedy, who dropped out of Princeton in 1935 before he crashed through at Harvard (cum laude) in 1940—along with Jacqueline Kennedy, who deserted Vassar before eventually graduating from George Washington University. Woodrow Wilson dropped out of North Carolina's Davidson College, later went on to Princeton. Robert Frost quit Dartmouth and William Faulkner the University of Mississippi. Architect Edward D. Stone dropped out of the University of Arkansas. Henry Ford II left Yale; his fellow auto tycoon, George Romney, spent only a year at the University of Utah. Psychiatrist Karl Menninger quit Kansas' Washburn College after two years; California's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike left the University of Santa Clara after his
sophomore year. Oil Billionaire J. Paul Getty failed to finish at U.S.C., Berkeley or Oxford—and went on to become "the richest man in the world."
College psychiatrists by no means disapprove of all dropouts. If dropouts lack "motivation," it may be a healthy reaction against too many rules and goals that—for them—are momentarily false. Adolescence is by definition a struggle to create a self. Sometimes an intelligent retreat is the best way to win. Says Stanford Psychologist Nevitt Sanford: "Leaving college may leave a student with a sense of unfinished business that will, in some cases, provide motivation for learning for the rest of his life."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896311,00.html#ixz...
In fact if success is why you want to go to college, you may not need to go:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Famous-College-Drop-Outs-Who-Became-Successful
Famous College Drop-Outs Who Became Successful
Something that really surprised me when I began to study business is the lack of connection between business success and formal education.
Fortunately he has no shortage of inspiration. Did you know these famous business owners were also college drop-outs?
1) Bill Gates-founder of Microsoft; billionaire
2) Michael Dell-founder of Dell Computers; billionaire
3) Steve Jobs-co-founder of Apple Computers; billionaire
4) Steve Wozniak-co-founder of Apple Computers
5) David Geffen-co-founder of Dreamworks, SKG
6) Larry Ellison-founder of the database company Oracle; billionaire
7) William Hanna-of the cartoon producers Hanna-Barbera
8) Sheldon Adelson-real estate and casino owner; billionaire
9) Jack Taylor-Enterprise Rent-A-Car; billionaire
The more I've continued to look into this, it's nearly the same story with most industrialized nations around the world. There are a lot of billionaires that dropped out of high school and college for various reasons, from Li Ka-Shing in Asia (net worth of nearly $12 billion) to Roman Abramovich (richest man in Russia at $18.2 billion) to Amancio Ortega (Spain's richest man at $14.8 billion). There is a pattern to all of this, and it's interesting to me. For all the famous people out there, there are thousands of successful people that aren't as well known but have similar circumstances.
I think the message you can take away from all these businessmen is that you have your success in your hands. The lack of a formal education does not have to be an excuse not to succeed in life unless you want it to be. In my case, I better not let my college degree be an excuse not to succeed!
Success without a college degree
POSTED: 9:12 a.m. EST, November 3, 2006
By Kate Lorenz
CareerBuilder.com
Adjust font size:CNN.com has a business partnership with CareerBuilder.com, which serves as the exclusive provider of job listings and services to CNN.com.
(CareerBuilder.com) -- Many think the only way to succeed is through education. While piling on the degrees can earn you piles of dough -- and debt -- it's not the only option.
Some of today's most successful people don't have a college degree. But what they lack in academic credentials, they make up for in tenacity, brains, guts and strong business sense.
Richard Branson -- In 1970, Richard Branson founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer, and not long afterward he opened a record shop in London. Two years later, the
first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, recorded "Tubular Bells." Since then many household names, including Ben Harper, Fatboy Slim, Perry Farrell, Gorillaz, Lenny Kravitz, Janet Jackson and The Rolling Stones have helped to make Virgin Music one of the top record
companies in the world.
Branson sold the equity of Virgin Music Group -- record labels, music publishing and recording studios -- in 1992 in a $1 billion deal, but he remains chairman of Virgin Group,
which today includes Virgin Atlantic, Books, Games, LifeCare, Limousines, Megastores and Hotels.
Janus Friis -- Named to Time Magazine's 2006 list of 100 most influential people, Janus Friis holds no formal education. He worked at the help desk of CyberCity, one of Denmark's
first ISPs and later worked at Tele2, the leading alternative consumer oriented pan-European telecom operator. It was at Tele2 where Friis met Niklas Zennström, with whom he co-founded the file-sharing application KaZaA and Skype, the peer-to-peer telephony application. In early 2006, Friis and Zennström sold Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion.
Anna Wintour -- Best identified by her trademark sunglasses and pageboy hairstyle, Anna Wintour is an icon of the fashion world. She reportedly attended North London Collegiate
School, but never graduated. She started in 1970 working in the fashion department of Harpers and Queen in London. In 1976, she was named fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar, followed by a brief stint at New York Magazine, three years as creative director of American
Vogue, and finally named editor of British Vogue in 1986.
In 1998, she became editor-in-chief of American Vogue. Wintour's work style is so notorious, the novel "The Devil Wears Prada" and its subsequent motion picture are said to
be based on her. In recent years, she's focused on many philanthropic endeavors including raising more than $10 million for AIDS, putting Vogue's support behind women-owned businesses in Kabul, Afganistan, and promoting various post-9/11 campaigns.
Barry Diller -- Barry Diller started his career in the mail room of the William Morris Agency after dropping out of UCLA after one semester. He was hired by ABC in 1966 where he created the ABC Movie of the Week, pioneering the concept of the made-for-television movie.
At age 32, he became president of Paramount Pictures, which produced a string of successful television shows (Laverne and Shirley, Taxi, Cheers) and feature films (Saturday
Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Beverly Hills Cop) under his helm. From 1984 to 1992, he was chairman and CEO of Fox Studios and was responsible for creating the Fox Broadcasting Company. Today, Diller is the chairman of Expedia and the chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which includes Citysearch, Evite, Home Shopping Network, Lending Tree, Match.com and Ticketmaster .
Sources: Virgin Group Web site, "Tavis Smiley" on PBS, FoodTV.com, Washington Post Company Web site, Museum of Broadcast Communications, Time.com, BusinessWeek.com,
Hispanictrends.com, Skype.com, Vogue.com.
© Copyright CareerBuilder.com 2007. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the
prior written authority
Fancy college matters lot less than you think for succeeding in the business world. (USA Today)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-06-cover-ceos_x.htm
Wanted: CEO, no Ivy required
By Del Jones, USA TODAY
2005 April 6.
Imagine how far Brenda Barnes would have gone had she graduated from Harvard, Princeton or Yale. Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes graduated from Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. "We stand up better than anybody," she says of Augustana graduates.Sara Lee via APNo need, Barnes says. Attending Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., "made me CEO of Sara Lee," she says. With a workforce of 150,400 and 2004 sales of $19.6 billion, Sara Lee is the largest corporation with a female CEO.
"We alums at Augustana, we say there might be other schools that open more doors," says Barnes, who declines most interviews but was quick to come to the phone to talk about her alma mater. "Once we get in the door, we stand up better than anybody."
Statistics back her claim. Between World War II and the early 1980s, just about every major company shopped for future CEOs in Cambridge, Mass., Princeton, N.J., or New Haven, Conn. That hasn't been the case in recent executive suite shake-ups. (Related chart: Colleges attended by top CEOs) Last week Hewlett-Packard replaced Carly Fiorina with Mark Hurd, who got a business degree at Baylor University ('79) on a tennis scholarship. Taking over at Walt Disney in October is Robert Iger, an Ithaca College graduate ('73), who replaces Michael Eisner of Denison University ('64) in Granville, Ohio.
A study by executive search firm Spencer Stuart found that the percentage of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies who were educated at Ivy League schools declined from 16% in 1998 to 11% in 2004. Even the Harvard MBA shows signs of erosion. Among large-company CEOs who have MBAs, 28% received their degrees at Harvard, according to the 1998 study. By 2004, that had slipped to 23%. A survey by the Wharton School at the
Ivy League's University of Pennsylvania indicates the trend extends back 25 years. In 1980, 14% of CEOs at Fortune 100 companies received their undergraduate degrees from an Ivy League school. By 2001, 10% of CEOs received undergraduate degrees at one of the eight Ivies: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and Yale. The percentage of CEOs with undergraduate degrees from public colleges and universities shot up from 32% in 1980 to 48% in 2001.
Barnes isn't the first to hit the CEO lottery out of Augustana, a Lutheran liberal arts school overlooking the Mississippi River. There are QCR Holdings CEO Doug Hultquist ('77) and Noodles & Co. CEO Aaron Kennedy ('85) and retired Deere CEO Robert Hanson ('48). Murry Gerber, CEO of gas company Equitable Resources, graduated the same year ('75) as Barnes.
"It isn't Ivy League status that we rely on for our reputation. It is the accomplishment of our graduates," says Augustana President Steven Bahls.
Augustana churned out its CEOs even though it has just 2,200 students. Another example where size doesn't matter: Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in San Dimas, Calif., has an enrollment of 108, yet produced David Edmondson, who takes over as RadioShack's CEO on May 19.
Perhaps the ultimate slap on Ivies: Michael Dell for the first time passed Bill Gates as the most admired executive, selected last month by entrepreneurs at the Inc. 500 conference. Neither Dell nor Gates graduated from college, but at least Harvard could take a measure of pride in counting Gates among its dropouts. Dell dropped out from the University of Texas.
The trend is a pet peeve of FedEx CEO and Yale graduate ('66) Fred Smith. "I've talked to (Yale President) Rick Levin about this many times," says Smith, who blames Yale's de-emphasis of business in favor of disciplines such as history, economics and government.
There are other reasons behind the trend. Non-Ivy colleges and universities, both public and private, have gained stature, allowing recruiters to do more fishing at non-Ivies to avoid the "sense of entitlement" they encounter on Ivy campuses, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. He, by the way, has three Harvard degrees and is now an associate dean at Yale and founder of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Not every student at the non-Ivies is CEO material, "but you don't have to fish blindly," he says.
More Ivy graduates are interested in large corporations, but he suspects some "reverse snobbery" may hold them back because companies have non-Ivies doing the hiring,
Sonnenfeld says. The best CEOs today have a rapport with the rank and file, says Bill Zollars, CEO of trucking firm Yellow Roadway and a University of Minnesota alumnus ('69). "People who go to the University of Minnesota are used to being with people of all socioeconomic backgrounds," he says. "It's just as important to talk to (employees) one-on-one as it is the investment community and bankers."
Trend away from Ivies grows
If anything, the CEO trend away from Ivies is intensifying. So far in 2005 there have been 24 new CEOs named to run Fortune 1,000 companies, according to public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. USA TODAY found only one, Corning's soon-to-be-CEO Wendell Weeks, with an Ivy League degree, a Harvard MBA ('87).
Weeks went to work for Corning after getting his undergraduate degree from Lehigh ('81). When he gave CEO James Houghton notice that he was quitting to go to Harvard, Houghton
— who happens to be the third of four generations in his family to attend Harvard ('58, MBA '62) — offered to pay his tuition and salary if Weeks promised to return to Corning. Weeks, who replaces Houghton as CEO on April 28, says he had to turn down lucrative offers from headhunters to keep his promise.
Few of his fellow Harvard students went into industry, Weeks says, and instead opted for the higher starting salaries at investment banks. When asked if that hurts corporations and U.S. competitiveness, Weeks laughs and uses self-deprecating humor: "I've yet to see the study that proves that Harvard creates value."
In 2004, there were 99 new CEOs named at Fortune 1,000 companies. While eight had Ivy credentials, five of those were from Harvard's Advanced Management Program, which is
intensive and expensive ($52,500), but takes 10 weeks to complete.
Just one of the 99 has an Ivy undergrad degree: the CEO of auto parts maker ArvinMeritor, Charles McClure, went to Cornell ('76) for mechanical engineering. But when McClure
decided to get an MBA, he went to night school at the University of Michigan ('84) while he continued to work full time. McClure says it's an accomplishment to be accepted at an Ivy League school. "I also have a lot of respect for people who go to school at night," he adds.
Kellogg CEO Jim Jenness got both his undergraduate and MBA degrees at DePaul ('69 and '71). "An Ivy League education is certainly something to be proud of, but there are
plenty of top-notch leaders who hail from excellent schools from all parts of the world, including the Midwest," he says. Clarence Otis, CEO of Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster and Olive Garden), got a law degree at Stanford ('80), but he credits his liberal arts education at Williams College ('77) for critical thinking skills. "You get intellectual engagement with the faculty. That's not always available at Stanford or an Ivy League school," he says.
Yellow Roadway's Zollars worked with several Ivy Leaguers when he started at Kodak fresh out of the University of Minnesota. He doesn't recall one of them climbing as
high up the ladder.
The ethics of non-Ivy schools
When Barnes first graduated from Augustana, she worked stints as a waitress and a postal clerk before landing a $10,000-a-year job at Wilson Sporting Goods. There, the promotions were frequent. "The things that contribute most to leadership were things I did not learn from my (geology) major," says Equitable Resources' Gerber, who got to know business and
economics major Barnes at Augustana. Gerber says, among other things, he was introduced to existentialism and "making good with your life while you're on this planet. I don't believe someone from Augustana College would end up with the mess of Enron, to put it
bluntly. We don't turn out those kinds of people."
Others cited ethics as the backbone of their educations. Baxter International CEO Robert Parkinson, who in 2002-03 was dean of Loyola University's Chicago School of Business,
says when he got his MBA from Loyola ('75), it was one of five programs to offer a course in business ethics. Loyola's "Jesuit tradition is educating the whole person," he says. Adecco Group North America CEO Ray Roe credits his years at West Point ('67) for his "strong base of principles, code of conduct and ethics." However, it's not as if the Ivies are producing more CEOs who push ethical or legal lines.
Hank Greenberg, who left in scandal last month March at American International Group, went to the University of Miami ('48) and New York University Law School ('50). Harry Stonecipher, fired by Boeing last month after having an affair with a subordinate, graduated from Tennessee Tech ('60); WorldCom's just-convicted Bernie Ebbers graduated from Mississippi College ('67); Tyco International's Dennis Kozlowski went to Seton Hall ('68); and Enron's Ken Lay has degrees from the universities of Missouri ('64 and '65) and Houston ('70).
Martha Stewart, however, is an alumna of Barnard College ('63), an all-female liberal arts affiliate of Columbia University, one of the Ivies.
Of course, the Ivies have pumped out top-notch CEOs. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has a Harvard MBA ('82). Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a friend of Gates' at Harvard ('77), stayed on to graduate. Sharon Patrick, who took over as CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2003, has a Harvard MBA ('78). But Patrick then was replaced last year by Susan Lyne, a University of California, Berkeley dropout.
Times have changed, Sonnenfeld says. Had Gates been a product of the 1960s, he likely would have finished Harvard and gone on to develop software products for IBM. Gates may
even have made IBM CEO after 30 years.
But the best and brightest of the 1980s started doing things other than getting on the corporate fast track. Now, those decisions are being reflected at the top.
Wanted: CEO, no Ivy required
By Del Jones, USA TODAY
2005 April 6.
Imagine how far Brenda Barnes would have gone had she graduated from Harvard, Princeton or Yale. Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes graduated from Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. "We stand up better than anybody," she says of Augustana graduates.Sara Lee via APNo need, Barnes says. Attending Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., "made me CEO of Sara Lee," she says. With a workforce of 150,400 and 2004 sales of $19.6 billion, Sara Lee is the largest corporation with a female CEO.
"We alums at Augustana, we say there might be other schools that open more doors," says Barnes, who declines most interviews but was quick to come to the phone to talk about her alma mater. "Once we get in the door, we stand up better than anybody."
Statistics back her claim. Between World War II and the early 1980s, just about every major company shopped for future CEOs in Cambridge, Mass., Princeton, N.J., or New Haven, Conn. That hasn't been the case in recent executive suite shake-ups. (Related chart: Colleges attended by top CEOs) Last week Hewlett-Packard replaced Carly Fiorina with Mark Hurd, who got a business degree at Baylor University ('79) on a tennis scholarship. Taking over at Walt Disney in October is Robert Iger, an Ithaca College graduate ('73), who replaces Michael Eisner of Denison University ('64) in Granville, Ohio.
A study by executive search firm Spencer Stuart found that the percentage of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies who were educated at Ivy League schools declined from 16% in 1998 to 11% in 2004. Even the Harvard MBA shows signs of erosion. Among large-company CEOs who have MBAs, 28% received their degrees at Harvard, according to the 1998 study. By 2004, that had slipped to 23%. A survey by the Wharton School at the
Ivy League's University of Pennsylvania indicates the trend extends back 25 years. In 1980, 14% of CEOs at Fortune 100 companies received their undergraduate degrees from an Ivy League school. By 2001, 10% of CEOs received undergraduate degrees at one of the eight Ivies: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and Yale. The percentage of CEOs with undergraduate degrees from public colleges and universities shot up from 32% in 1980 to 48% in 2001.
Barnes isn't the first to hit the CEO lottery out of Augustana, a Lutheran liberal arts school overlooking the Mississippi River. There are QCR Holdings CEO Doug Hultquist ('77) and Noodles & Co. CEO Aaron Kennedy ('85) and retired Deere CEO Robert Hanson ('48). Murry Gerber, CEO of gas company Equitable Resources, graduated the same year ('75) as Barnes.
"It isn't Ivy League status that we rely on for our reputation. It is the accomplishment of our graduates," says Augustana President Steven Bahls.
Augustana churned out its CEOs even though it has just 2,200 students. Another example where size doesn't matter: Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in San Dimas, Calif., has an enrollment of 108, yet produced David Edmondson, who takes over as RadioShack's CEO on May 19.
Perhaps the ultimate slap on Ivies: Michael Dell for the first time passed Bill Gates as the most admired executive, selected last month by entrepreneurs at the Inc. 500 conference. Neither Dell nor Gates graduated from college, but at least Harvard could take a measure of pride in counting Gates among its dropouts. Dell dropped out from the University of Texas.
The trend is a pet peeve of FedEx CEO and Yale graduate ('66) Fred Smith. "I've talked to (Yale President) Rick Levin about this many times," says Smith, who blames Yale's de-emphasis of business in favor of disciplines such as history, economics and government.
There are other reasons behind the trend. Non-Ivy colleges and universities, both public and private, have gained stature, allowing recruiters to do more fishing at non-Ivies to avoid the "sense of entitlement" they encounter on Ivy campuses, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. He, by the way, has three Harvard degrees and is now an associate dean at Yale and founder of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Not every student at the non-Ivies is CEO material, "but you don't have to fish blindly," he says.
More Ivy graduates are interested in large corporations, but he suspects some "reverse snobbery" may hold them back because companies have non-Ivies doing the hiring,
Sonnenfeld says. The best CEOs today have a rapport with the rank and file, says Bill Zollars, CEO of trucking firm Yellow Roadway and a University of Minnesota alumnus ('69). "People who go to the University of Minnesota are used to being with people of all socioeconomic backgrounds," he says. "It's just as important to talk to (employees) one-on-one as it is the investment community and bankers."
Trend away from Ivies grows
If anything, the CEO trend away from Ivies is intensifying. So far in 2005 there have been 24 new CEOs named to run Fortune 1,000 companies, according to public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. USA TODAY found only one, Corning's soon-to-be-CEO Wendell Weeks, with an Ivy League degree, a Harvard MBA ('87).
Weeks went to work for Corning after getting his undergraduate degree from Lehigh ('81). When he gave CEO James Houghton notice that he was quitting to go to Harvard, Houghton
— who happens to be the third of four generations in his family to attend Harvard ('58, MBA '62) — offered to pay his tuition and salary if Weeks promised to return to Corning. Weeks, who replaces Houghton as CEO on April 28, says he had to turn down lucrative offers from headhunters to keep his promise.
Few of his fellow Harvard students went into industry, Weeks says, and instead opted for the higher starting salaries at investment banks. When asked if that hurts corporations and U.S. competitiveness, Weeks laughs and uses self-deprecating humor: "I've yet to see the study that proves that Harvard creates value."
In 2004, there were 99 new CEOs named at Fortune 1,000 companies. While eight had Ivy credentials, five of those were from Harvard's Advanced Management Program, which is
intensive and expensive ($52,500), but takes 10 weeks to complete.
Just one of the 99 has an Ivy undergrad degree: the CEO of auto parts maker ArvinMeritor, Charles McClure, went to Cornell ('76) for mechanical engineering. But when McClure
decided to get an MBA, he went to night school at the University of Michigan ('84) while he continued to work full time. McClure says it's an accomplishment to be accepted at an Ivy League school. "I also have a lot of respect for people who go to school at night," he adds.
Kellogg CEO Jim Jenness got both his undergraduate and MBA degrees at DePaul ('69 and '71). "An Ivy League education is certainly something to be proud of, but there are
plenty of top-notch leaders who hail from excellent schools from all parts of the world, including the Midwest," he says. Clarence Otis, CEO of Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster and Olive Garden), got a law degree at Stanford ('80), but he credits his liberal arts education at Williams College ('77) for critical thinking skills. "You get intellectual engagement with the faculty. That's not always available at Stanford or an Ivy League school," he says.
Yellow Roadway's Zollars worked with several Ivy Leaguers when he started at Kodak fresh out of the University of Minnesota. He doesn't recall one of them climbing as
high up the ladder.
The ethics of non-Ivy schools
When Barnes first graduated from Augustana, she worked stints as a waitress and a postal clerk before landing a $10,000-a-year job at Wilson Sporting Goods. There, the promotions were frequent. "The things that contribute most to leadership were things I did not learn from my (geology) major," says Equitable Resources' Gerber, who got to know business and
economics major Barnes at Augustana. Gerber says, among other things, he was introduced to existentialism and "making good with your life while you're on this planet. I don't believe someone from Augustana College would end up with the mess of Enron, to put it
bluntly. We don't turn out those kinds of people."
Others cited ethics as the backbone of their educations. Baxter International CEO Robert Parkinson, who in 2002-03 was dean of Loyola University's Chicago School of Business,
says when he got his MBA from Loyola ('75), it was one of five programs to offer a course in business ethics. Loyola's "Jesuit tradition is educating the whole person," he says. Adecco Group North America CEO Ray Roe credits his years at West Point ('67) for his "strong base of principles, code of conduct and ethics." However, it's not as if the Ivies are producing more CEOs who push ethical or legal lines.
Hank Greenberg, who left in scandal last month March at American International Group, went to the University of Miami ('48) and New York University Law School ('50). Harry Stonecipher, fired by Boeing last month after having an affair with a subordinate, graduated from Tennessee Tech ('60); WorldCom's just-convicted Bernie Ebbers graduated from Mississippi College ('67); Tyco International's Dennis Kozlowski went to Seton Hall ('68); and Enron's Ken Lay has degrees from the universities of Missouri ('64 and '65) and Houston ('70).
Martha Stewart, however, is an alumna of Barnard College ('63), an all-female liberal arts affiliate of Columbia University, one of the Ivies.
Of course, the Ivies have pumped out top-notch CEOs. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has a Harvard MBA ('82). Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a friend of Gates' at Harvard ('77), stayed on to graduate. Sharon Patrick, who took over as CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2003, has a Harvard MBA ('78). But Patrick then was replaced last year by Susan Lyne, a University of California, Berkeley dropout.
Times have changed, Sonnenfeld says. Had Gates been a product of the 1960s, he likely would have finished Harvard and gone on to develop software products for IBM. Gates may
even have made IBM CEO after 30 years.
But the best and brightest of the 1980s started doing things other than getting on the corporate fast track. Now, those decisions are being reflected at the top.
College Rankings that DO MATTER (How Big Names measure up.)
http://collegeprowler.com/rankings/girls/
Girls
(from A+ to C-)
C-: Cal Tech,
C+: MIT, Stanford, Williams, U Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Columbia,
B-: Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, UC Berkeley, UPenn
B: Amherst, Brown, Duke, Princeton,
B+: Yale
A-: Middlebury, NYU, Georgetown
Guys (from A+ to D+)
C: Williams
B-: Columbia, MIT, UChicago,
B: Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Amherst, Georgetown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford, UPenn
B+: Johns Hopkins, Duke, Yale,
A-: UCLA, Middlebury,
Campus Dining:
A+ Cornell, Dartmouth,
A: UCLA
A-: Princeton, Duke
B+: Harvard, UC Berkeley, U Chicago, Williams, Yale
B: Amherst, NYU,
B-: Brown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia
C+: UPenn,
Girls
(from A+ to C-)
C-: Cal Tech,
C+: MIT, Stanford, Williams, U Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Columbia,
B-: Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, UC Berkeley, UPenn
B: Amherst, Brown, Duke, Princeton,
B+: Yale
A-: Middlebury, NYU, Georgetown
Guys (from A+ to D+)
C: Williams
B-: Columbia, MIT, UChicago,
B: Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Amherst, Georgetown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford, UPenn
B+: Johns Hopkins, Duke, Yale,
A-: UCLA, Middlebury,
Campus Dining:
A+ Cornell, Dartmouth,
A: UCLA
A-: Princeton, Duke
B+: Harvard, UC Berkeley, U Chicago, Williams, Yale
B: Amherst, NYU,
B-: Brown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia
C+: UPenn,
Where these top 50 Fortune 500 CEOs went to college (TIME)
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1227055,00.html
Surprisingly, Ivy League graduates do not dominate the top fifty Fortune 500 Companies. When measuring CEO undergraduate education, the University of Texas system has just as
much representation as Harvard: a total of 3 CEOs. What does this
mean for students? An elite career doesn't always stem from an elite
education.
COMPANY
CEO
COLLEGE
Exxon Mobil
Rex Tillerson
University of Texas at Austin
Wal-Mart Stores
H. Lee Scott
Pittsburg State University in Kansas
General Motors
Rick Wagoner
Duke University
Chevron
David O'Reilly
University College, Dublin
Ford Motor
William Ford, Jr.
Princeton University
ConocoPhillips
James Mulva
University of Texas
General Electric
Jeff Immelt
Dartmouth College
Citigroup
Charles Prince
University of Southern California
American Intl. Group (AIG)
Martin J. Sullivan
N/A
Intl. Business Machines
Samuel J. Palmisano
Johns Hopkins University
Hewlett-Packard
Mark V. Hurd
Baylor University
Bank of America Corp.
Ken Lewis
Georgia State University
Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett
University of Nebraska
Home Depot
Robert Nardelli
Western Illinois University
Valero Energy
Bill Klesse
University of Dayton
McKesson
John Hammergren
University of Minnesota
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Jamie Dimon
Tufts University
Verizon Communications
Ivan Seidenberg
City University of New York
Cardinal Health
Robert D. Walter
Ohio University
Altria Group
Louis Camilleri
University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
Kroger
David Dillon
University of Kansas
State Farm Insurance Cos.
Edward B. Rust, Jr.
Illinois Wesleyan University
Marathon Oil
Clarence Cazalot, Jr.
Louisiana State University
Procter & Gamble
Alan G. Lafley
Hamilton College
Dell
Kevin Rollins
Brigham Young University
Boeing
W. James McNerney, Jr.
Yale University
AmerisourceBergen
R. David Yost
U.S. Air Force Academy
Costco Wholesale
James Sinegal
San Diego State University
Target
Robert Ulrich
University of Minnesota
Morgan Stanley
John J. Mack
Duke University
Pfizer
Henry A. McKinnell
University of British Columbia
Johnson & Johnson
William Weldon
Quinnipiac College
Sears Holdings
Alan J. Lacy
Georgia Institute of Technology
Merrill Lynch
Stan O'Neal
Kettering University
MetLife
Rob Henrikson
University of Pennsylvania
Dow Chemical
Andrew N. Liveris
University of Queensland
UnitedHealth Group
William W. McGuire
University of Texas at Austin
Wellpoint
Larry C. Glasscock
Cleveland State University
AT&T
Edward Whitacre, Jr.
Texas Tech University
Time Warner
Richard D. Parsons
University of Hawaii
Goldman Sachs Group
Lloyd Blankfein
Harvard University
Lowe's
Robert Niblock
University of North Carolina
United Technologies
George David
Harvard University
United Parcel Service
Michael L. Eskew
Purdue University
Walgreen
David Bernauer
North Dakota State University
Wells Fargo
Richard Kovacevich
Stanford University
Albertson's
Larry Johnston
Stetson University
Microsoft
Steve Ballmer
Harvard University
Intel
Paul Otellini
University of San Francisco
Safeway
Steven Burd
Carroll College
Surprisingly, Ivy League graduates do not dominate the top fifty Fortune 500 Companies. When measuring CEO undergraduate education, the University of Texas system has just as
much representation as Harvard: a total of 3 CEOs. What does this
mean for students? An elite career doesn't always stem from an elite
education.
COMPANY
CEO
COLLEGE
Exxon Mobil
Rex Tillerson
University of Texas at Austin
Wal-Mart Stores
H. Lee Scott
Pittsburg State University in Kansas
General Motors
Rick Wagoner
Duke University
Chevron
David O'Reilly
University College, Dublin
Ford Motor
William Ford, Jr.
Princeton University
ConocoPhillips
James Mulva
University of Texas
General Electric
Jeff Immelt
Dartmouth College
Citigroup
Charles Prince
University of Southern California
American Intl. Group (AIG)
Martin J. Sullivan
N/A
Intl. Business Machines
Samuel J. Palmisano
Johns Hopkins University
Hewlett-Packard
Mark V. Hurd
Baylor University
Bank of America Corp.
Ken Lewis
Georgia State University
Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett
University of Nebraska
Home Depot
Robert Nardelli
Western Illinois University
Valero Energy
Bill Klesse
University of Dayton
McKesson
John Hammergren
University of Minnesota
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Jamie Dimon
Tufts University
Verizon Communications
Ivan Seidenberg
City University of New York
Cardinal Health
Robert D. Walter
Ohio University
Altria Group
Louis Camilleri
University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
Kroger
David Dillon
University of Kansas
State Farm Insurance Cos.
Edward B. Rust, Jr.
Illinois Wesleyan University
Marathon Oil
Clarence Cazalot, Jr.
Louisiana State University
Procter & Gamble
Alan G. Lafley
Hamilton College
Dell
Kevin Rollins
Brigham Young University
Boeing
W. James McNerney, Jr.
Yale University
AmerisourceBergen
R. David Yost
U.S. Air Force Academy
Costco Wholesale
James Sinegal
San Diego State University
Target
Robert Ulrich
University of Minnesota
Morgan Stanley
John J. Mack
Duke University
Pfizer
Henry A. McKinnell
University of British Columbia
Johnson & Johnson
William Weldon
Quinnipiac College
Sears Holdings
Alan J. Lacy
Georgia Institute of Technology
Merrill Lynch
Stan O'Neal
Kettering University
MetLife
Rob Henrikson
University of Pennsylvania
Dow Chemical
Andrew N. Liveris
University of Queensland
UnitedHealth Group
William W. McGuire
University of Texas at Austin
Wellpoint
Larry C. Glasscock
Cleveland State University
AT&T
Edward Whitacre, Jr.
Texas Tech University
Time Warner
Richard D. Parsons
University of Hawaii
Goldman Sachs Group
Lloyd Blankfein
Harvard University
Lowe's
Robert Niblock
University of North Carolina
United Technologies
George David
Harvard University
United Parcel Service
Michael L. Eskew
Purdue University
Walgreen
David Bernauer
North Dakota State University
Wells Fargo
Richard Kovacevich
Stanford University
Albertson's
Larry Johnston
Stetson University
Microsoft
Steve Ballmer
Harvard University
Intel
Paul Otellini
University of San Francisco
Safeway
Steven Burd
Carroll College
How the College Rankings are flawed.
(From the Book Admission Matters (2005)
written by Sally P. Springer and Marion R. Franck)
The first rankings, published in 1983, were based on surveys of college administrators.
“I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university-- any more than the quality of a magazine-- can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering method.” Gerhard Casper, former president of Stanford University.
As the president of a university that is among the top-ranked universities, I hope I have the standing to persuade you that much about these rankings-- particularly their specious formulas and spurious precision-- is utterly misleading. I wish I could forgo this letter since, after all, the rankings are only another newspaper story. Alas, alumni, foreign newspapers, and many others do not bring a sense of perspective to the matter.” (10)
How it's calculated-- ¼: reputation ratings it receives in the poll of college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans-- they are asked to rate academic quality of undergraduate programs at schools with the same mission as their own (e.g.: Research universities together and liberal arts colleges together) on a 1-5 scale from 'marginal' to 'distinguished,' with the option to respond 'don't know.' Many of those who receive the questionnaire acknowledge that they don't have the kind of detailed information about other colleges that would be needed to respond meaningfully.
The other factors that go into the ranking include: retention and graduation rate (20%), faculty resources (20%), student selectivity (15%), financial resources (10%), alumni giving (5%), graduation rate performance (5%)
All of this information is collected and put into a formula that assigns weightings to the different kinds of data and then computes an overall 'ranking.' Each year the magazine slightly modifies the formula it uses, ostensibly to improve its usefulness as a tool to assess educational quality but also to sell the rankings as “new and improved.”
Between 1998-2000, Cal Tech went moved #9 to #1 back down to less prominent position, while Johns Hopkins moved from #22 to #10 to #15, and Columbia from #9 to #15 to #11. Critics of the rankings argue that meaningful changes in college quality are not possible over a period as short as one year, and that formula changes are primarily to designed to keep interest in the rankings high and sell more magazines.
-Most important criticism of the rankings is that they are not based on any direct measures of educational quality or student satisfaction. -For the last few years, India University has attempted to measure quality and satisfaction by asking students direct questions about their educational experiences and how they spend their time.
The myth of “I'll make more money if I graduate from an elite college. “Students may have a better sense of their potential ability than college admissions committees. To cite one prominent example, Steven Spielberg was rejected by the USC and UCLA film schools.” (19) Stacey Dale and Alan Krueger, researchers who studied the long-term effects of attending different kinds of colleges.
They wanted to test their hypothesis that maybe the kind of college where students received their undergraduate education wasn't a big factor at all and what mattered was the personal qualities that students had. So Dale and Krueger compared incomes figures for individuals who were accepted by elite colleges and actually attended those colleges with the income of
people who were accepted by elite colleges but who chose to attend a less selective college. The results showed no difference in income between the two groups. The data even suggested that simply having applied to an elite college, regardless of whether a student was accepted, was the critical factor in predicting later income. Students who had the self-confidence and motivation to envision themselves competitive at an elite college showed the enhanced economic benefit normally associated with having actually attended such a college.
Their research also had sufficient data to show that people who went to a selective college were no more likely to obtain an advanced degree than those who were admitted to a selective college but chose to attend a less selective school... students admitted to a selective college but who chose o attend a less selective one seemed to fare just as well when it came to graduate or profession school admission as those who actually attended the more selective college.
“We didn't find any evidence that suggests that the selectivity of a student's undergraduate college was related to the quality of the graduate school they attended.” Susan Dale.
“Do not choose a college by the numbers. Most of those numbers are about resources and reputations and not actual quality of performance. Base your choice on your own needs and aspirations and which college can best meet them. As Albert Einstein reminded us, 'Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” David Davenport, former president of Pepperdine University.
written by Sally P. Springer and Marion R. Franck)
The first rankings, published in 1983, were based on surveys of college administrators.
“I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university-- any more than the quality of a magazine-- can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering method.” Gerhard Casper, former president of Stanford University.
As the president of a university that is among the top-ranked universities, I hope I have the standing to persuade you that much about these rankings-- particularly their specious formulas and spurious precision-- is utterly misleading. I wish I could forgo this letter since, after all, the rankings are only another newspaper story. Alas, alumni, foreign newspapers, and many others do not bring a sense of perspective to the matter.” (10)
How it's calculated-- ¼: reputation ratings it receives in the poll of college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans-- they are asked to rate academic quality of undergraduate programs at schools with the same mission as their own (e.g.: Research universities together and liberal arts colleges together) on a 1-5 scale from 'marginal' to 'distinguished,' with the option to respond 'don't know.' Many of those who receive the questionnaire acknowledge that they don't have the kind of detailed information about other colleges that would be needed to respond meaningfully.
The other factors that go into the ranking include: retention and graduation rate (20%), faculty resources (20%), student selectivity (15%), financial resources (10%), alumni giving (5%), graduation rate performance (5%)
All of this information is collected and put into a formula that assigns weightings to the different kinds of data and then computes an overall 'ranking.' Each year the magazine slightly modifies the formula it uses, ostensibly to improve its usefulness as a tool to assess educational quality but also to sell the rankings as “new and improved.”
Between 1998-2000, Cal Tech went moved #9 to #1 back down to less prominent position, while Johns Hopkins moved from #22 to #10 to #15, and Columbia from #9 to #15 to #11. Critics of the rankings argue that meaningful changes in college quality are not possible over a period as short as one year, and that formula changes are primarily to designed to keep interest in the rankings high and sell more magazines.
-Most important criticism of the rankings is that they are not based on any direct measures of educational quality or student satisfaction. -For the last few years, India University has attempted to measure quality and satisfaction by asking students direct questions about their educational experiences and how they spend their time.
The myth of “I'll make more money if I graduate from an elite college. “Students may have a better sense of their potential ability than college admissions committees. To cite one prominent example, Steven Spielberg was rejected by the USC and UCLA film schools.” (19) Stacey Dale and Alan Krueger, researchers who studied the long-term effects of attending different kinds of colleges.
They wanted to test their hypothesis that maybe the kind of college where students received their undergraduate education wasn't a big factor at all and what mattered was the personal qualities that students had. So Dale and Krueger compared incomes figures for individuals who were accepted by elite colleges and actually attended those colleges with the income of
people who were accepted by elite colleges but who chose to attend a less selective college. The results showed no difference in income between the two groups. The data even suggested that simply having applied to an elite college, regardless of whether a student was accepted, was the critical factor in predicting later income. Students who had the self-confidence and motivation to envision themselves competitive at an elite college showed the enhanced economic benefit normally associated with having actually attended such a college.
Their research also had sufficient data to show that people who went to a selective college were no more likely to obtain an advanced degree than those who were admitted to a selective college but chose to attend a less selective school... students admitted to a selective college but who chose o attend a less selective one seemed to fare just as well when it came to graduate or profession school admission as those who actually attended the more selective college.
“We didn't find any evidence that suggests that the selectivity of a student's undergraduate college was related to the quality of the graduate school they attended.” Susan Dale.
“Do not choose a college by the numbers. Most of those numbers are about resources and reputations and not actual quality of performance. Base your choice on your own needs and aspirations and which college can best meet them. As Albert Einstein reminded us, 'Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” David Davenport, former president of Pepperdine University.
Your college rejected you? Reject them back! (NYT)
Source:
http://www.collegiatechoice.com/myaccept.htm
The following letter appeared in the New York Times and was written by Mr. Paul Devlin after receiving numerous rejections.
“Dear Admissions Committee:
Having reviewed the many rejection letters I have received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejection at this time. This year, after applying to a great many colleges and universities, I received an especially fine crop of rejection letters.
Unfortunately, the number of rejections that I can accept is limited. Each of my rejections was reviewed carefully and on an individual basis. Many factors were taken into account - the size of the institution, student-faculty ratio, location, reputation, costs and social atmosphere.
I am certain that most colleges I applied to are more than qualified to reject me. I am also sure that some mistakes were made in turning away some of these rejections. I can only hope they were few in number. I am aware of the keen disappointment my decision may bring.
Throughout my deliberations, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have taken for you to reach your decision to reject me. Keep in mind that at times it was necessary for me to reject even those letters of rejection that would normally have met my traditionally high standards.
I appreciate your having enough interest in me to reject my application. Let me take the opportunity to wish you well in what I am sure will be a successful academic year.
SEE YOU IN THE FALL!
Sincerely,
Paul Devlin
Applicant at Large
http://www.collegiatechoice.com/myaccept.htm
The following letter appeared in the New York Times and was written by Mr. Paul Devlin after receiving numerous rejections.
“Dear Admissions Committee:
Having reviewed the many rejection letters I have received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejection at this time. This year, after applying to a great many colleges and universities, I received an especially fine crop of rejection letters.
Unfortunately, the number of rejections that I can accept is limited. Each of my rejections was reviewed carefully and on an individual basis. Many factors were taken into account - the size of the institution, student-faculty ratio, location, reputation, costs and social atmosphere.
I am certain that most colleges I applied to are more than qualified to reject me. I am also sure that some mistakes were made in turning away some of these rejections. I can only hope they were few in number. I am aware of the keen disappointment my decision may bring.
Throughout my deliberations, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have taken for you to reach your decision to reject me. Keep in mind that at times it was necessary for me to reject even those letters of rejection that would normally have met my traditionally high standards.
I appreciate your having enough interest in me to reject my application. Let me take the opportunity to wish you well in what I am sure will be a successful academic year.
SEE YOU IN THE FALL!
Sincerely,
Paul Devlin
Applicant at Large
Boston Globe columnist's classic words of wisdom on college rejection: He knows how you feel.
The college rejection letter
By David Nyhan | March 10, 2008
Former Globe columnist the late David Nyhan wrote the following column in 1987. Since then, it has been reprinted in the newspaper and online many times around this time of
year. Nyhan died in January 2005.
THE REJECTIONS arrive this time of year in thin, cheap envelopes, some with a crummy window for name and address, as if it were a bill, and none with the thick packet you'd
hoped for.
''Dear So-and-so:
'The admissions committee gave full consideration . . . but I regret to inform you we will be unable to offer you a place in the Class of 2012." Lots of applicants, limited number of spaces, blah blah blah, good luck with your undergraduate career. Very truly yours, Assistant Dean Blowhard, rejection writer, Old Overshoe U.
This is the season of college acceptance letters. So it's also the time of rejection. You're in or you're out. Today is the day you learn how life is not like high school. To the Ins, who got where they wanted to go: Congrats, great, good luck, have a nice life, see you later. The rest of this is for the Outs.
You sort of felt it was coming. Your SAT scores weren't the greatest. Your transcript had some holes in it. You wondered what your teachers' recommendations would really say, or imply. And you can't help thinking about that essay you finished at 2 o'clock in the morning of the day you absolutely had to mail in your application, that essay which was, well, a little weird.
Maybe you could have pulled that C in sociology up to a B-minus. Maybe you shouldn't have quit soccer to get a job to pay for your gas. Maybe it was that down period during sophomore year when you had mono and didn't talk to your teachers for three months while you vegged out. What difference does it make what it was? It still hurts.
It hurts where you feel pain most: inside. It's not like the usual heartache that kids have, the kind other people can't see. An alcoholic parent, a secret shame, a gaping wound in the family fabric, these are things one can carry to school and mask with a grin, a wisecrack, a scowl, a just-don't-mess-with-me-today attitude.
But everybody knows where you got in and where you didn't. Sure, the letter comes to the house. But eventually you've still got to face your friends. ''Any mail for me?" is like asking for a knuckle sandwich. Thanks a lot for the kick in the teeth. What a bummer.
How do you tell kids at school? That's the hard part. The squeals in the corridor from the kids who got in someplace desirable. The supercilious puss on the ones who got early
acceptance or the girl whose old man has an in at Old Ivy.
There's the class doofus who suddenly becomes the first nerd accepted at Princeton, the 125-pound wrestling jock who, surprise, surprise, got into MIT. But what about you?
You've heard about special treatment for this category or that category, alumni kids on a legacy ticket
or affirmative action luckouts or rebounders or oboe players. Maybe they were trying to fill certain slots. But you're not a slot. You're you. They can look at your grades and weigh your scores and see how many years you were in French Club. But they can't look into your head, or into your heart. They can't check out the guts department.
This is the important thing: They didn't reject you. They rejected your resume. They gave some other kid the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that kid deserved a break. Don't you deserve a break? Sure. You'll get one. Maybe this is the reality check you needed. Maybe the school that does take you will be good. Maybe this is the day you start to grow up.
Look at some people who've accomplished a lot and see where they started. Ronald Reagan? Eureka College. Jesse Jackson? They wouldn't let him play quarterback in the Big Ten, so he quit Illinois for North Carolina A & T. Do you know that the recently retired chairmen and CEOs of both General Motors and General Electric graduated from UMass? Bob Dole? He went to Washburn Municipal University.
The former minority leader of the United States Senate, Tom Daschle, went to South Dakota State. The former speaker of the US House of Representatives, J. Dennis Hastert, went to Northern Illinois University. Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, took a bachelor's degree from Jamestown College. Winston Churchill? He was so slow a learner that they used to write to his mother to come take this boy off our hands.
I know what you think: Spare me the sympathy. It still hurts. But let's keep this in perspective. What did Magic Johnson say to the little boy who also tested HIV positive? ''You've got to have a positive attitude." What happens when you don't keep a positive attitude? Don't ask.
This college thing? What happened is that you rubbed up against the reality of big-time, maybe big-name, institutions. Some they pick, some they don't. You lost. It'll happen
again, but let's hope it won't have the awful kick. You'll get tossed by a girlfriend or boyfriend. You won't get the job or the promotion you think you deserve. Some disease may pluck you from life's fast lane and pin you to a bed, a wheelchair, a coffin. That happens.
Bad habits you can change; bad luck is nothing you can do anything about. Does it mean you're not a good person? People like you, if not your resume. There's no one else that can be you. Plenty of people think you're special now, or will think that, once they get to know you. Because you are.
And the admissions department that said no? Screw them. You've got a life to lead.
By David Nyhan | March 10, 2008
Former Globe columnist the late David Nyhan wrote the following column in 1987. Since then, it has been reprinted in the newspaper and online many times around this time of
year. Nyhan died in January 2005.
THE REJECTIONS arrive this time of year in thin, cheap envelopes, some with a crummy window for name and address, as if it were a bill, and none with the thick packet you'd
hoped for.
''Dear So-and-so:
'The admissions committee gave full consideration . . . but I regret to inform you we will be unable to offer you a place in the Class of 2012." Lots of applicants, limited number of spaces, blah blah blah, good luck with your undergraduate career. Very truly yours, Assistant Dean Blowhard, rejection writer, Old Overshoe U.
This is the season of college acceptance letters. So it's also the time of rejection. You're in or you're out. Today is the day you learn how life is not like high school. To the Ins, who got where they wanted to go: Congrats, great, good luck, have a nice life, see you later. The rest of this is for the Outs.
You sort of felt it was coming. Your SAT scores weren't the greatest. Your transcript had some holes in it. You wondered what your teachers' recommendations would really say, or imply. And you can't help thinking about that essay you finished at 2 o'clock in the morning of the day you absolutely had to mail in your application, that essay which was, well, a little weird.
Maybe you could have pulled that C in sociology up to a B-minus. Maybe you shouldn't have quit soccer to get a job to pay for your gas. Maybe it was that down period during sophomore year when you had mono and didn't talk to your teachers for three months while you vegged out. What difference does it make what it was? It still hurts.
It hurts where you feel pain most: inside. It's not like the usual heartache that kids have, the kind other people can't see. An alcoholic parent, a secret shame, a gaping wound in the family fabric, these are things one can carry to school and mask with a grin, a wisecrack, a scowl, a just-don't-mess-with-me-today attitude.
But everybody knows where you got in and where you didn't. Sure, the letter comes to the house. But eventually you've still got to face your friends. ''Any mail for me?" is like asking for a knuckle sandwich. Thanks a lot for the kick in the teeth. What a bummer.
How do you tell kids at school? That's the hard part. The squeals in the corridor from the kids who got in someplace desirable. The supercilious puss on the ones who got early
acceptance or the girl whose old man has an in at Old Ivy.
There's the class doofus who suddenly becomes the first nerd accepted at Princeton, the 125-pound wrestling jock who, surprise, surprise, got into MIT. But what about you?
You've heard about special treatment for this category or that category, alumni kids on a legacy ticket
or affirmative action luckouts or rebounders or oboe players. Maybe they were trying to fill certain slots. But you're not a slot. You're you. They can look at your grades and weigh your scores and see how many years you were in French Club. But they can't look into your head, or into your heart. They can't check out the guts department.
This is the important thing: They didn't reject you. They rejected your resume. They gave some other kid the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that kid deserved a break. Don't you deserve a break? Sure. You'll get one. Maybe this is the reality check you needed. Maybe the school that does take you will be good. Maybe this is the day you start to grow up.
Look at some people who've accomplished a lot and see where they started. Ronald Reagan? Eureka College. Jesse Jackson? They wouldn't let him play quarterback in the Big Ten, so he quit Illinois for North Carolina A & T. Do you know that the recently retired chairmen and CEOs of both General Motors and General Electric graduated from UMass? Bob Dole? He went to Washburn Municipal University.
The former minority leader of the United States Senate, Tom Daschle, went to South Dakota State. The former speaker of the US House of Representatives, J. Dennis Hastert, went to Northern Illinois University. Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, took a bachelor's degree from Jamestown College. Winston Churchill? He was so slow a learner that they used to write to his mother to come take this boy off our hands.
I know what you think: Spare me the sympathy. It still hurts. But let's keep this in perspective. What did Magic Johnson say to the little boy who also tested HIV positive? ''You've got to have a positive attitude." What happens when you don't keep a positive attitude? Don't ask.
This college thing? What happened is that you rubbed up against the reality of big-time, maybe big-name, institutions. Some they pick, some they don't. You lost. It'll happen
again, but let's hope it won't have the awful kick. You'll get tossed by a girlfriend or boyfriend. You won't get the job or the promotion you think you deserve. Some disease may pluck you from life's fast lane and pin you to a bed, a wheelchair, a coffin. That happens.
Bad habits you can change; bad luck is nothing you can do anything about. Does it mean you're not a good person? People like you, if not your resume. There's no one else that can be you. Plenty of people think you're special now, or will think that, once they get to know you. Because you are.
And the admissions department that said no? Screw them. You've got a life to lead.
Before They Were Titans, Moguls and Newsmakers, These People Were...Rejected (WSJ)
At College Admission Time, Lessons in Thin Envelopes
-Wall Street Journal 2010
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
Few events arouse more teenage angst than the springtime arrival of college rejection letters. With next fall's college freshman class expected to approach a record 2.9 million students, hundreds of thousands of applicants will soon be receiving the dreaded letters.
Teenagers who face rejection will be joining good company, including Nobel laureates, billionaire philanthropists, university presidents, constitutional scholars, best-selling authors and other leaders of business, media and the arts who once received college or graduate-school rejection letters of their own.
Both Warren Buffett and "Today" show host Meredith Vieira say that while being rejected by the school of their dreams was devastating, it launched them on a path to meeting life-changing mentors. Harold Varmus, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, says getting rejected twice by Harvard Medical School, where a dean advised him to enlist in the military, was soon forgotten as he plunged into his studies at Columbia University's med school. For other college rejects, from Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and entrepreneur Ted Turner to broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, the turndowns were minor footnotes, just ones they still remember and will talk about.
Rejections aren't uncommon. Harvard accepts only a little more than 7% of the 29,000 undergraduate applications it receives each year, and Stanford's acceptance rate is about the same.
"The truth is, everything that has happened in my life...that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better," Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach "lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity."
As it turned out, his father responded with "only this unconditional love...an unconditional belief in me," Mr. Buffett says. Exploring other options, he realized that two investing experts he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia's graduate business school. He dashed off a late application, where by a stroke of luck it was fielded and accepted by Mr. Dodd. From these mentors, Mr. Buffett says he learned core principles that guided his investing. The Harvard rejection also benefited his alma mater; the family gave more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008 through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, based on tax filings.Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn't have been a good fit. But at the time, he "had this feeling of dread" after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago, and a fear of disappointing his father.
The lesson of negatives becoming positives has proved true repeatedly, Mr. Buffett says. He was terrified of public speaking—so much so that when he was young he sometimes threw up before giving an address. So he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, Susan Thompson, a "champion debater," he says. "I even proposed to my wife during the course," he says. "If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might not have taken it."
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was rejected as a teenager when he applied to Harvard. He says the experience cemented his belief that it was up to him alone to define his talents and potential. His family had moved to a small, isolated town in rural Oregon, where educational opportunities were sparse. As a kid, he did menial jobs around the newspaper office, like sweeping the floor.
Mr. Bollinger recalls thinking at the time, "I need to work extra hard and teach myself a lot of things that I need to know," to measure up to other students who were "going to prep schools, and having assignments that I'm not." When the rejection letter arrived, he accepted a scholarship to University of Oregon and later graduated from Columbia Law School. His advice: Don't let rejections control your life. To "allow other people's assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake," says Mr. Bollinger, a First Amendment author and scholar. "The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you."
Others who received Harvard rejections include "Today" show host Meredith Vieira, who was turned down in 1971 as a high-school senior. At the time, she was crushed. "In fact, I was so devastated that when I went to Tufts [University] my freshman year, every Saturday I'd hitchhike to Harvard," she says in an email. But Ms. Vieira went on to meet a mentor at Tufts who sparked her interest in journalism by offering her an internship. Had she not been rejected, she doubts that she would have entered the field, she says.
And broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, also rejected as a teenager by Harvard, says it was one of a series of setbacks that eventually led him to settle down, stop partying and commit to finishing college and working in broadcast journalism. "The initial stumble was critical in getting me launched," he says.
Dr. Varmus, the Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was daunted by the first of his two turndowns by Harvard's med school. He enrolled instead in grad studies in literature at Harvard, but was uninspired by thoughts of a career in that field.
After a year, he applied again to Harvard's med school and was rejected, by a dean who chastised him in an interview for being "inconstant and immature" and advised him to enlist in the military. Officials at Columbia's medical school, however, seemed to value his "competence in two cultures," science and literature, he says.
If rejected by the school you love, Dr. Varmus advises in an email, immerse yourself in life at a college that welcomes you. "The differences between colleges that seem so important before you get there will seem a lot less important once you arrive at one that offered you a place."
Similarly, John Schlifske, president of insurance company Northwestern Mutual, was discouraged as a teenager when he received a rejection letter from Yale University. An aspiring college football player, "I wanted to go to Yale so badly," he says. He recalls coming home from school the day the letter arrived. "Mom was all excited and gave it to me," he says. His heart fell when he saw "the classic thin envelope," he says. "It was crushing."
Yet he believes he had a deeper, richer experience at Carleton College in Minnesota. He says he received a "phenomenal" education and became a starter on the football team rather than a bench-warmer as he might have been at Yale. "Being wanted is a good thing," he says.
He had a chance to pass on that wisdom to his son Dan, who was rejected in 2006 by one of his top choices, Duke University. Drawing on his own experience, the elder Mr. Schlifske told his son, "Just because somebody says no, doesn't mean there's not another school out there you're going to enjoy, and where you are going to get a good education." Dan ended up at his other top choice, Washington University in St. Louis, where he is currently a senior. Mr. Schlifske says, "he loves it."
Rejected once, and then again, by business schools at Stanford and Harvard, Scott McNealy practiced the perseverance that would characterize his career. A brash economics graduate of Harvard, he was annoyed that "they wouldn't take a chance on me right out of college," he says. He kept trying, taking a job as a plant foreman for a manufacturer and working his way up in sales. "By my third year out of school, it was clear I was going to be a successful executive. I blew the doors off my numbers," he says. Granted admission to Stanford's business school, he met Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and went on to head Sun for 22 years.
Paul Purcell, who heads one of the few investment-advisory companies to emerge unscathed from the recession, Robert W. Baird & Co., says he interpreted his rejection years ago by Stanford University as evidence that he had to work harder. "I took it as a signal that, 'Look, the world is really competitive, and I'll just try harder next time,'" he says. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and got an MBA from the University of Chicago, and in 2009, as chairman, president and chief executive of Baird, won the University of Chicago Booth School of Business distinguished corporate alumnus award. Baird has remained profitable through the recession and expanded client assets to $75 billion.
Time puts rejection letters in perspective, says Ted Turner. He received dual rejections as a teenager, by Princeton and Harvard, he says in an interview. The future America's Cup winner attended Brown University, where he became captain of the sailing team. He left college after his father cut off financial support, and joined his father's billboard company, which he built into the media empire that spawned CNN. Brown has since awarded him a bachelor's degree.
Tragedies later had a greater impact on his life, he says, including the loss of his father to suicide and his teenage sister to illness. "A rejection letter doesn't even come close to losing loved ones in your family. That is the hard stuff to survive," Mr. Turner says. "I want to be sure to make this point: I did everything I did without a college degree," he says. While it is better to have one, "you can be successful without it."
-Wall Street Journal 2010
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
Few events arouse more teenage angst than the springtime arrival of college rejection letters. With next fall's college freshman class expected to approach a record 2.9 million students, hundreds of thousands of applicants will soon be receiving the dreaded letters.
Teenagers who face rejection will be joining good company, including Nobel laureates, billionaire philanthropists, university presidents, constitutional scholars, best-selling authors and other leaders of business, media and the arts who once received college or graduate-school rejection letters of their own.
Both Warren Buffett and "Today" show host Meredith Vieira say that while being rejected by the school of their dreams was devastating, it launched them on a path to meeting life-changing mentors. Harold Varmus, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, says getting rejected twice by Harvard Medical School, where a dean advised him to enlist in the military, was soon forgotten as he plunged into his studies at Columbia University's med school. For other college rejects, from Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and entrepreneur Ted Turner to broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, the turndowns were minor footnotes, just ones they still remember and will talk about.
Rejections aren't uncommon. Harvard accepts only a little more than 7% of the 29,000 undergraduate applications it receives each year, and Stanford's acceptance rate is about the same.
"The truth is, everything that has happened in my life...that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better," Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach "lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity."
As it turned out, his father responded with "only this unconditional love...an unconditional belief in me," Mr. Buffett says. Exploring other options, he realized that two investing experts he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia's graduate business school. He dashed off a late application, where by a stroke of luck it was fielded and accepted by Mr. Dodd. From these mentors, Mr. Buffett says he learned core principles that guided his investing. The Harvard rejection also benefited his alma mater; the family gave more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008 through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, based on tax filings.Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn't have been a good fit. But at the time, he "had this feeling of dread" after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago, and a fear of disappointing his father.
The lesson of negatives becoming positives has proved true repeatedly, Mr. Buffett says. He was terrified of public speaking—so much so that when he was young he sometimes threw up before giving an address. So he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, Susan Thompson, a "champion debater," he says. "I even proposed to my wife during the course," he says. "If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might not have taken it."
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was rejected as a teenager when he applied to Harvard. He says the experience cemented his belief that it was up to him alone to define his talents and potential. His family had moved to a small, isolated town in rural Oregon, where educational opportunities were sparse. As a kid, he did menial jobs around the newspaper office, like sweeping the floor.
Mr. Bollinger recalls thinking at the time, "I need to work extra hard and teach myself a lot of things that I need to know," to measure up to other students who were "going to prep schools, and having assignments that I'm not." When the rejection letter arrived, he accepted a scholarship to University of Oregon and later graduated from Columbia Law School. His advice: Don't let rejections control your life. To "allow other people's assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake," says Mr. Bollinger, a First Amendment author and scholar. "The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you."
Others who received Harvard rejections include "Today" show host Meredith Vieira, who was turned down in 1971 as a high-school senior. At the time, she was crushed. "In fact, I was so devastated that when I went to Tufts [University] my freshman year, every Saturday I'd hitchhike to Harvard," she says in an email. But Ms. Vieira went on to meet a mentor at Tufts who sparked her interest in journalism by offering her an internship. Had she not been rejected, she doubts that she would have entered the field, she says.
And broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, also rejected as a teenager by Harvard, says it was one of a series of setbacks that eventually led him to settle down, stop partying and commit to finishing college and working in broadcast journalism. "The initial stumble was critical in getting me launched," he says.
Dr. Varmus, the Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was daunted by the first of his two turndowns by Harvard's med school. He enrolled instead in grad studies in literature at Harvard, but was uninspired by thoughts of a career in that field.
After a year, he applied again to Harvard's med school and was rejected, by a dean who chastised him in an interview for being "inconstant and immature" and advised him to enlist in the military. Officials at Columbia's medical school, however, seemed to value his "competence in two cultures," science and literature, he says.
If rejected by the school you love, Dr. Varmus advises in an email, immerse yourself in life at a college that welcomes you. "The differences between colleges that seem so important before you get there will seem a lot less important once you arrive at one that offered you a place."
Similarly, John Schlifske, president of insurance company Northwestern Mutual, was discouraged as a teenager when he received a rejection letter from Yale University. An aspiring college football player, "I wanted to go to Yale so badly," he says. He recalls coming home from school the day the letter arrived. "Mom was all excited and gave it to me," he says. His heart fell when he saw "the classic thin envelope," he says. "It was crushing."
Yet he believes he had a deeper, richer experience at Carleton College in Minnesota. He says he received a "phenomenal" education and became a starter on the football team rather than a bench-warmer as he might have been at Yale. "Being wanted is a good thing," he says.
He had a chance to pass on that wisdom to his son Dan, who was rejected in 2006 by one of his top choices, Duke University. Drawing on his own experience, the elder Mr. Schlifske told his son, "Just because somebody says no, doesn't mean there's not another school out there you're going to enjoy, and where you are going to get a good education." Dan ended up at his other top choice, Washington University in St. Louis, where he is currently a senior. Mr. Schlifske says, "he loves it."
Rejected once, and then again, by business schools at Stanford and Harvard, Scott McNealy practiced the perseverance that would characterize his career. A brash economics graduate of Harvard, he was annoyed that "they wouldn't take a chance on me right out of college," he says. He kept trying, taking a job as a plant foreman for a manufacturer and working his way up in sales. "By my third year out of school, it was clear I was going to be a successful executive. I blew the doors off my numbers," he says. Granted admission to Stanford's business school, he met Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and went on to head Sun for 22 years.
Paul Purcell, who heads one of the few investment-advisory companies to emerge unscathed from the recession, Robert W. Baird & Co., says he interpreted his rejection years ago by Stanford University as evidence that he had to work harder. "I took it as a signal that, 'Look, the world is really competitive, and I'll just try harder next time,'" he says. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and got an MBA from the University of Chicago, and in 2009, as chairman, president and chief executive of Baird, won the University of Chicago Booth School of Business distinguished corporate alumnus award. Baird has remained profitable through the recession and expanded client assets to $75 billion.
Time puts rejection letters in perspective, says Ted Turner. He received dual rejections as a teenager, by Princeton and Harvard, he says in an interview. The future America's Cup winner attended Brown University, where he became captain of the sailing team. He left college after his father cut off financial support, and joined his father's billboard company, which he built into the media empire that spawned CNN. Brown has since awarded him a bachelor's degree.
Tragedies later had a greater impact on his life, he says, including the loss of his father to suicide and his teenage sister to illness. "A rejection letter doesn't even come close to losing loved ones in your family. That is the hard stuff to survive," Mr. Turner says. "I want to be sure to make this point: I did everything I did without a college degree," he says. While it is better to have one, "you can be successful without it."
Rejection letters from the best to the worst (WSJ)
Rejection: Some Colleges Do It
Better Than Others
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
Members of this year's record-size high-school graduating class applied to more colleges than ever -- and now, that's resulting in a heavier than usual flurry of rejection letters.
Hundreds of students at high schools from Newton, Mass., to Palo Alto, Calif., have created cathartic "Wall of Shame" or "Rejection Wall" displays of college denial letters. On message boards at CollegeConfidential.com, students critique, attack and praise missives from various schools, elevating rejection-letter reviews to a sideline sport.
Even with impressive test scores and grades, abundant extracurricular activities, good recommendations and an admission essay into which "I poured myself heart and soul," Daniel Beresford, 18, of Fair Oaks, Calif., netted 14 rejection letters from 17 applications, he says. Among the denials: Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. (He's bound for one of his top choices, Pepperdine University.) When he "realized it was going to be so much harder this year," he started calling in reinforcements, asking teachers and friends to open the rejections for him.
Here, based on my own highly unscientific survey of actual letters, student interviews and message boards, are my picks for this year's most noteworthy college rejection letters -- and the liveliest response by a student.
Toughest:
Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. Most rejection letters, in an effort to soften the blow, follow a pattern: We're sorry, we had a huge applicant pool, all our applicants were terrific, we wish we could admit everyone. Bates, a competitive, 1,700-student college, expresses its regrets to rejected applicants and praises its applicant pool. But it delivers a more direct, and
perhaps more honest, message: "The deans were obliged to select from among candidates who clearly could do sound work at Bates," the letter says.
The letter touched off a chorus of moans online. One recipient, a 17-year-old high-school student from California, says it "implied that you had been rejected because you s-." Bates Dean of Admissions Wylie Mitchell acknowledges that he had one applicant "take me to task for such an abrupt letter." But he says he carefully considered how to convey respect for applicants and decided that brevity is the best route. The letter aims to clarify that Bates is "denying the student's application, and not rejecting the student," Mr. Mitchell says. He doesn't see counseling recipients as the role of college deans.
Stanford University sends a steely "don't call us" message embedded in its otherwise gentle rejection letter. In addition to asserting that "we are humbled by your talents and achievements" and assuring the applicant that he or she is "a fine student," the letter says, "we are not able to consider appeals." It links to a Q&A that reiterates: "Admission decisions are final and there is absolutely no appeal process." It also discourages attempts to transfer later, an even more competitive process. One recipient, whose heart had long been set on Stanford, cried for hours, her mother says, after interpreting the letter as, "we never want to
hear from you again so don't bother."
Stanford admissions dean Richard Shaw says the ban on appeals is necessary because other California universities allow appeals and families assume Stanford does too. Even after sending that firm message, Stanford, which has an admission rate of 7.6%, still gets about 200 attempted appeals. "We care deeply about the repercussions" of the letter, Mr. Shaw says, but "there's no easy way to tell someone they didn't make it."
Kindest:
Harvard College. Despite an estimated admission rate of about 7% this year, this hotly sought-after school sends a humble rejection letter.
"Past experience suggests that the particular college a student attends is far less important than what the student does to develop his or her strengths and talents over the
next four years." "I didn't feel a teensy bit bitter about" it, says recipient Evelyn Anne Crunden, 18. Instead, the
letter's "warm and apologetic tone ... made me feel proud for
having even applied."
Duke University, Durham N.C., also drew raves for a gracious missive emphasizing that it's not passing judgment on individuals, but trying to put together a well-rounded class. Undergraduate admissions dean Christoph Guttentag won particular praise from students and parents for the line, "I know you will find an institution at which you will be happy; I know, too, that the school you choose will benefit from your presence." Says Mr. Beresford, who was one of the 18,000 recipients: "It made me feel like I was a good applicant, not just another rejection."
Mr. Guttentag says he's had particular empathy for rejected applicants since his own daughter was rejected by several kindergartens four years ago. "We know we're imparting bad news, and we just want to make it as human as we can," he says.
Most Confusing:
University of California, San Diego. Officials there rejected 29,000 candidates not once, but twice. After sending a first round of rejections, they accidentally sent all 47,000 applicants, including those who had been denied, an email invitation to an open house for admitted students: "We're thrilled that you've been admitted ... join us this Saturday ... and get a glimpse of the powerful combination that can be you plus UC San Diego." The errant message raised some false hopes. "It would be cool if this means they changed their decision," one rejected applicant says he thought.
Less than two hours later came 29,000 re-rejections. "We deeply regret this mistake, because we understand the level of distress it has caused" for many, university officials wrote. "We continue to wish you success." The admissions staff worked all night and through the next two days, making and taking calls, to straighten things out, a spokeswoman says. "We would never intentionally confuse students."
Another surprise package came from Penn State, which sent the hoped-for "fat envelope" with a rejection letter inside. Applicants who receive a fat envelope assume they've been admitted. But Penn State sends a fat envelope to students who have been denied admission to its biggest campus, at University Park, Pa. One mother says her daughter was "so excited then ... No!" She adds, "I had to pick her up off the floor."
The envelope contains information on others among Penn State's 20 campuses where the student is invited to enroll, with the right to transfer later to University Park, says admissions executive Anne Rohrbach. "We've had some people not laugh about that," she concedes. "We don't see them as denials," she says, but as invitations to qualified students the university would like to enroll elsewhere.
Most Discouraging:
Boston University. To students who have family ties to the university, its letter begins: "We give special attention to applicants whose families have a tradition of study at Boston University. We have extended this consideration in the evaluation of your application, but I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission." Consideration of family
legacies is common practice at many universities. But Rob Flaherty, 17, a North Reading, Mass., recipient, said he felt the wording in BU's letter translated to "we made it even easier for you and you STILL couldn't get in." Admissions head Kelly Walter says BU
tries to deliver such bad news "with as much sensitivity as possible." Most applicants appreciate an acknowledgement of their family ties, she says, and she regrets that "our efforts fall short with some."
Biggest Spin:
Numerous colleges spin the data in their rejection letters as a well-intentioned way of comforting denied students. University of California, Davis, says it had "42,000 applicants from which UC Davis could enroll a freshman class of 4,600." This implies an 11% acceptance rate. Its actual admission rate is closer to 50%, because many accepted candidates ultimately enroll elsewhere.
UC Davis undergraduate admissions director Pamela Burnett says most applicants understand that actual enrollment rates vary and she hasn't received any complaints that the language is misleading.
Best Coaching:
Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick. This 2,200-student institution added handwritten notes to almost all the 600 denial letters it sent this year, explaining
areas of weakness, such as math grades or English skills. The personal detail, says Ron Byrne, a vice president who oversees admissions, helps students understand "it's not a rejection of them, and they know very concretely some of the things they can do" to improve their chances if they apply again.
Best Student Response:
Living well. As the rejections sunk in, many students rebounded to console each other. After getting rejections from Harvard and Yale, Isaac Chambers, 17, Champaign, Ill., a top student, track athlete, student-government leader and an editor of his school's online newspaper, posted these words of advice for other rejected candidates on CollegeConfidential.com: "When you're in the dough," he wrote, "fax the colleges that
denied you a copy of your rejection letter every day -- letting them know just how badly they screwed up."
Better Than Others
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
Members of this year's record-size high-school graduating class applied to more colleges than ever -- and now, that's resulting in a heavier than usual flurry of rejection letters.
Hundreds of students at high schools from Newton, Mass., to Palo Alto, Calif., have created cathartic "Wall of Shame" or "Rejection Wall" displays of college denial letters. On message boards at CollegeConfidential.com, students critique, attack and praise missives from various schools, elevating rejection-letter reviews to a sideline sport.
Even with impressive test scores and grades, abundant extracurricular activities, good recommendations and an admission essay into which "I poured myself heart and soul," Daniel Beresford, 18, of Fair Oaks, Calif., netted 14 rejection letters from 17 applications, he says. Among the denials: Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. (He's bound for one of his top choices, Pepperdine University.) When he "realized it was going to be so much harder this year," he started calling in reinforcements, asking teachers and friends to open the rejections for him.
Here, based on my own highly unscientific survey of actual letters, student interviews and message boards, are my picks for this year's most noteworthy college rejection letters -- and the liveliest response by a student.
Toughest:
Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. Most rejection letters, in an effort to soften the blow, follow a pattern: We're sorry, we had a huge applicant pool, all our applicants were terrific, we wish we could admit everyone. Bates, a competitive, 1,700-student college, expresses its regrets to rejected applicants and praises its applicant pool. But it delivers a more direct, and
perhaps more honest, message: "The deans were obliged to select from among candidates who clearly could do sound work at Bates," the letter says.
The letter touched off a chorus of moans online. One recipient, a 17-year-old high-school student from California, says it "implied that you had been rejected because you s-." Bates Dean of Admissions Wylie Mitchell acknowledges that he had one applicant "take me to task for such an abrupt letter." But he says he carefully considered how to convey respect for applicants and decided that brevity is the best route. The letter aims to clarify that Bates is "denying the student's application, and not rejecting the student," Mr. Mitchell says. He doesn't see counseling recipients as the role of college deans.
Stanford University sends a steely "don't call us" message embedded in its otherwise gentle rejection letter. In addition to asserting that "we are humbled by your talents and achievements" and assuring the applicant that he or she is "a fine student," the letter says, "we are not able to consider appeals." It links to a Q&A that reiterates: "Admission decisions are final and there is absolutely no appeal process." It also discourages attempts to transfer later, an even more competitive process. One recipient, whose heart had long been set on Stanford, cried for hours, her mother says, after interpreting the letter as, "we never want to
hear from you again so don't bother."
Stanford admissions dean Richard Shaw says the ban on appeals is necessary because other California universities allow appeals and families assume Stanford does too. Even after sending that firm message, Stanford, which has an admission rate of 7.6%, still gets about 200 attempted appeals. "We care deeply about the repercussions" of the letter, Mr. Shaw says, but "there's no easy way to tell someone they didn't make it."
Kindest:
Harvard College. Despite an estimated admission rate of about 7% this year, this hotly sought-after school sends a humble rejection letter.
"Past experience suggests that the particular college a student attends is far less important than what the student does to develop his or her strengths and talents over the
next four years." "I didn't feel a teensy bit bitter about" it, says recipient Evelyn Anne Crunden, 18. Instead, the
letter's "warm and apologetic tone ... made me feel proud for
having even applied."
Duke University, Durham N.C., also drew raves for a gracious missive emphasizing that it's not passing judgment on individuals, but trying to put together a well-rounded class. Undergraduate admissions dean Christoph Guttentag won particular praise from students and parents for the line, "I know you will find an institution at which you will be happy; I know, too, that the school you choose will benefit from your presence." Says Mr. Beresford, who was one of the 18,000 recipients: "It made me feel like I was a good applicant, not just another rejection."
Mr. Guttentag says he's had particular empathy for rejected applicants since his own daughter was rejected by several kindergartens four years ago. "We know we're imparting bad news, and we just want to make it as human as we can," he says.
Most Confusing:
University of California, San Diego. Officials there rejected 29,000 candidates not once, but twice. After sending a first round of rejections, they accidentally sent all 47,000 applicants, including those who had been denied, an email invitation to an open house for admitted students: "We're thrilled that you've been admitted ... join us this Saturday ... and get a glimpse of the powerful combination that can be you plus UC San Diego." The errant message raised some false hopes. "It would be cool if this means they changed their decision," one rejected applicant says he thought.
Less than two hours later came 29,000 re-rejections. "We deeply regret this mistake, because we understand the level of distress it has caused" for many, university officials wrote. "We continue to wish you success." The admissions staff worked all night and through the next two days, making and taking calls, to straighten things out, a spokeswoman says. "We would never intentionally confuse students."
Another surprise package came from Penn State, which sent the hoped-for "fat envelope" with a rejection letter inside. Applicants who receive a fat envelope assume they've been admitted. But Penn State sends a fat envelope to students who have been denied admission to its biggest campus, at University Park, Pa. One mother says her daughter was "so excited then ... No!" She adds, "I had to pick her up off the floor."
The envelope contains information on others among Penn State's 20 campuses where the student is invited to enroll, with the right to transfer later to University Park, says admissions executive Anne Rohrbach. "We've had some people not laugh about that," she concedes. "We don't see them as denials," she says, but as invitations to qualified students the university would like to enroll elsewhere.
Most Discouraging:
Boston University. To students who have family ties to the university, its letter begins: "We give special attention to applicants whose families have a tradition of study at Boston University. We have extended this consideration in the evaluation of your application, but I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission." Consideration of family
legacies is common practice at many universities. But Rob Flaherty, 17, a North Reading, Mass., recipient, said he felt the wording in BU's letter translated to "we made it even easier for you and you STILL couldn't get in." Admissions head Kelly Walter says BU
tries to deliver such bad news "with as much sensitivity as possible." Most applicants appreciate an acknowledgement of their family ties, she says, and she regrets that "our efforts fall short with some."
Biggest Spin:
Numerous colleges spin the data in their rejection letters as a well-intentioned way of comforting denied students. University of California, Davis, says it had "42,000 applicants from which UC Davis could enroll a freshman class of 4,600." This implies an 11% acceptance rate. Its actual admission rate is closer to 50%, because many accepted candidates ultimately enroll elsewhere.
UC Davis undergraduate admissions director Pamela Burnett says most applicants understand that actual enrollment rates vary and she hasn't received any complaints that the language is misleading.
Best Coaching:
Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick. This 2,200-student institution added handwritten notes to almost all the 600 denial letters it sent this year, explaining
areas of weakness, such as math grades or English skills. The personal detail, says Ron Byrne, a vice president who oversees admissions, helps students understand "it's not a rejection of them, and they know very concretely some of the things they can do" to improve their chances if they apply again.
Best Student Response:
Living well. As the rejections sunk in, many students rebounded to console each other. After getting rejections from Harvard and Yale, Isaac Chambers, 17, Champaign, Ill., a top student, track athlete, student-government leader and an editor of his school's online newspaper, posted these words of advice for other rejected candidates on CollegeConfidential.com: "When you're in the dough," he wrote, "fax the colleges that
denied you a copy of your rejection letter every day -- letting them know just how badly they screwed up."
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