The Rejection in Being Accepted

One of the best and worst times in the life of a parent is when you ship the rug rats off to college. I’ll probably have to expand on this at a later date, but today I’m looking for feedback on how to proceed with a situation where I may have reached an impasse.

Abbey is in the final semester of high school and in the midst of the college search process. She is a fantastic writer (she gets it from me) and plans to major in Journalism. She is also considering a minor in either Spanish or Vocal Performance, two more of her gifts. She has applied to Missouri, Loyola-Chicago, and Northwestern. She has been accepted at Mizzou and Loyola, and we expect to hear back from Northwestern later this month.This is the first time we have done this college search thing, and maybe I’m wrong here, but this seems to be an entirely difference experience from I went to college 25 years ago.

Mizzou has been awesome to deal with. It's also the best Journalism school in the country. They invited Abbey to visit the campus to check out the Honors Program, and the admissions representative we are working with allowed us an hour on the phone to answer our questions.

Loyola, on the other hand, must be the Harvard of the Midwest, with people lining up at the boxing ring to duke it out for admission. I should say that as part of her acceptance, Abbey did receive a partial scholarship to ease the pain of a private college. This puts the cost in line with Mizzou. But the thing I’m struggling with is opening up a dialogue with the admissions representative. I know this guy exists, at least in a virtual world. His name and contact information appear on the Admissions Office web page.

In November I sent him an email asking if he could spare some time for a call phone call to answer some of our questions. Four weeks go by and we get no response. Over the Christmas holidays we were a few hours from Chicago, so we did a day trip drive in to the city so I could check out the campus. The admissions office was open, but our representative had the day off. Another admissions representative gave us about 20 minutes to answer some basic questions. He was great, and he said he’d have our representative contact us. A week goes by and I still have no response from this guy. So I call him and get his voicemail. I leave a polite message requesting a call back. That was a week ago.

Abbey would really like to take part in their upcoming Overnight Stay program where she’ll spend the night in a dorm and sit in on a class. Before I spend the money to do this, I’d really like to talk to this guy.

So today I sent the following email:

Hello (name withheld to protect the “innocent”),

Through prior email, campus visit, and phone call I have tried to reach you, but have been unsuccessful to date. I’m starting to take this personally, and I am thinking you just don’t like me. Usually it takes people a full hour of interaction to come to this conclusion. You are sharper than the rest, for sure.

Hopefully you can make this easy for me by falling back to the college days of multiple choice questions. Here it is:

I cannot meet your request for a conversation because:

A.    I am busy considering the pros and cons of the paper vs plastic debate, and do not have time for such nonsense.

B.    This request is out of our scope of supply, and will be subject to a change order in the amount of $112.56.

C.    You have not said the magic word.

D.    All of the above.

If you would please be so kind as to respond with one of the letters above, I can move on to the recovery process of rejection.

I would sincerely appreciate your response by tomorrow as it will help us determine if we should go to the expense of packing up the family truckster for a trip to Chicago on February 13^th.

Woefully yours,

Terrance M Tingle

Now maybe I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. (Maybe there is no maybe about it.) But I’m beginning to think that I’m not going to hear back from this guy. If that’s true, I’m trying to figure out what my options might be. Do I contact someone higher up the food chain? Do I accept the fact that I’m not going to have the chance to ask my questions? Do I tell Abbey that this guy is communicating to us that Loyola is a “I’m doing you a favor by letting you come here” kind of place, and that’s not a place where we’ll spend our money?

The question -am I missing something? Suggestions are appreciated. So are donations - this college thing is wicked expensive.


Postlogue - I received a call from the admissions rep about 6 hours after I sent the email. He apologized for not reaching me. Turns out he called me back. Or at least he thought he had. He had been dialing the wrong number and leaving a message on someone else's answering maching. Glad I took the humorous and not the hardball approach.