17 Students Shared Hilariously Worst Reasons College Admission Officers Reject Them

If you’re worried about how you might be rejected by your college of choice, chances are they are not as weird as these. These stories are the weirdest ones that ever circulate the Internet. We’ve pulled these out of Reddit, and we know how some of you breathed out in happiness for bidding goodbye to the Common App.

Some students are actually proud of being habitual cheaters, while some wrote like if they were asked about their dream as a 7-year-old. Yeah, these are real stories from admission officers, and we feel a little sorry for them.

1.

“I work in another department at a college, but I’ve heard some great stories from our admissions counselors. My favorite is one girl who was actually admitted. Then the department’s social media person followed her on Twitter.

Her profile picture was smoking a blunt in front of a pile of coke. scrolling through, a very graphic picture of her fellating someone… Yeah, that acceptance letter got pulled REAL quick.” – Zoos27

2.

“Had a kid once send in his own worn and slightly smelly shoe along with a note that said, ‘Hope this helps get my foot in the door.’

It didn’t.” – xtremechaos

3.

“I’m a teacher–one of the students I work with just had his acceptance to Stanford rescinded. He’s a low-income minority student with an excellent GPA and ACT scores. On paper, he’s a score for schools that value talent and diversity. So he got accepted to Stanford.

When he got the letter, he tweeted AT STANFORD saying something like “f**k yeah, I got in.” That prompted them to click on his Twitter and they saw all this f**ked up sh** about misogyny and drug use. They called our school and told us that they no longer were interested in admitting him as a student.” – Reddit

4.

“Worked in a graduate admissions office in college. We once turned away a woman who would call the office every day, to ask us questions about the program that we were not able to disclose (average gpa/gmat of class accepted so far, job placement rate – this was a brand new program. the first class hadn’t even graduated yet. – for this year, etc.)

Eventually, we rejected her because her resume wasn’t as built out as some of our other applicants (I guess this is different for grad school), though we did look at her application with a slight bias…

She flipped a switch and actually came into our office to scream at us.” – arctic92

5.

“I rejected a student who applied to our Ph.D. program to work with me because she PLAGIARIZED MY PAPER in the personal essay of her application. Who does that?” – Reddit

6.

“I once went and visited a college that my brother was interested in. All of the potential students and parents sat down in an auditorium. The admission officer must of have been having an awful day because he proceeded to go on a full-blown/rant.

He said “If ANY of you write a college essay about a tragic event in your life, it has to be tragic. An essay about how you moved in your sophomore year of high school to another state and no longer had friends with you, THAT IS NOT TRAGIC. If it is supposed to be a tragedy or huge overcoming then it must be a tear-jerker. EVERY TIME I see an essay about overcoming a lame obstacle, it instantly hits the bin.”

Needless to say, my brother did not attend.” – PvToucher

7.

“I attended a top 3 school in the US (recently) and worked closely with their admissions office during my time there. Each year we have new-student orientation, a week where students are allowed to visit other dorms, do activities, etc in order to get acquainted and make any changes to their schedule or living arrangements. My school is popular among high school obsessives, they pine over it and dream about attending. Some get obsessive. One got too obsessive.

He was just starting senior year in high school and hadn’t even started applying to college. He decided, however, that it was his RIGHT and OBLIGATION to attend this school. So, what is an un-admitted high school student to do?

He lied to his parents and said that he had been admitted into a special program at the school, hopped a bus for a 4-hour drive to campus, and pretended to be a student. I believe his reasoning was that if he attended classes there for a year he would certainly get in because he’d be able to prove that he could do it. He made friends, convinced desk workers at dorms that he’d lost his key card, slept in various peoples’ rooms after making a variety of excuses as to why he couldn’t stay in his (roommate was mean, allergic to something, etc), and hopped from one dorm to the next after being found out and banned from his current living arrangements.

I think he was on campus for almost a week and a half. His plan was to stay for the entire year and attend classes. He even went so far as to find a handicapped girl, convince her that the school had assigned him to her as an official note-taker, and was going to use her as his “in” to lectures.

Admissions had their eye on him for a while prior to this – he was really active in the admitted students Facebook group (even though he hadn’t even applied) and nobody could really figure out what his deal was. When they started getting reports of this sketchy compulsive liar on campus who was sleeping in dorms he didn’t live in, was attending events he wasn’t permitted to attend, and exploiting handicapped students, they put two and two together and tracked him down.

They eventually found him and contacted his parents. He was escorted off campus by two police officers who traveled with him all the way to the bus station to send him home. They informed him that there was a standing order for his arrest if he ever stepped foot onto school property again. And that was that.

So, I asked some friends of mine in the admissions office, “I’m not sure what it takes to earn an instant rejection, but would that do it?”

“Yes.”

And they did.” – jzzsxm

8.

“College Financial Aid Counselor here (USA) who works with our admissions staff. It’s common sense but some students don’t seem to realize that if you receive federal student aid at one school, other schools can see this on a variety of national databases. The National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) for example.

Several years ago we had a high school student with decent grades, selected for additional documents (verification), and completed the process… but… just seemed off. Well, during our awarding process we discovered that she attended prior schools and received aid. Lots. Several years worth. That right there, lying on the admissions app, is enough to get the boot. What was the real shocker – she was 26. She was not only lying about school but her age. She said she was 18 on the app.

She came in to see about her package and we directed her to her admissions adviser. She said, “Ok, I’ll be right back!” and I said, under my breath “oh-no-you-wont…” Following up with admissions I asked how it went and the counselor said, ‘Good right up until she started crying and walked out.'” – remember_mee

9.

“I was at a program for the University that I wanted to attend, and they talked to us about CommonApp essays.

They told us the story of this one applicant that mentioned the show Dexter in his essay, and then ended his essay with something along the lines of “I would definitely become Dexter, and kill bad guys.” Needless to say, he was rejected.” – dragid10

10.

“Just graduated college last summer, worked in the undergraduate admissions office for 4 years as a student ambassador (tour guide, shadow host, etc) and as an admissions counselor’s assistant. Worst case I’ve seen is a kid openly admit in his application essay that he was a habitual cheater throughout high school but it taught him how to become resourceful and think outside the box. I’ve never seen an application get denied faster.” – fiesta_on

11.

“Super late to the party, but my mom is an admissions counselor (i know I’m sorry I’m not one) but the worst story I’ve heard from here goes like this: The student was outstanding, top GPA, test scores, good essay, but my mom had never heard of the school. So she does some searching and can’t find anything on the school (odd), so she types in the address on google maps. What she finds is an abandoned school, which turns out no one has attended for YEARS. Kid forged the entire application, I thought it was impressive, but she did not. Instant deny.” – dersmart

12.

“I’m an admissions counselor for all of our Chinese applicants, so you can imagine I get a lot of interesting essays (many of which look like they’re either straight from Google Translate or they paid a consultant to write something for them). One essay I read recently was from a girl who wrote about her experience volunteering in a nursing home. I thought this would just be the typical “I’m awesome because I made a difference” essay, but in fact, it turned into softcore p[o]rn. The girl began writing about giving an old woman a bath (whom she called her “pet”); she described in detail how she rubbed the skin back and forth, including the “floppy crotch.” Floppy crotch. Just imagine that visual.” – Reddit

13.

“I rejected a student to our (science) Ph.D. program because he said he “didn’t believe in data” during our interview.” – Reddit

14.

“This reminds me of a great story an admissions officer at W&M officer told me about essay writing.

This student had submitted this beautifully written essay. It was well written, emotional, spelling and error-free, and overall a fantastic essay. The admissions officer was just about ready to accept her right there when she saw that at the end of the essay, the student had written “And that’s why I want to go to UVA.”

Rejected!” – Metlover

15.

“Once, one of those college speakers at my high school told us this story when explaining letters of rec to us. One teacher wrote a letter for an extremely good student. She was kind, hardworking, got good grades, and she also babysat for the teacher, so obviously, this teacher had no shortage of good things to say about this student. However, later on, after the letter of rec had been sent in, the college got a call from the teacher, who took back everything she said in the letter and told them to not consider the student. Why? Because she caught the student stealing from her house.” – dralcax

16.

“Copy/pasted from an email I received from a prospective student. Nothing was altered here except for his name being redacted. [EDIT: and school and star basketball player]

“I think u were at my school and u r from [School name]. I have some questions first. I took the act and got a 17 but a 23 in math, what scholrships does that get me? do you have classes with [Star BBall player] ? Hes so dope. I wanna study biochemistery and cure cancer. I really want to go to ur school. But im gonna go on my own terms.

[redacted]”

Needless to say, even at a state school with a near 90% acceptance rate, he was rejected when his application came around.” – Reddit

17.

“I was on the admission committee at my med school. One time we had an applicant whose personal statement started out saying, in all seriousness, that he wanted to be a doctor because a doctor’s white coat or a surgeon’s scrubs are aphrodisiacs. It was an instant-denial.” – HayleeVZ