Dear Applicant:

After detailed review of your application by the Admissions Committee, I regret to inform you that we have decided not to offer you a spot in our class of 2015.

Please know that this does not reflect upon your abilities but instead the extremely large pool of applicants this year. Out of the 100,000 students who submitted applications, we selected a mere 2,400 students. We thank you for applying after being encouraged by one of the thousands of colorful pamphlets we sent out, knowing full well that 97.6 percent of students who received these letters never stood a chance.

Additionally, we are eternally grateful that students like you help keep our admissions percentage low, causing our school to appear selective and elite. It is this kind of recognition that results in the real applicants that we want: frequent Huffington Post and The New Yorker contributors, young five-time gold-medal winning Olympic athletes, and teenage scientists who have earned world recognition for their revolutionary, inexpensive water cleaning device that could change the lives of millions in third-world countries.

Be assured that we reviewed your application carefully before making this difficult decision. We consider many factors when looking at applications, including (but not limited to) your academic record, your extracurricular involvement, and any supporting materials that you submitted, all of which were excellent—but nothing compared to the young heirs and heiresses whose parents just donated a new multi-million dollar media center.

You may be wondering how your stellar academic record, your leadership positions in six different clubs, and your extensive volunteering profile did not gain you admission to our school, even though you are the perfect embodiment of the “well-rounded” student that our good-for-nothing website said we wanted.

If attending our school remains your goal, we urge you to consider alternate ways in which you may receive admission, like transferring from another school. This is an option that will give you hope, until you find out that our transfer student acceptance rate is just as low.

I wish you the best of luck in the future, and I’m extremely sure that you will reach your full potential at the mediocre state college you are forced to attend because it is one of the only schools in the world that is still accepting students based on merit.

Sincerely,

Dean of Admissions