SOUTH TWIN FORKS UNIVERSITY
Subsiste Sermonem Statim
Office of Undergraduate Admissions

Dear Mr. Tao,

The South Twin Forks University admissions committee has completed its review of early decision candidates for admission to the class of 2010, and I write with news that you may not be happy to receive. You showed great interest in STFU by agreeing that, if admitted, you will enroll and pay whatever price we determine is necessary, possibly including your firstborn child. However, we are still not able to offer you a place here. This is not negotiable. We will not review your file again in the spring, so you can rest assured that our opinion will not change.

Ordinarily I say that our decision is more a reflection of the exceptional abilities and accomplishments of the applicant pool than a judgment of your own intelligence, but your case is not an ordinary one. Out of the thirty thousand students who apply to STFU each year, nearly all have at least some hope of doing the level of work required here or making a unique contribution to the university. You, on the other hand, do not. It was supremely difficult for us to spend time looking at your application, but we managed to read enough to come to this conclusion.

Rejected applicants often ask what was wrong with their applications. I can outline a few of the problems with yours, but there were so many, I wonder why you even took the time to put them all together and send them to us. Your standardized test scores were low, as were your grades. Try to pass more of your classes in the future. If you do that poorly on tests again, just cancel your scores and say you were sick. You're not an athlete, you have no interesting life story, you're not an underrepresented minority, and your parents didn't go to STFU.

We offer our early decision program so that students can be absolutely certain where they will be spending the next four years as soon as possible. This gives qualified seniors the greatest amount of time to slump and to recover from years of schooling. The program also conveniently eliminates students who would try to be accepted here and then enroll somewhere else. You are not one of these qualified students. I'm not sure why you even applied. I wish you the best possible luck for next year. You'll need it.

Sincerely,

Albert Berge
Director of Admissions
STFU