The Cruelty of Template Denials: How Colleges Cut Off Dialogue

"Take it as it is. Move forward. See it as redirection." This common saying echoes through every college rejection season, passed down like ancient wisdom. And yes—there's profound truth in learning to process rejection, in finding strength through adversity, in reimagining closed doors as new pathways. But in our rush to teach young people resilience, we've left something crucial unexamined: the moral responsibility of institutions who actively sought out, encouraged and benefited from applicants' vulnerability. We're so focused on teaching teenagers how to handle rejection that we've forgotten to ask whether the denials themselves are being handled humanely. For months, universities have encouraged applicants to open their hearts, to share their deepest struggles and dreams, and to demonstrate what makes them their unique selves. Yet when it comes time for their response, these same institutions retreat behind cold, automated templates. As we tell students to "take it as it is," perhaps we should be asking: Why must universities' final words to hopeful applicants be devoid of the very humanity they asked applicants to show?

There's something particularly jarring about how universities end their relationships with denied applicants. After months of encouraging students to pour their hearts out, showcase their uniqueness, and demonstrate their passionate interest, it all ends with... a template.

The Promise of Personal Recognition

The college admissions process is designed with noble intentions—to forge meaningful connections between institutions and the young people who dream of joining their communities. Universities claim they want to understand each applicant as a whole person, to see beyond the numbers and into the heart of who they truly are. They encourage students to share their authentic selves through essays, interviews, and supplemental materials. They promise to be careful stewards of these personal stories, suggesting that by learning about applicants' unique experiences, challenges, and aspirations, they can build lasting bridges between institution and individual.

This intention manifests in how universities structure their entire application process. They create elaborate systems of personal essays, supplemental questions, and optional materials that go far beyond simple academic metrics. The Common Application's personal statement asks students to reflect deeply on their lives, while supplemental essays probe specific aspects of character and experience. Universities invest significant resources in training admissions officers to read these narratives carefully, looking for authentic voices and genuine growth. Some institutions even add interview components, whether with alumni or admissions staff, further emphasizing their commitment to knowing applicants as individuals. The design suggests a relationship-building journey: from initial interest, through deeper personal sharing, to what should be thoughtful, individualized decisions about fit and potential.

This design profoundly shapes how applicants approach the process. Young people spend months carefully crafting their applications, each word chosen with purpose and hope. Late into the night, they write draft after draft of essays, struggling to capture the essence of their lives in 650 words. They reveal deeply personal struggles—family hardships they've overcome, moments of self-doubt transformed into growth, cherished dreams they've hardly shared with anyone else. With each revision, they make themselves more vulnerable, trusting that these institutions will honor their openness. After all, didn't the universities specifically ask them to share these intimate parts of themselves? Didn't they promise to see and value each applicant's unique story?

But beneath this carefully crafted veneer lies a crushing disconnect between design and reality. While universities encourage this deep personal sharing during the application process, their systems reveal a different truth at the moment of greatest vulnerability. When it comes time to deliver life-altering news, these same institutions that asked applicants to bare their souls retreat behind the cold shield of automation. This isn't just an administrative choice—it's a betrayal of trust that cuts to the heart of what these relationships could have been. The systematic shift from personal engagement to automated communication exposes a harsh reality about how institutions ultimately view their relationship with the young people who believed in their promises.

The Abrupt Cutoff

Imagine having a deep conversation with someone, sharing your dreams, your struggles, your vision for the future—and then suddenly, they switch to reading from a script and walk away. This is essentially what template denial letters do. They transform what has been a seemingly personal dialogue into an automated response, cutting off all meaningful communication.

Empty Words of Understanding

One of the most frustrating aspects is how the template phrases attempt to acknowledge emotional investment. "We understand your emotional investment and take responsibility for it," they may say, while demonstrating neither understanding nor responsibility through their actions. It's institutional hypocrisy at its finest—claiming emotional awareness while actively choosing the most emotionally distant form of communication. Consider how these template responses actually function in practice. When a student receives their denial, they're typically given a link to a portal or an email with a pre-written message. There's usually no way to respond, no avenue for questions, no opportunity to understand what aspects of their application resonated even if they weren't ultimately admitted. If there's contact information at all, it's often a generic admissions email address that sends automated replies stating they cannot provide individual feedback. The message is clear: this is not a dialogue, but a final pronouncement.

Then comes the almost mockingly unhelpful suggestion: "If you really want this so badly, you can always transfer!" This line, appearing in many denial letters, demonstrates either a profound lack of understanding or a willful ignorance of reality. Because everyone already knows that including this suggestion in a denial letter is like telling someone who didn't get a job "It's okay, you can always apply next year!" Everyone who's invested enough to feel deeply hurt by a denial has almost certainly already thought about transferring. Multiple times. It's not that suggesting transfer is inherently wrong—it's that this tends to be the only alternative route these template letters bother to mention.

The timing of these communications reveals another layer of institutional tone-deafness. Picture this moment: an applicant has just opened their decision letter. Their heart is racing, their hopes are high—and then they read the rejection. In those first raw moments of processing loss and disappointment, what they need is space to feel, to grieve, to make sense of this outcome. Instead, the template letter immediately pivots to "But don't worry—you can always transfer!" This instant leap to "solutions" fundamentally misunderstands human emotional processing. It's like telling someone at a funeral "Well, you can always make new friends!"

Suggesting future possibilities right after delivering crushing news demonstrates either a profound lack of emotional intelligence or a willful ignorance of what applicants need at that moment."You can always apply again next year!"—it adds salt to the wound while providing no meaningful support or guidance.

What's particularly frustrating about the transfer suggestion is how it reveals multiple layers of institutional disconnect. The transfer pathway exists—yes, everyone knows this—but it's an entirely different world with its own complex web of requirements and expectations. Look at any prestigious university's transfer statistics, and you'll often find an even more competitive landscape, with limited departmental seats making the process more selective than freshman admission. And the experience itself? It's fundamentally different—socially, academically, everything.

This structure actively prevents the very kinds of meaningful exchanges that could help students process rejection constructively. Imagine if institutions instead created pathways for limited but genuine interaction—perhaps a brief note about what stood out in their application, or a way to schedule a short conversation with an admissions staff member or alumni volunteer. These touchpoints wouldn't change the admission decision, but they would honor the vulnerability applicants showed in sharing their stories. They would transform what feels like a door slamming shut into a bridge to future possibilities.

Instead, the current approach creates a peculiar and painful asymmetry. Universities have just spent months learning intimate details about an applicant's life, holding profound knowledge about the student. Yet, the student receives nothing but automated text in return. It's as if someone shared their life story with a friend, only to have that friend respond with a pre-recorded message saying, "Thanks for sharing, but I don't want to talk anymore," and then blocking their number.

Even in the realm of personal rejection, most people intuitively understand the importance of keeping the connection. When someone turns down another's romantic interest, they often say, "But I really value you as a friend" or "I'd love to stay in touch"—and while these phrases have become clichés, they at least acknowledge the other person's ongoing worth and potential for a meaningful relationship, even if in a different form than what was hoped for. Even middle schoolers, despite their age and lack of relational experience compared to those in universities, understand this. When they reject another's feelings, they often don't just slam the door in their faces—oftentimes, they can still become friends with the person they rejected. People, in their innate nature, understand the fundamental importance of relational continuity, and despite not reciprocating one form of connection, they nonetheless invite connection.

This comparison might seem unexpected at first glance—after all, in our age of automation and transactional processes, who thinks of institutions with the capacity to show the same care as individual people? But that's precisely the point. If even teenagers navigating their first romantic sparks can understand the importance of cushioning rejection with humanity, then surely entire universities of countless mature and wise men and women, especially with their vast resources and knowledge about humanity, must be vastly more than able to do more than an automated goodbye.

At its core, this isn’t just about courtesy—it’s about charity, the kind of steadfast love Scripture calls chesed. Even when teenagers turn someone down, they instinctively offer some form of grace: a gesture that says, you still matter. If they can offer that basic form of relational dignity, surely institutions claiming to develop human beings can embody at least the same.

Imagine if a sixteen-year-old ended a heartfelt love letter by handing the other person a mass-printed pamphlet that said, 'I appreciate your interest in this connection. Unfortunately, due to high volume, I'm unable to respond personally. I wish you the best in future relational endeavors.'

The absurdity sharpens the tragedy we confront next—that universities, in contrast to middle schoolers, slam the door completely shut, leaving applicants outside shivering in the cold. There's no nuance, no alternative pathways for engagement, no recognition that a candidate who showed genuine passion for the institution might still have valuable contributions to make. They don't say "While we can't offer admission, we'd love to have you join our summer research program" or "Your interest in our marine biology department impressed us—would you like to be part of our citizen science initiative?" They don't offer special access to campus lectures, discounted continuing education courses, or involvement in community outreach programs. They don't even maintain a database of promising candidates to contact if relevant opportunities arise.

This binary approach—"you're either admitted, or you're nothing to us"—ignores the rich spectrum of ways institutions could maintain meaningful connections with engaged young people who showed genuine interest in their mission. Think about it: these are applicants who have demonstrated enough passion for the institution to spend months crafting applications, often conducting detailed research about specific programs and professors. Yet universities treat this demonstrated enthusiasm as disposable, missing countless opportunities to build lasting positive relationships with future professionals in their fields.

The irony is that maintaining these bridges wouldn't just benefit rejected applicants—it could serve the institutions' own interests. Today's rejected applicant might be tomorrow's industry pioneer, research collaborator, or potential donor. But instead of nurturing these possibilities, universities opt for the coldest possible closure, teaching young people early that institutional relationships are all-or-nothing propositions. Instead, the current approach creates a peculiar and painful asymmetry. Universities have just spent months learning intimate details about an applicant's life—their family dynamics, their personal struggles, their deepest aspirations. They hold this profound knowledge about the student, while the student receives nothing but automated text in return. It's as if someone shared their life story with a friend, only to have that friend respond with a pre-recorded message saying "Thanks for sharing, but I don't want to talk anymore" and then blocking their number

The Cost of Efficiency

Universities might argue this standardized approach is necessary for efficiency. But what's the actual cost of this efficiency?

When universities choose this standardized approach, they may think they're saving time—they're actively eroding something precious. Let's break down what's really being lost here. Each time a university sends out another batch of template denials:

1. Trust in institutions is eroded: Every template response chips away at students' trust in educational institutions' capacity for genuine connection.

2. Students learn their vulnerability won't be matched: Young people learn early that their vulnerability will be met with institutional detachment.

3. The dialogue ends on the institution's terms only: The dialogue ends entirely on the institution's terms, teaching harsh lessons about power dynamics.

4. Young people learn early that institutions prioritize efficiency over humanity.

The "Professionalism and Fairness" Argument

Now, some might argue that standardizing denials is necessary to uphold professionalism and fairness—that as professionals, it is necessary to respond to all applicants the exact same way because responding more to one applicant would be unfair to other applicants who don't get that level of response. But let's take a step back. When people came to that conclusion, did they approach it with a proper understanding of what constitutes fairness in the first place? Is it really fair to equalize all responses? Consider this analogy:

Suppose two people are both depositing their money in their US Bank accounts. One of them deposits $1,000 dollars, the other deposits $1,000,000. Now, let's imagine that one day, the US Bank announces a policy that requires everyone, no matter how much they initially deposited, will only ever be able to withdraw $1,000 in total from their accounts. If you previously withdrew $1,000 and try to go back and draw more money, you will not be allowed to do so. They claim the intent is to "uphold professionalism and fairness."As a result, those who have deposited $200 or $500 gain a fair amount of money. The person who deposited $1000 is left off no better or worse than before. However, the person who deposited $1,000,000 loses a massive amount of money. Does equalizing everyone's returned money in this way truly ensure fairness and professionalism? Of course not!

Similarly, different applicants put in different amounts of personal investment than others. Some only put their grades, and some essays that share less of themselves and stay on a more superficial and generic level. Others, however, pour their hearts earnestly into it, sharing the deepest depths of their hearts. To claim that responding to both levels of investment in the same way upholds fairness and professionalism is a travesty. Countless professional jobs not only treat people in personalized ways, but some are even required to! Nurses treat patients with different, personalized levels of care depending on the different needs of each individual, and university professors treat their students similarly. So, if university professors treat their students this way, then the entire university should treat their corresponding group in need—the applicants—this was, too!

Simple Solutions Left on the Table:

You know what makes this whole situation even more frustrating? There are better ways to handle this—approaches that wouldn't even require massive overhauls of the system. Just imagine if universities took any of these steps:

• Create different levels of responses that actually reflect how much of themselves applicants shared

• Add even brief personal notes acknowledging specific elements of applications

• Form small teams dedicated to maintaining human communication

• Find ways to recognize what resonated in applications, even if admission wasn't possible

• Develop response protocols that match the level of investment applicants demonstrated

The Broader Impact

Until something changes, this practice keeps shaping how young people view institutions for years to come. And trust me, they're learning lessons alright—just not the ones universities probably want to be teaching. They learn these four things:

1. Being vulnerable and pouring your heart out to an institution means receiving nothing except automation in return. When students share their deepest dreams, struggles, and aspirations in their applications, they're not just filling out forms—they're opening up their inner worlds. They write about personal challenges, family hardships, moments of growth, and visions of their future. Yet, after all this emotional investment, they receive a response that could have been sent to anyone. This jarring transition from deeply personal sharing to cold automation teaches a harsh lesson about institutional relationships.

2. Efficiency will always trump genuine human connection. Universities demonstrate through their actions that processing applications quickly is more important than acknowledging the humanity of their applicants. This prioritization of efficiency over empathy isn't just about saving time—it's a clear statement of values. When institutions choose standardized responses over even the slightest personal acknowledgment, they're showing exactly where their priorities lie, and students are learning to expect this same treatment from other institutions in the future.

3. Individual stories don't merit individual responses. Each application represents countless hours of reflection, writing, and revision. Students share unique perspectives, overcome distinct challenges, and demonstrate personal growth in their own ways. Yet, in the end, all these individual journeys are met with identical responses. This teaches students that no matter how unique or meaningful their story might be, institutions will still treat it as just another data point to be processed.

4. Institutions can ask for your heart but give nothing personal back. As Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 states, "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up." This fundamental imbalance in emotional investment reflects a deeper truth about institutional relationships. The biblical wisdom here is particularly poignant—it reminds us that human connections should be reciprocal, with both parties supporting each other in times of vulnerability. Yet universities create a one-sided relationship where they expect applicants to bare their souls while offering nothing personal in return. When students fall (receive rejection), there is no one on the institutional side to help them up—just an automated message telling them to try again elsewhere. This betrays the very principle of mutual support and understanding that should be at the heart of educational institutions.

Moving Forward—The Future of the University's Relationships to Their Applicants

It's time for universities to recognize that responding to applicants—those who have poured the depths of their heart onto their applications—with generic, template denials isn't just impersonal. It can be actively and deeply harmful. It creates a form of institutional trauma that shapes how young people view and interact with institutions for years to come. By offering to share one's deep and personal aspects, the university is essentially conveying that it is building a bridge for the person. And so, the person writes deeply and personally. They invest countless hours, pouring out their hopes and dreams and how they see their futures at the university. But while the applicant is in the middle of the bridge, the rest of the bridge collapses and falls to the chasm below, leaving the applicant with no choice but to look at the university on the other side of the bridge with shattered longings and a broken heart. The applicant risks having the pieces of their broken heart falling into the chasm beneath as well. And now, what was first thought to be a bridge was actually a wall—a bridge broken. Template denials create walls around chasms where bridges could have been built.

The solution isn't complex. It doesn't require sharing private deliberations or compromising admissions integrity. It simply requires treating applicants as humans worthy of genuine closure, not data points to be processed and discarded. Universities like Stanford, Yale, and Harvard have massive resources, and if they can uphold initiatives like the UC System's Extension universities, they can surely ensure that all applicants, whether admitted or denied, can at least walk across the bridge and talk to a person on the other side. But even though they are large and often complicated, always remember this—no matter how big the institution or their research grants are, or anything else, oftentimes, even the smallest acts of kindness can change everything. Even if the act is as small as a look of deeply felt solace. Even if it's only one person doing it.

Until then, each template denial will continue teaching students that their emotional investment in institutions will be met with automated responses—a lesson that serves neither education nor society.