A high school senior rejected by Duke made national news from a tongue-in-cheek email she wrote to the admissions office.
For thousands of high school seniors around the country, April is an exciting time to look ahead to the future of college life. For others, however, April also means dealing with the harsh reality of rejection. Siobhan O’Dell—a high school senior from High Point, N.C.—wrote a letter refusing to accept her rejection from Duke.
“Thank you for your rejection letter of March 26, 2015,” wrote O’Dell in the email—which she also posted to social media platforms Twitter and Tumblr. “After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me admission into the Fall 2015 freshman class at Duke.”
O’Dell was motivated to send the email after witnessing her peers stress out throughout the college application and decision process.
“I just realized how much power these universities have over the lives of students, and what they have to say is pretty much the end all,” O’Dell said. “So I thought, ‘what if it wasn’t? What if students had the final decision?’”
O’Dell said that she does not expect the email to reverse her decision, calling it a “joke”—nor did she anticipate it making national headlines.
The letter was first picked up by teen magazine Seventeen and later featured on other news outlets including Good Morning America.
“I would much rather be have [my acceptance] be based off my credentials than me being really sassy one time,” O’Dell said. “I wasn’t even that bitter.”
Although her letter references receiving rejection letters from “the best and brightest universities in the country,” O’Dell reported that her only rejection letter came from Duke.
This year, Duke accepted 2,650 students out of 28,000 applicants through regular decision—reaching an acceptance rate of 9.4 percent, the third time it has reached single digits.
O’Dell said she will attend the University of South Carolina and plans to major in biology with a minor in mathematics. She hopes to become a pediatrician or pediatric oncologist.
At the time of the interview, O’Dell said that she had not yet told her mother about the email because she was hoping that the attention would eventually die down. Her father found out about it online on April 1.
“My dad saw it on Facebook and texted me, ‘I see you’re trending today,’” O’Dell said.
She was also called to her principal’s office to discuss the email due to the viral effects of her letter, but no disciplinary action was taken.
O’Dell’s email is not the first retort to college rejections that made national headlines. In 2013, Suzy Lee Weiss published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “To (all) the Colleges that Rejected Me” that captured national attention.
Despite the national spotlight, O’Dell remains secure in her decision to send her response and post it online.
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