Rejected by the Same School Four Times

I got rejected by the same school four times in a row before they finally let me in.

Cal Poly ran on a quarter system, so I applied for Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Rejected every time by admissions. I was never an A student. I've made peace with that over the years, mostly because nobody's ever asked to see my transcript before signing a contract. At the time, though, it stung watching each envelope come back the same way.

Eventually I stopped applying through admissions and wrote straight to the dean instead. The letters weren't just asking for a chance. I told him what I was actually doing while stuck outside the gates: running a placemat ad business, a carpet shampoo business, freelance design work, all built from a house and triplex that I managed down the street. I wasn't asking him to bet on potential. I had actual businesses to point to. I just wanted campus added to what I was already building, not swapped in for it.

I got in the following spring, a year behind my original plan. Never finished in four clean years, and by then I'd stopped pretending I would.

I think the real lesson isn't "never give up," which is true but useless as advice. It's narrower: when the same channel rejects you the same way four times, the fifth attempt through that channel probably isn't the one that works. Admissions had a form. The dean was a person, and I gave him something other than a transcript to say yes to.

I still don't know if it was persistence or just stubbornness that got me in. Possibly the same thing wearing different clothes.

Where are you resubmitting the same application, hoping attempt five works differently than one through four?