Trying to Get Into Marywood University: What to Do When You’re Scared You Won’t Get In
The laundry basket was overflowing with my son’s faded soccer hoodies and worn flannel shirts last Tuesday night when he leaned against the kitchen doorframe, phone clutched in one hand, and asked the question I’d been waiting for: “Mom, I’m trying to get into Marywood. Am I cooked?”
I set down the sweatshirt I was folding and wiped a stray dog hair off my jeans. The maple donut crumbs from his after-school snack were still on the counter, and our golden retriever was already trying to nose his way toward them. It had been three weeks since he hit submit on his common app, and he’d been scrolling college admission Reddit every night before bed, digging up stories from kids with higher GPAs than him who got rejected last cycle.
He pushed off the doorframe and sat down across from me at the table, turning his phone to show me a comment: 3.7 unweighted, 1300 SAT, got rejected from Marywood art therapy. What the hell, the user wrote. My son tapped his own transcript on the table: 3.4 unweighted, 1180 SAT, B in AP Bio first semester senior year. “I knew it,” he said. “I wasted my essay on a school I don’t have a shot at.”
I didn’t say “you’ll be fine” because that’s the worst thing you can say to a panicking 17-year-old. Instead, I pulled my laptop over and Googled “Marywood University common data set” like I’d done back in November when we first started working on his applications. It took 90 seconds to pull up the most recent report, and I slid the laptop over to him. The middle 50% of admitted freshmen had GPAs from 3.1 to 3.8. His 3.4 was dead center. The middle 50% SAT was 1090 to 1280, so his score fell right in that range too. The Reddit user with the 3.7 was an outlier, probably applying to an ultra-competitive program like nursing or physician assistant, didn’t have any relevant experience, or just had an essay that didn’t align with what the school was looking for.
That’s the thing no one tells you about applying to smaller private universities like Marywood. All the hype around college admissions is for Ivies and big name state schools, so kids and parents assume every school rejects most applicants. Marywood’s overall acceptance rate hovers around 70% – that means seven out of every ten kids who apply get in. Most of the panic comes from one-off bad stories shared on social media that get blown out of proportion.
After we looked at the numbers, I reminded him of the day we visited the campus last fall. We sat in on an intro art therapy class, and after class he talked for 15 minutes with the professor about his volunteer work at the local art studio for kids with autism. That’s the work he wrote his entire essay about. When we met the admissions rep for the arts at the regional college fair a month later, she told us straight up: Marywood doesn’t build their incoming class just off GPAs and test scores. They want kids who actually want their specific program, not just a degree from any college. If you can show you’ve already put work into the thing you want to study, that counts for way more than a few tenths of a point on your GPA.
We’d already put that advice into action, actually. After he submitted his application, we talked about sending a short note to his assigned admissions counselor. It wasn’t a fancy, over-polished letter. It was three sentences: I submitted my application for the fall 2024 art therapy program last month. I visited campus again over Christmas break and sat in on another drawing class, and I’m even more convinced Marywood is the right fit for me. Please let me know if you need anything else from my application. That’s it. It took five minutes to write, and it wasn’t pushy. For smaller schools where admissions counselors read every single application, that small check-in makes you stand out as someone who actually cares, not just another name on a list.
If you’re a parent going through this with your kid, the first concrete thing I’d tell you to do is pull that common data set together with your kid. Don’t just tell them they’re good enough – show them, with the school’s own numbers. Second, if their stats are in or near the middle 50%, help them lean into whatever experience they have that ties to their intended major. If they’re applying to Marywood’s education program, for example, remind them to highlight that after-school babysitting or summer camp counseling they did, not just their grades. Third, if Marywood is absolutely their first choice, that short note of interest works. It doesn’t have to be long.
We still don’t have an answer. Decision letters don’t go out until mid-March, so there’s still a lot of waiting. He still checks the portal once a day now, instead of once every 20 minutes. Last night he ate the other half of that maple donut he picked up over the weekend, watched a movie with his friends, and didn’t mention college once. We already lined up a backup: he’s been accepted to the local community college’s fine arts program, which has a transfer agreement with Marywood if he doesn’t get in this time around. That’s another thing no one talks about – getting rejected from Marywood as a freshman doesn’t mean you can’t go there later. A lot of kids transfer in after a year or two of solid community college grades, and it works out just fine.
Is he cooked? I don’t know. Nobody knows right now. But what I do know is that the panic he’s feeling doesn’t have to take over the next month. We did the work, we checked the numbers, and we have a backup plan. Whatever happens, it’s not the end of the road.
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