It’s no shocker that it’s incredibly tough to get into Harvard. Currently, the school has a 3.6% admission rate, allowing around 2,000 new students in a year out of around 50,000 applicants. Competition is only getting harder with more international students challenging U.S. applicants, not to mention some students getting professional help to craft the perfect application.
Getting rejected from your school of choice is hard, but back in 1981, one applicant didn’t take his failure lying down. Instead, Paul Devlin fired back at Harvard by rejecting their rejection letter.
He came up with the idea after noticing there was a typo in the letter, and he wouldn’t let that stand. “When I was a senior in high school, I noticed that the rejection letter I received from Harvard had a grammatical error. So, I wrote a letter back, rejecting their rejection letter. Then I sent a version to all the colleges that had rejected me,” Devlin said, according to Snopes.
The letter was printed in The New York Times
Devlin’s mother sent the letter to The New York Times, where it was printed in the New Jersey section on May 31, 1981. In 2022, Himesh Patel, a British actor who has starred in Tenet and The Odyssey, gave a dramatic reading of it at the Letters Live event at the Royal Albert Hall.
Here is an excerpt of the letter:
Having now reviewed the many rejection letters received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you that I am unable to accept your rejection at this time…
This year, I applied to a great number of fine colleges and universities and, of course, received many rejection letters. Unfortunately, the number of rejection letters that I can accept is very limited. It is for this reason that I was forced to reject the rejection letters of many qualified institutions.
This was not an easy task. Each rejection was reviewed carefully and on an individual basis. Many factors were taken into account, such as the size of the institution, student-faculty ratio, location, reputation, cost, and social atmosphere…
I appreciate your having enough interest in me to reject me, and, although it may seem inappropriate to you at this time, let me take the opportunity to wish you well in what I am sure will be a highly successful academic year.
See you all in the fall.
You can read it in its entirety in The New York Times:
The letter was more than just funny
The letter is a hilarious rebuttal to Harvard’s rejection, but it’s also a great example of perseverance. Instead of getting down on himself, Devlin decided to have a sense of humor about the setback. In the process, he probably gave a lot of young people in the same situation a reason to smile as well. As the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Incidentally, Harvard made a big mistake when they rejected Devlin. He’s gone on to have an incredibly successful career producing and directing documentaries and editing video. He has won nine Emmy awards and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He’s currently working on Castner’s Cutthroats, a scripted series about a ragtag group that freed Alaska from Japanese control in WWII.
Take that, Harvard.
