Bolding theirs.
Argh!
And the worst part is that I have no idea what went wrong. Was it a missing document? I triple-checked them. Were the letters of recomendation not set up right?
I’d be angry if I wasn’t so sad. No one ever accepts anything from me. Not an application, not a book proposal. I’ve even had people reject me trying to buy their services.
Have someone look at the stuff you submit and give you an objective critique on it.
That’s really stupid that they don’t let you know why you weren’t chosen.
Call or email their offices to ask them generally why your application was refused.
That does suck, though. And the fact that they are so mealy-mouthed about it is rather off-putting. Who runs this program?
Wow, that’s a pretty harsh letter. Some of the rejections I’ve gotten for other kinds of things at least say things like:
-“there was an unusually large number of applicants this year”
-“there were many more excellent applicants than could be accepted”
-“we were only able to accept [small percentage of the applicants]”
-“we hope you try again next year”
etc.
I know they’re just trying to be nice about it, but still, it helps.
Remind me, does JET reject applicants if they specify too-popular posts? Like if your three choices were Tokyo, Kyoto, and…um, whatever their third most-popular post is, would they reject you off the bat, or do they call you in with the provision that they may stick you in the coldest, northernmost province in Japan? (I know they say one way or the other what their practice is; I just forget what, indeed, it is.)
Regardless, it sucks. And from what I remember, they seemed pretty strict that each I and each T be dotted and crossed in exactly the right way, or else it’s total rejection for you. In other words, it probably wasn’t you they were rejecting. (Scant to no consolation, I’m sure, but still.)
Sadly, I think I may know what happened. I suspect that one of my references didn’t actually follow the instructions. I thought I made a good essay, and I’m pretty sure I followed all of their (extremely intricate) instructions. And of course, I couldn’t open the letter to make sure!
I’m sorry you didn’t get at least an interview - speaking as an ex-JET, it would have been nice to have some more Dopers here!
They do get thousands upon thousands of applications and the first cut is made in a fairly arbitrary manner, simply to weed down the numbers to sift through, so like you say, instructions not followed to the letter or applications one minute late will get chucked.
I bet you fell into one of those weeding type categories and you shouldn’t feel that it reflects on you or your abilities (that rejection would have come after the interview!!)
Chin up, you maybe didn’t want to end up like me who came to Japan 15 years ago and am still here…
You WILL find something that suits you, so just keep on searching.
I have been. For two years. And all I’ve done is lose a pile of money trying to publish books.