Many of the rumors, myths, and other erroneous pieces of information about college admissions include some version of a perceived weakness that results in colleges refusing to even consider an applicant. I group these as, “Colleges won’t even look at you.” The statements sound like this:

“I heard if you don’t have any leadership positions, colleges won’t even look at you.”

“Is it true that if you haven’t taken eight APs, colleges won’t even look at you?”

“My friend went to a presentation that said if you leave spaces blank on the Common Application, the colleges won’t even look at you.”

But you need to be a long way from admissible for a college to refuse to consider your application. In fact, most of our counselors who worked in admissions will tell you that they read and carefully considered every single application that came across their desks.

Yes, at some schools where admission is a straight meritocracy based on numbers (mostly large public schools that ask only for a transcript and test scores), it’s true that a failure to hit those numbers often means an automatic denial.

But if you’re applying to a college that asks you to share any information beyond your grades and tests scores—like activities, honors and awards, essays, letters of rec, etc.—chances are, your application will be read and thoughtfully considered by at least one real human being. You won’t get arbitrarily tossed aside for failing to hit some vague standard of qualification.

I’m not suggesting that a student with a 2.0 GPA will have a legitimate shot of getting into a school like MIT. But you know what? If that kid applies, they won’t just delete him and pretend he never existed. Someone will read his application and make sure they haven’t missed anything.

Almost every admissions officer I’ve met—and certainly all of the former admissions officers now working at Collegewise—are nice people. They’re respectful of applicants who put themselves out there to be evaluated. They can’t admit everyone they want to admit, but that doesn’t mean they enjoy the denials that inevitably come with the process.

Work hard in school. Commit yourself to activities you care about. Be an engaged learner and contributor who’s nice to teachers and fellow students. Then find colleges that fit you and use the applications to help those schools get to know you better.

They’ll look at you. I promise.