I have always been told by others (including educators) that putting in extra effort and working extra hard is the key to succeeding at things you don't seem to have a high level of natural ability for, but after reading some of the posts on here over the last few months, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm one of the vast majority of applicants who has gotten rejected repeatedly and simply won't get accepted. Emory receives around 280 applications per year and accepts around 40. If you crunch the numbers, that means approximately 14% of applicants get accepted to their program. Based on that statistic, an applicant is much more likely to NOT get accepted, and if they do get rejected, then it means they suffered the same fate as the vast majority (~86%) of applicants. So it seems like you really can't complain and whine about getting rejected because that was always the most likely outcome all along, in a statistical sense. If we are part of the 86% of rejected applicants after multiple application attempts and after multiple attempts to improve the one factor (e.g., GRE) that has been keeping us out, is that an indication that we aren't cut-out to be an AA? I'm just trying to figure out where to go from here and could use a bit of blunt honesty...