By: Ryanna Lui, Ishrak Ramzan
After a whole lifetime of slaving away at school, you get your college decision back. This is it, this is all you’ve been working for. You desperately hope that you get accepted, but alas, it was not meant to be. You got rejected. What is the meaning of life? Who even are you now? The future looks dark.
Don’t fret. You will move on, because you are strong enough to. After all, you completed the convoluted, entangled mess of the college applications system, wrote various essays, and filled out numerous supplements; you can get through this too. So how should you deal with college rejection? We’ve decided to compile some different strategies and tips for coping and moving forward for the benefit of all seniors.
Cry. You might feel dismay, and that’s all right, but you shouldn’t let these feelings last too long, so they don’t build up and consume your life. It’s always a good idea to let your emotions out instead of bottling them up inside. Crying is a natural response to emotions or pain, and if you feel the need to cry, that isn’t something that you should feel ashamed of. This will serve as a physical form of relief and release and will leave you feeling better immediately, and you need not worry about the emotional baggage coming back to haunt you every time you are reminded of your rejection.
Don’t take it personally. Recognize that every year, thousands of qualified applicants are rejected from colleges and universities across the nation, and it’s nobody’s fault in particular. Colleges have a limited number of slots in their freshman class; they wouldn’t be able to accept everyone who would be competitive, even if they wanted to. Besides just space alone, there are innumerable other factors involved in the college admissions process, such as what a college is looking to create in its freshmen class in a specific year and the admissions officers involved, so don’t take it to heart.
Consider other colleges. You’ve probably applied to several schools, so you still have a shot at higher education. As a result, you likely received acceptances to other schools as well, even if you were rejected from some others. Sure, maybe you didn’t get into your top choice, but you still have a number of solid options laid out in front of you, and you should keep an open mind. Take some time to reflect on your top choices; think about what specifically made those schools appealing to you. Chances are that you will be able to find those qualities in other schools that you got accepted to. Additionally, while the name of the school you attend carries some weight, what is going to be more important is what you make of your time there. You can choose to dwell on the past, spending years thinking about what could have been, or you can involve yourself in the college community, meeting new people and pursuing the things you enjoy.
Realize you aren’t stuck at the school you go to in the fall. You won’t necessarily stay at the college you decide to attend for all four years of undergrad. People transfer all the time, and if the college you go to ends up not working out for you, transferring presents an opportunity both to leave and another chance to get into schools you may have wished to go to previously. At the same time, if you intend on pursuing a graduate or professional degree later on, who knows, you might just get into that school you’ve dreamt of for all this time.
If you need help moving forward in your life, try talking to someone you trust about what happened and how you feel, be it a friend or a parent. Being able to speak about and express your feelings out loud is therapeutic, and if your friends are seniors, they will more than likely be able to relate, as their pain over college rejections is just as fresh. You might be surprised to find out that the people who seem perfect have experienced their own fair share of failure.
Channel the negative energy and pent-up emotions into something productive that you enjoy, like a hobby or craft. Instead of mulling too much on something that you have no power over, take advantage of your emotional state and use it to spur you onto greater things. Besides, spite is a great motivator; there’s nothing like becoming accomplished and making the colleges regret rejecting someone like you.
Sometimes, there’s a more specific reason you were rejected. What you do with your four years of high school definitely influence a major part of your admittance, or lack thereof. As much as those four years should be and were utilized as learning experiences, the consequences of your actions are still inevitable, and college rejection might be one of them. You can look at this as a learning experience, something that is ultimately just part of your path toward your future endeavors.