The Personal Anguish of the College Rejection Letter

This can be an exciting and gut-wrenching time of year, especially for students and their parents, but also for admission officers and counsellors or educational consultants who support the students. Admissions decisions are being made, letters sent out, online accounts updated to share the news with their anxious recipients. I am proud and thrilled that many, or most, of the decisions coming to my students this time of year are positive ones, this year being no exception, though there are always some disappointments – maybe that “pie in the sky”, “perfect”, “far reach” school doesn’t offer acceptance, or doesn’t offer enough funding to make it possible for the student to attend. Regardless, it is a highly emotionally charged time. And many students take a non-acceptance or “rejection letter”, as a personal rejection or failure.

And then there are those years that the indescribable and truly unexpected happens….  A student gets offered admission to a school of their choice and then….the offer turns out to be a mistake?! “What?!” you say. “How can that be possible?” Well, in the world of selective college admission, the odd and bizarre do happen. This very thing has happened more than once – perhaps even a dozen times to my knowledge. Whether it be technological or human error, the wrong letter or email gets sent to the wrong group of students, and then that offer has to be rescinded. I won’t mention the names of the colleges or universities which have suffered this situation and all of the very bad publicity and backlash that comes along with such an error. You may be surprised. Some are those extremely selective and high profile places from which you can only imagine perfection…not so. And the collateral damage with these institutions may be greater than with others because of their highly selective nature. It is doubly heartbreaking for those students who are the unfortunate victims.

The important point here is this. Human nature is to want something that seems harder to get, and then to equate the “not getting” with personal failure or inadequacy. What I urge students to remember, is that this is an imperfect process, with lots of luck, demographics, factors beyond anyone’s control, and certainly (as mentioned above), some “whammies” thrown in there too. Many perfectly qualified students do not get offers from the schools for which they qualify, when the school has an admission pool of candidates that is 20 times the number of spaces they have in their freshman class! So, to equate getting a “rejection” letter with a statement that you are “not good enough” is the equivalent of saying that since you failed to find the needle in the haystack, you must be blind! Yes, it’s a bit of a leap to make.

This is why it pays to have gone through the steps of putting together a well-considered list of schools to which admission would be great in each case – from the foundation schools with a likelier admission for your profile, to those on your list that are “reachier”. You’ve already determined that these schools will suit you well, and in the long run help you in your quest for graduate school admission, career or other types of success in your future. So what does it matter that some of those schools wouldn’t – or couldn’t – offer you a space. What you do in your time in university is what will count most. And, if you have found a good fit, you are far more likely to succeed and flourish there. Don’t waste too much energy on the rejection letter/s. Have a cry, throw a tantrum, burn the letter, and then move on! Celebrate your other offers, remind yourself why this (your chosen school) will be great for you, and start building your connections and network there. Chat with other students there and ask advice. Even contact professors. Think about where you are going to want to live on campus, what activities you might join and what internships, study abroad and other experiences you want to access. Start planning and get invested in your choice, and you will be all the better for it.

After considering all this…you still think “they must have made a mistake” OR, you have had a significant turn of events (for the better) that you think should have been considered in the decision if it had happened just a month before…OK, so yes, there is an admission appeal process at most institutions. But, only in rare cases are admission decisions overturned on appeal. If you have indeed had a significant achievement, i.e. you garnered a spot on the Olympic team, got a book published, gained a patent on an invention, won a national debate tournament, perhaps it might be worth a try to appeal. If you need to do this in order to be at peace with the process, then do so, and then leave it in the past.