College rejection may be an awakening, but it sure is a rude one. Regardless of the kind of college – reach, target, or safety – rejection is unpleasant. It sends a fairly clear signal to you, and it may be the first time that a group of seemingly objective individuals assessed your credentials and judged them insufficient. Unpleasant, to say the least.
You may ignore the rejection, quickly find your feet, and move on. You may engage in some introspection. Or you may take the Twitter to inform the universe of your displeasure. One of these is good, one is not good, and one is a really bad idea. Let’s look at these options.
Before reviewing some obvious examples, keep in mind that if you decide to transfer (who knows?) or attend grad school (who knows?), then your high school counselor will likely be involved. Just because you graduate college doesn’t mean that your relationship with your high school counselor is over. Keep that in mind as you consider creating a minefield of snark on social media.
Email/Phone! No, you should not send an angry (but righteous!) email to the college to let them know what they’re missing by rejecting you. And you certainly shouldn’t call. Anger, crying, and pleading does not turn an applicant into an admitted student. Ever. I don’t care about that story from X years ago that you heard and swear is true about the kid who asked super nicely and then was magically admitted after being rejected. It’s not true and you should do a reality-check if you think it is.
Hate Speech! Sure, it’s fun and maybe you lost your mind for a minute, but if you say something that’s considered “hate speech” or may be threatening, then the college may inform your counselor, and your counselor will speak to you, and the only result is that you’ve burnt more bridges and appear to be a maniac. This applies to you, the applicant, and to your parents.
The Fuzz! Sometimes anger gets the best of you – or your dad – and the police are called. It actually happens. There are a million things you may say to your friends in the privacy of your basement-PS4 lair that will get you a visit from the police if said on the phone. Stay cool.
The Grapevine. Do something stupid and you may ruin more than your relationship with your high school counselor. Other colleges may discover your temper – through social media, from a friend, via a counselor – and change their decision about you. These people talk to each other. Don’t give them anything bad to say about you.
It wasn’t personal, really. The college doesn’t really know you. They have many qualified applicants. Frankly, they may have had too many applicants from your school. These aren’t things you could have controlled or predicted. And you always have other options: other colleges, 2-year college + transfer, gap year, etc. And here’s where rejection can be very valuable.
The wrong question to ponder is: why did this college reject me? Again, if may be a good reason or a bad one or just the luck of the draw among many qualified candidates.
The right question to ask is: what can I do to be more desirable to colleges? If you were rejected, you may not have been a below-average candidate, but you also weren’t an above-average candidate. An awful lot of rejected applicants are average – nothing awful but nothing great. So how can you become better than average? How can you dedicate yourself to ensuring that your next application will be above average?
Oh, and there will be many more applications – college transfer, grad school, professional school, jobs. You may go through this process a dozen more times in your life – so, how can you improve yourself in order to obtain better results next time?
Because there will be a next time. Accept the challenge and commit yourself to improving. And whatever you do, don’t start posting @Harvard pics of dog poop on Twitter. Really, don’t.
