College Rejection Affirmations
Welcome back,
As of December 11th when I write this, Princeton’s Single-Choice Early Action Decisions have come back. No one I know who applied—no one who had once so deliberately signed, sealed, delivered their applications—has been accepted. For the most part (congratulations Sri!), even the deferrals of last year have gone, turning to complete rejections—letting all the pent-up hope abruptly disappear like a puff of acrid smoke from a nauseating magic trick from an insincere magician.
This is for them:
My own early decision to Brown University has not come back yet so I won’t be able to feel the emotions as palpably as I did previously, but I hope my own empathy can make up for the disconnect between us. It’s an attitude I encourage those who did not get rejected from their choice college to embrace. (Update: I got rejected, but I feel this shouldn’t alter the ultimate message of this article. It sort of supports my philosophy in a way—because it shows that despite whatever outcome you receive, you ought to be supportive of others in a way your own result is irrelevant. )
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It may feel like a quintuple betrayal. The college denied you; those online grifters selling courses were right; you didn’t believe them; you didn’t make a fitting application; you got your hopes up; you fell for the engagement bait.
The whole thing can feel dead deafening. The college admissions process has almost been like being placed into a pitch-black room rumored to have one invisible exit. The oubliette is packed with everyone you know, and apparently other people you don’t; people at other schools have made it out—but you can’t know for sure. Everyone’s talking over each other and blathering about where the exit is but ultimately no one knows. And you know no one knows, but people have gotten out. Right?
My dejected rejected friend said plainly that it was the hope that hurt most. He felt awful for even thinking he had a shot when the only SB students to make it in last year were an FBLA president and a Rutgers researcher; that the authenticity in how he acted in high school could be counteracted by the performative work ushered in by better-off people at other schools paying thousands to listen to college counselors and founding useless nonprofit schemes. That he should let go of other prestigious schools he considered applying to like Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania. That the fact no SBHS students have been accepted to MIT in the past six years should discourage him. He confided: he never should’ve gotten his hopes up at all.
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I said he couldn’t have controlled his hopes and thus can’t blame himself for it. No one can.
He asked how that’s possible. It’s the first thing everyone says when there’s a chance of being let down: don’t get your hopes up, and it’s his fault for not being able to control his hopes when other people can to such an extent that it’s become an adage.
But of course that’s everything? Right? This is what other people say; this is my experience; I don’t have research, he does. But when the one person from our school who got deferred didn’t have those easter eggs…research, nonprofits, those things prescribed by some inauthentic college speaker, that “other people” school of thought begins to fall apart a little. How can you admit that no one knows anything, and then believe you did wrong? In the end if everyone’s clueless, listening to yourself and having hope makes just as much sense as listening to someone else and not. If it’s anarchy why not embrace the positivist view?
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That friend remarked how the day he was rejected had once had the potential to be the greatest day of his life. Maybe it did. But thinking that way again just continues to minimize your control, your autonomy: will you let the factors that lead to the greatest day of your life be decided by someone else?
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The return of a college’s decision is a lot like a sudden deposition, a phase change. It’s easy to see data about accepted and rejected students, tens of Instagram Reels about student stats with colorful ✅ and ❌ emojis to represent which colleges thought they were “good enough”; it’s entirely different if those people are students you know—whose essays you’ve helped read and revise, who you know care, who you know deserve the best. It’s different when you can feel the faces of the people in that pitch-black room with you.
For those who do get into your dream colleges, celebrate! It’s great, you did great, you worked hard enough, and luck favored you. But do remember the humanity often hidden by the data—support your friends who weren’t as fortunate. Being kind to those who for whatever reason (whether you believe it to be bad luck or less effort or whatever headcanon you’ve developed within the blind crowd) haven’t made it, in no way hurts you. It shouldn’t affect your view of yourself because if you base your own luck on the success of others, all while similarly blind to their circumstances or the thousands of little decisions which butterfly-effected into whatever scenario ended up happening, you fall victim to the blindness too.
By the time anyone even receives their decision, the control they’ve had over it has long been gone.
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All you can really do is finish that humanization. Go out with your friends and keep encouraging them as much as you can, and let them encourage you. Have some fun tonight and maybe it’ll end up being the best day of one of your lives. Have hope, and be you. What else can you do?
