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Column: Rejection, the bane of college admissions
Published: Thursday, March 27, 2008 - 2:49pm
IT’S NEARING APRIL 1, and a strange, anxious anticipation is in the air. Seniors are sprinting at the sound of the mail truck and constantly checking their e-mail. The reason for this erratic behavior?
College admission decisions have arrived.
Almost six months ago, seniors across the nation switched their focus from their studies and social scenes to self-promotion.
Students spent countless hours writing essays about their wonderfully talented and unique selves, hunting down teachers for last-minute recommendations, and skipping school (finally for legitimate reasons) to visit colleges.
After the applications were signed, sealed, and hopefully delivered, all that remained to do was wait, and pray that the admissions officers would extend some mercy.
As a senior myself, I have spent the better part of this school year with college on the brain. I’ve drifted in and out of moments of unbearable anxiety and inexplicable indifference, poring over college Web sites and looking at their statistics, trying to see where I fit.
As the multi-interested, indecisive person that I am, I applied to 12 different colleges, not knowing what to expect when admissions decisions rolled around.
The first two notices I received were letters of acceptance. My confidence and self-esteem ballooned with each, and the dreaded inklings of rejection that had pestered me for the past few months began to dwindle.
Then it arrived, the hypothetical thorn that pierced the side of my bright, happy balloon: my first rejection letter.
At first I brushed off the disappointment, telling myself I had many, many more schools to hear from. However, with the next letter came another rejection, and another, and another, adding up to a grand total of four loathsome colleges that didn’t want anything to do with me.
I sulked for a few days, dragging my mostly deflated balloon along behind me. I complained to a few of my peers who in turn whined harmoniously and offered sympathy along the lines of “I feel you, man” and “You’re going to get in other places.”
Thankfully, it only took a little more than a week for me to snap out of my stupor and realize that the sky was, in fact, not crashing down in flames, and if I get wait-listed or rejected, I’ll find a different path.
For the letters of admission yet to come, I’m keeping a sunny outlook.
Note: An earlier version of this column appeared as an entry in the Gargoyle staff blog.
