Handling Rejection

Handling Rejection





Hana R. Alberts



Here's one cheery thought for students coping with rejection letters from colleges this week: You're not alone.


Not did more students than ever apply to college this year, but decisions by Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia to cut early-action programs increased competition during the regular cycle, according to college consultant Michele Hernandez. In fact, Hernandez says, she anticipates that this year's admissions season will produce "the lowest admit rates in history" at some of the country's elite schools.


"You have to comfort yourself that this has been the perfect storm of admissions years," says Hernandez, president and founder of Vermont-based Hernandez College Consulting. She advises her clients to focus their attention on schools where they were accepted and banish the notion that big-name schools are the only places they could be happy. "Forget about the Ivy League," she says. "Don't obsess with the name brand. You can't really mope for your whole life."


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Feelings of isolation and despair are typical accompaniments to rejection, according to Elayne Savage, a communication coach and author of Don't Take It Personally: The Art of Dealing with Rejection. Parents should encourage their children to hash out complex emotions in conversations with other adults or capture them in words in a journal or blog--and they should be careful not to intensify those emotions by projecting their own disappointment onto their children.


"It's going to feel like they are the only person going through it," Savage says. "In families, anxious feelings can get passed around from person to person. So, if the parent is reliving past disappointments and rejections, and as tension builds, the teen may be picking up, absorbing, the parent's fears."



What makes college-related rejection worse than typical rejection--such as from a romantic interest or a prospective employer--is the number of people hungrily anticipating the decision.


"Rejection is proportionate to the amount of emotional investment we've made. So the letters come in, and you didn't get in, and your mother, father, grandparents, counselors at school, your coach and your SAT coach are asking, 'Did you get it?'" says Brenda Wade, a San Francisco-based family psychologist for the Today show. "With young people, you always have to hold out the opportunity that there's more to come. Because they live so much in the moment."


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Some experts urge students to visit all the schools where they've been accepted and compile a list of their positive attributes, while others emphasize the possibility of transferring if a student is still unhappy after freshman year at another college.


Most important is to avoid the temptation to wallow in painful feelings, according to Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a professor of psychology at Yale and author of Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and Reclaim Your Life. There are two distinct phases that follow any rejection, Nolen-Hoeksema says. The first is re-appraisal, when students put a positive spin on a negative experience; the second is problem-solving, when students take action in order to forget feelings of futility and sadness.


Seeking feedback on your application and suggestions for future improvement from guidance counselors and college admissions officers are two concrete ways to turn rejection into useful information.


Above all, though, parents and students alike should struggle to maintain some perspective. "Don't judge your child's success in life by the schools ... they did or didn't get into," says Chuck Hughes, a former Harvard admissions officer and founder of RoadToCollege.com. "A child's success in [his or her] career is going to be defined by their work ethic, by their intelligence, and by their ability to overcome adversity."