The Agony and the Ecstasy is a film about Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, but the title could just as easily be about the end of the college admissions process.
I hate to date myself, but when I was applying to college, we all got acceptance and rejection letters in the mail which were timed to arrive on April 1. I’m not sure what sadistic (SAT word) admissions officer decided that April Fools’ Day was a good day for these decisions to be released, but that was when it was done. I’m rather glad that most schools now release their decisions between March 15 and March 31.
In any case, April 1 was the day I got rejected from my top school. I cried, something no teenaged boy likes to do, particularly over something like a college rejection. It was one of the most devastating feelings in the world, and one that, I am positive, is part of what makes me a good college counselor. Because I understand the agony of rejection. For most students, most places, particularly very smart students applying to very selective schools, this is the most common outcome of all the work and effort they put into applying. If an elite college gets 30,000 applications for 1,500 spaces, most people are going to be disappointed.
As a college counselor, part of my job is to try to help students avoid this experience, but inevitably some students still don’t get into their top choices.
Most of the time, they deserve them. But, as I’ve had some top college admissions officers tell me, they could have rejected everyone they accepted, accepted an entirely different class made up from their original list of rejects, and still have as good, if not better, a freshman class coming in. There are almost 40,000 high schools in the United States, and if the valedictorian of each class applies to the “best” college in the country (according to US News and World Report, Princeton University this year), around 38,000 valedictorians are going to be rejected. We haven’t even considered the salutatorians, or the presidents of the student bodies, or the tri-varsity captains, or the first-chair violinists. The system simply cannot accommodate every qualified individual.
Of course, if you’ve been accepted to your top choice, you’re probably feeling pretty ecstatic, and I don’t blame you. But, this is not necessarily the ecstasy I’m talking about in my opening paragraph. I’m actually still talking, mostly, about those students who have just experienced the agony of rejection. Because, once you get over the agony of your rejection, you still have something very positive remaining: the ecstasy of your future. Here’s my story about it. I ended up attending my safety school, and my feelings about it were decidedly mixed. I thought I should be somewhere “better,” but at the same time, I’d made sure that my “safety” school was a place I’d actually like to attend, if worse came to worse. Then, on the first day of college, I met the woman who would go on to become my wife. I got a brilliant education, run a successful company, and am able to do something that I believe truly matters in the world, all without getting a degree from my dream school.
If you’ve been rejected this week, it is not the apocalypse (SAT word), for a myriad (SAT word) of reasons.
This may sound odd coming from someone with my job, but your happiness does not depend on where you go to college, but on what you make of the college you go to. I’m not saying that you should not be disappointed by a rejection. None of us like to be rejected - and believe me, I’m talking from experience. But, as a smart, talented, capable student, you can have a bright future wherever you go. Indeed, almost all the most successful people have become so because they have overcome setbacks, rejections, and disappointments, not because they’ve never experienced them.
The focus of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation - God reaching out to give Adam life. In many ways, this is a good metaphor for a college journey; your college acceptances and rejections are merely the beginning of the next stage of your life, a life filled with unexpected possibilities. Even if it might not feel like it right now, truly wondrous things await you.
Mr. K
Y O U M I G H T A L S O L I K E :
Learn more about these three different categories of colleges that you should aim to apply to and why they are so important.