Admissions decisions from colleges aren’t life defining.
They can feel like it at the time. A lot of hard-working students spend their high school years driven to gain admission to a particular (or to a particular type of) college. So when the “Yes,” or “No” arrives, it can feel like your high school career has just been validated or invalidated, and that your future path is either clear or in shambles.
But successful adults don’t look back on the day that a college acceptance arrived as the pivotal moment that ignited their future success. Nobody says, “Since that magical day I got into Cornell, my life has been an uninterrupted string of success and happiness.” They might identify a pivotal experience that took place once they got to college. But it’s never the moment the letter arrived.
Frankly, the same can be said of people who never achieved what they wanted to.
Nobody ever looks back and says, “From the day ‘college x’ said no, my life was in a downward spiral. I knew from that day forward that life would never be the same.”
If your decision is whether to go or not to actually go to college at all, that will almost certainly be a life-defining event. But where you go to college is a lot less important than whether or not you go, and what you do while you’re there. Wherever you go to college, it’s going to be one step in a process of education and growth that continues throughout your life.
So whatever news you receive from your colleges of choice, remember that while the arrival of this decision might feel like a life-defining day, it isn’t. If you’re happy with the news, congratulations. Celebrate it and look forward to making the most of the opportunity once you get there.
But if you’re not happy with your choices, remember that you’ve got four years of college, and a lifetime after you leave it, to define the life you want. This day isn’t the beginning or the end of your story.