As college decisions pour in, those students who don’t get the yes they were looking for from their dream school face the collision of two often frustratingly contradictory lessons—do you accept that things don’t always work out as you’d hoped, or refuse to give up on your dreams?
Some students (and often parents in what feels like support for their kids) choose the latter. They’ll do a ruthless autopsy of their admissions process in search of where they supposedly went wrong. They’ll compare their accomplishments to those of students who were admitted. And in some cases, they’ll appeal the college’s decision, usually as a last-ditch effort to get what they want (before you do that, please consider the advice in this past post).
My problem with that approach is that it keeps students focused on schools that said no. Why not reallocate that time and emotional energy to making the right choice among the schools that said yes? There’s no need to stay stagnant, focusing on circumstances you have almost no power to change, when other acceptances give you a clear path forward.
You’ve probably had experiences where the refusal to give up has served you well. And it will continue to serve you well at various points during and after college. But you have to make the distinction between those things you have the power to influence, and those things that are beyond your control. When a college says no, the decision has been made. There’s no shame in accepting it. When you let go of a school that said no, you free yourself to grab hold of another that said yes.