Thursday, March 31, 2016

Introduction: The Beginning, or the End?

On March 31st, 2016, my dreams were crushed by a simple sentence:

"The Committee on Admissions has completed its Regular Decision meetings, and I am very sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you admission to the Class of 2020."

I received three messages containing this sentence, with minor variations. So I could be calling this "My Life as a Harvard, Yale and Columbia Reject," but why rub it in more than I need to? The point is, I didn't quite make it. It's hard when there are upwards of 30,000 perfectly qualified applicants and 1,600 spots, so I knew the odds weren't great to begin with. In fact, I applied Early Action and was deferred, making the process an arduous six-month wait before finally getting the bad news.

If you were one of the 464 students who were flat-out rejected during the Early Action phase, you have my sympathies. That hurts. But, in a way, I envy you; the Band-Aid got torn off back in December, and you got to move on to other things, unlike the 4,673 of us who were deferred. Out of those, a lucky few got in during the Regular Decision phase. To those who didn't, I have something to say: Welcome to the Insult to Injury club. We are an elite 10% of the total applicants, and we each endured the longest possible wait before finally being put out of our misery--or into misery, I suppose, since we now need to find somewhere else to go to school.

Yale's letter even said "I hope the replies you receive from other colleges this spring will soon erase any disappointment regarding Yale's decision." Ouch. Normally that'd be a nice thing to hear, but not when the only other responses you got were also rejections.
I'm not bitter in any way toward the institutions that denied my admission. Statistically, the vast majority of applicants wind up like me. Was I sad? Definitely. Did I cry a little?

Maybe.
I'll never experience the 'round-the-clock availability of unlimited pancakes and Jamba Juice at Columbia, Yale's unlimited free 3D printing or, well... Harvard. But it's time to dust myself off and get on with it. The fact is, with all three of my reach schools out of the question, I'm down to my mid-range school and my safety school, and I still have some important choices to make.

I don't want these disappointments to define who I will become. Regardless of whether I believe it right now, (or if you do, dear reader), there is life after rejection from your dream school. I've got a whole lot of life ahead of me, and so do you. One of my rejection letters said "I hope you will go on to great success in your pursuits." And you know what?

Challenge Accepted.