Some (Positive)Thoughts on Dealing with Early Deferral or Rejection
Now that app-writing season is over, the long wait begins. For some, waiting is just that — neither bitter nor exciting. But for others, the sting of the first round of the application cycle has already hit, either because they were deferred or rejected from an early action or early decision school.
When I talked to my friends a few years ago, the general consensus was that it was one of the worst feelings they had experienced in high school, and I spent a lot of time thinking about which was worse: a flat, final rejection, or a slow, drawn-out deferral? In the end, I concluded that it didn’t really matter, because the feeling was still the same. It was tough, and there was no way to comfort the many friends who were dealing with the uncertainty and insistent hypothetical questions about what they could have done to change the outcome.
Yet believe me when I say that, having gone through the application cycle myself and having been in college for nearly two years, the result of an early application does not mean that you’re a failure, nor does it mean that you won’t end up being happy in college.
In fact, the question “can I be really happy at [insert school name here] is often impossible to answer, and it might not even be the right one to ask. (Stay tuned for another article on this topic!)
But let’s start with the first common reaction to an early deferral or rejection: I wasn’t good enough. Though there’s a vanishingly small chance that you, in fact, weren’t, the reality is that the admissions process is complex and has many, many (many!) moving parts and tiny variables that we as applicants can’t account for.
To name a few: many applicants who also happened to invent a potent fish food to make farm salmon grow twice their normal size (a useful invention, right?), too many people with the exact same number of AP courses on their transcript (with the same grades, too), an over-saturation of students applying from your area, or maybe even the desire to see the rest of the pool once the regular decisions applications come in.
All these alternatives are pure speculation, and some are more ridiculous than others, but my point still stands: first, you will never know why you were deferred or rejected, and second, it is likely that it was due to some factor that was out of your control.
No matter which of the two above reasons — or perhaps another one — led to your deferral or rejection, I hope that there is some comfort in knowing that you worked hard to present a good application, and that for some reason that you could not have accounted for, it didn’t work out. That’s a difficult and recurring theme in the college admissions process: there are very many unknown unknowns to work with — far more than you can, or indeed should, worry about.
A second common reaction is “Will I be happy at a school that isn’t my first choice?” (Or even your second, or third.)
The answer — taking into account the necessary work of finding multiple schools that fit your interests and goals — is yes. Absolutely.
It’s very easy to say this in retrospect, of course, but think of it this way: a university appears a certain way on paper, touting its special program in a specific topic, or its small class sizes, or its facilities. College, however, is much greater than the sum of these characteristics — all of which could be, undoubtedly, important to the right person.
But there are also the people you’ll meet on the first day you move, the people you’ll live with in your dorm, the people you’ll learn from in your classes, and the people you’ll bump into at parties. A common factor among colleges, you’ll remember, is that they all have varying numbers of people between the ages of 18 and 22. Some of these people you’ll date, dislike, or ditch — and a small number of them will become the closest friends you’ve ever had, regardless of whether they’re the people at your first choice school or fifth.
A sophomore I know at McGill confirmed this to me: “I found friends who I couldn’t imagine living without.” Cliché? Possibly, but many college students report that one of the best parts of their academic experience are their friends — not the qualities colleges initially present on paper to increase their applicant counts. Small details, like friendship, are to be found at any college.
This same sophomore — now studying English and loving McGill — also told me that “I came to realize that a lovely thing about human nature is that we have usually a tendency to make the best out of whatever unsatisfactory unchangeable situation we are in.”
She’s right: though it may not seem like it right now, an early deferral or rejection does not mean you have failed in some way, nor does it say anything more about you than that you have faced an outcome you didn’t expect. It cannot possibly encapsulate all the interesting things you presented in your application. And, of course, if you do your due diligence, there are many schools at which you will be happy. You’ll have a hand in making four years of school what you want them to be — choices that are largely independent of whether or not your fish food invention was deemed interesting enough by an admissions committee.
