As finishing touches are put on final drafts, teacher recommendations are dated and delivered, and green checks multiply in your CommonApp portal, application season is coming to a close.
However, the college admissions season has only just begun. Acceptances are rolling out, Facebook news feeds are flooded with echoes of "Congratulations!" and "See you next year!", and university spiritwear is being paraded around high school campuses. The early applicants who have been admitted have officially succumbed to senioritis, and they're all but packed for college. This trend will unceasingly continue for the next few months, straight through winter break, spring break, and Easter, until our calendars finally hit May.
Amidst all of the excitement surrounding admissions, and in particular early admissions, it's easy to forget about the deferred and the rejected.
To the deferred, it sucks, and although I could choose a million far more eloquent phrases to describe the feeling, there is honestly no better way to put it. Part of you wishes that you had just been rejected, so you wouldn't have to wait another four months, only to hear back from the same school for a second time. It's also incredibly easy to translate "deferred" as "rejected," but they're far from the same thing. This is your fresh start, just another school to group in with your regular-decision schools.
To the rejected, I am sorry. I am sorry that the university of your dreams failed to see the magnificent potential in you. I know you probably feel upset and disappointed with yourself, trying to find that typo, that sentence you know you should have deleted, in a desperate attempt to decipher where you went wrong in your application. However, your rejection is by no means a reflection of your worth as a candidate.
I want to remind you of this: that college has no clue who you really are.
They see your GPA, they see your SAT scores, and they glance over your resume, but they don't know you. They don't know the way your eyes light up when you see your favorite book in a bookstore, the way you stayed up until 4am to hand tissues to your devastated best friend, the way you cheer for your brother at his baseball game in the stands. They don't see the way you pored through hundreds of JC Penney's and Marshall's catalogs to find the absolutely perfect gift for your mom. They don't know that you spent too long in the shower and wear your baggiest pair of sweats on Sundays. They don't know that your knee shakes when you get nervous, that you grind your teeth in your sleep, that you always pour in too much sugar when you bake cookies, that you can never find a pair of matching socks in the morning. They can't see your passion, your flaws, and your personality the way your family and friends can.
These colleges know what you got on the ACT, that you're kind of interested in engineering but actually maybe not, and that you wrote for the school newspaper for two years. They categorize you, they define you in quick numbers and statistics, but you are much too splendid and complex to be quantitatively summarized. You are not a 30, you are not a 2150, you are not a 3.5, you are not an annual household income. You are multifaceted, dynamic, and glorious in a way that colleges are not capable of comprehending.
I encourage you to see the college's opinion of you as that of a stranger's. Some people like shy people, others like outgoing people. Some colleges need trumpet players, but you play the trombone. I know that if any one of those colleges took the time and the effort to get to know you a little better, to appreciate and absorb you the way your family and friends have for the past so-many years, they would have all accepted you in a heartbeat.
You will be accepted to a college, regardless of whether it's the college of your dreams or not. I can assure you that no matter where you end up, you'll find incredible professors, friends, and classes. I can also definitively say that most, if not all, of the university students I know are so happy at their schools. Even if it wasn't their first choice, they found a welcoming community, a positive atmosphere, and most of all, a place where they belong.
And in the end, undoubtedly, you will find a place where you belong, too.
