Stressed-out seniors,

I know no amount of words will make you any less nervous, or make you get any more sleep, or make March 31 come any faster, or make any bad news you may receive that day any less heartbreaking, but hear me out.

I was you one year ago right now. I worked my butt off for four years of high school and was anxiously waiting for it all to pay off. I had gotten into some amazing schools Early Action, but I was waiting of the big ones. I had applied to 18 schools. Hours of essays, a six-page activity sheet, countless recommendation letters, and hundreds of dollars in application fees, and really all I cared about were the three schools I would hear back from on March 31 (and one on March 30).

Seniors should not be required to come to school on March 31; seniors should not be required to do anything on March 31, because all they are thinking about is the Ivy League school acceptances that come out online in the evening.

I am sure you have it all planned out. You have picked the order you will log onto the school websites. I opted to start with the one I had no faith I got into and work my way to the one I thought I had a shot at. This ended up being the order of my preference for them. I recommend checking the decisions in private, but have your family close by. Do not let anyone check it for you. You need to see it for yourself, and you shouldn’t put that pressure on someone else. Just breathe, and click “Open.” You will not die, no matter what it says on the screen.

March 30, 2015, I got my rejection letter to Georgetown in the mail, two days before the predicted announcement time. Georgetown had been my dream since tenth grade. I was in love, but apparently they didn’t love me back. I went to lacrosse practice that day after getting the letter and tried to hide the remnants of tears with my goggles. My teammates saw through them, though, and showered me with love and support. My coach, who happened to be my guidance counselor, gave me a pep talk, and in a half-hour I was good, plus I still had three more to hear from the next day.

(Harvard Dining Hall... yes, for real)

March 31, 2015, I walk into my house after practice. The decisions were due out at 5 o'clock, mere minutes away. I had applied to Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. I knew Harvard was a long shot and really had no expectations. The slim hope I had came from my tour guide that told me that if I said in my application I would be willing to play D1 rugby it would give me an advantage. Of course I would be willing to push people around at arguably the best college in the country, but I guess they didn’t need any more players that year, because I got denied. No biggie. On to Princeton. Again, I wasn’t expecting much, but with a campus like that, how could I not apply? Another no. Oh well. Now was the real deal. My number one school. While I had loved Georgetown, as senior year went on I got more attached to Cornell. It seemed to be exactly what I wanted. I applied to the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, one of the smaller of the seven schools of the university, taking only a few hundred students a year. But it also would only charge me in-state tuition. It seemed like God lined it up perfectly. Since I got denied from all the others, my decision would be easy, right?! Wrong. It was a no from Cornell too. I didn’t know what to do. For years my teachers and guidance counselors had been telling me that I could get into the schools I wanted to go to. My profiles matched their requirements on the college websites. Why didn’t they want me?

A year later I still don’t know. I will never know. Maybe I wasn’t artsy enough, or not the right race, or didn’t play the right instrument. Honestly, I don’t care anymore. I ended up at a school I should have paid more attention to beginning of my search, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, nothing to scoff at, I know. A year ago right now, if you had told me I would be here, I would have never believed it, but now I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

You have no idea what God has in store for you in this next year. You have no idea what March 31 will bring. But you will make it to March 31, 2017. And you will look at your friends who are seniors then and feel their pain, but also laugh at how much pressure they are putting on this one day. So on Ivy Day, the majority of you will cry. You will cry for longer than you thought was possible. Your heart will physically hurt. You will be insanely pissed off. You will question the concept of college. You will question your teachers and guidance counselors. You will question yourself. You will not want to go to school the next day. You will secretly be angry and hate the kids that got into the schools you wanted. You will want to not do any schoolwork for the rest of the year because you see no point.

But you will pick a college, graduate from high school, spend the best summer of your life with friends, and then pack up your room and go to this new, exciting place. You may still be angry for the first few weeks, imagining what life would have been like at those other schools. But then you will make friends, and join clubs, and start to love your new life. And a year from now you will question why you ever wanted to go to another school. So I’m not telling you to stop worrying or that it’s not a big deal. I know how annoying it is to hear that over and over and how it doesn’t help. I’m saying it’s OK to be angry and sad and hurt and jealous and even embarrassed. But five years from now you will have a degree from an amazing school, and March 31 will just be another passing day, and you will be satisfied with the way your life turned out, I promise.

And for those of you that do get good news that day, you rock. Congratulations. You should be proud of yourselves; you deserve it. Go and do amazing things.

All of you go and do amazing things.

Sincerely,

An Ivy-rejection survivor