In my senior year of high school, I anxiously waited for the decision letter from my dream school: Vanderbilt University. During the year, I planned out what I would do while I was down there, what I thought I wanted to study, and places I wanted to visit. At the end of March I received the letter telling me that I had not made it in. I was crushed.

I spent the night bawling my eyes out, trying to figure why I was not good enough for the only school I wanted to go to. I was angry at myself for not being better than I should have been and for not meeting their standards. I was mad at the world, and so heartbroken from the university that felt I was not qualified to attend their institution. The next day I had to skip school. My parents, fortunately, understood and allowed me to take the time to heal. I hated the questions from everyone asking whether or not I got in. Each time I had to reply with no, and when the word came out of my mouth, I felt my heart break all over again.

Getting rejected sucks. You feel that you aren’t good enough, and you are left heartbroken for a really long time. I chose to go to Wayne State because it was the only school I could really go to after I got rejected. Although I acted like I was excited, I just didn’t feel the same way about Wayne State that I had felt about Vanderbilt previously.

A year into my college career, and I realize that getting rejected was probably the best thing to happen to me. At the time I was so miserable, but looking back, it was really a blessing in disguise. I am so in love with my university now and could not imagine myself anywhere else but here. I immediately got involved and made the best of my first year of college.

So to all the ones who got rejected: I know it hurts, and I know it just flat out sucks, but you can’t dwell on a university that didn't choose you. You can’t just automatically assume you were not good enough because that isn’t true. You are good enough, and you are worthy, but that institution was not the place for you. I know it probably hurts right now, but I swear, wherever you go to school, you will love it. And if you don't love it, that's OK, because you have four years to figure out where you are meant to be.

Don’t let this hold you back. Don’t let a certain school tell you that you aren’t good enough, because you are the only judge of yourself. Let’s be honest: college applications do not do justice on letting someone know who you are. There is only so much you can get off of a piece of paper that honestly does not give an accurate representation of who you are. You will go on to do so many better things and you will find the place that you are truly meant to be at. Most of us will go on to medical school or graduate schools, and if you really want, you could always try again. Don’t get down on yourself. Yes, it will hurt for a while, but once your freshman year starts up, you’ll forget about the school that missed out on such a great human being.

I am sorry that you did not get in to where you wanted to go, but I promise you that you will go above and beyond doing bigger and better things at the institution where you are meant to be.