Coming to terms with college rejection letters

Even well-qualified students were turned away from schools simply because the economy has created an increase in California students applying to state-funded schools.

Many students, despite having been accepted to several universities, are disoriented by the pang of rejection that just one school can produce.

Katie Jensen, a senior at Aragon High School, understands this all too well.

"I was accepted to every UC I applied to [including Berkeley and Los Angeles],” she said.

However, Jensen was rejected from Stanford University, which she applied to early decision.

"It took me a while to bounce back because it was the first letter I received and I didn’t hear back from any other schools until three months later,” said Jensen.

When a student applies early decision and is not accepted, the hang time between letters can take a toll on their confidence. Jensen is a top student with above a 4.0 and an excellent SAT score. No one will ever be able to tell her why she didn’t get accepted to Stanford, and that lack of explanation is the worst part of rejection.

One coping mechanism is to emotionally reject the school that rejected the student.

"I was sitting in the kitchen with my best friend and I felt that deflated balloon feeling and my best friend just said, ‘well, Stanford sucks,’ and that helped,” Jensen said.

In the fall, Jensen will be attending UCLA. Getting accepted by so many other schools has helped to ease the feelings of disappointment that the letter of rejection from Stanford created.

A rejection letter from a school feels much like a break-up. For months, students invested time and energy into the application, agonizing over essays and wracking up as many extracurricular activities as possible to make the best case for themselves. It is not uncommon for a student to have a "dream school,” and after all the time and energy put into the application, a letter of rejection is just as hard, if not harder, than a terrible ending to a hopeful romance. The letters of rejection are mass produced and impersonal. They attempt to reassure that each student was well qualified and that there simply are too many applicants, but this is cold comfort when on the receiving end of one of these letters and it does little to ease the feelings of disappointment and sadness.

Some students, however, face more rejection than others.

Paige Bouey-Suen, a senior at Burlingame High School, applied only to four UCs and was accepted to none of them. Bouey-Suen will be attending a junior college and will hopefully be able to transfer out in under two years.

"I never wanted to go to a JC but I had no other option. It sucks, but there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said.

Total rejection is a rare experience but may become more common in the coming years. The emotional toll that total rejection takes on a student can be devastating.

"It’s hard when your friends are going away and you want to go away too and have the college experience,” said Bouey-Suen.

It is even more difficult reliving the experience every day, as college becomes the topic of every conversation when classmates begin to finalize their college decisions.

"I definitely cried. When I found out I didn’t get into the first UC I said, ‘Well, there’s always the next one,’ but I just kept getting rejected. I didn’t like talking about it and it was tough seeing my friends get in because it brought me back to that same awful feeling,” Bouey-Suen said.

It’s hard to make sense of total rejection when students feel they did everything they could to make themselves an attractive applicant.

"I was very involved. I was varsity team captain of the cross country team and I won [Peninsula Athletic League titles] as a sophomore, but I guess that wasn’t enough,” said Bouey-Suen, who was also a good student.

For the class of 2010, letters of rejection left their mark on more students than ever before.

Rainey Delgado-Pelton, a career and guidance counselor at Carlmont High School, agreed.

"Rejections are far more common than they were even a few years ago. More high schoolers are being rejected than ever before,” Delgado-Pelton said.

With the economy in its current state, this trend of rejections may not end soon.

"The budget cuts have had a huge impact on the ability of the UCs and CSUs to accept as many students as they have in the past,” Delgado-Pelton said.

Students rejected by public schools, in previous years might have chosen to attend a private school but the endowments of many privates have also taken a hit, allowing them to help fewer students with financial aid. For those students, rejection from their top public university is an even bigger blow.

Although rejection from any school is enough to put students out for a couple of weeks or even a couple of months, life eventually goes on.

Usually, students are happy where they end up, even if it was not their first choice.

"When students are given time to think about where they were accepted, they often times find reasons to fall in love with their second choice school,” Delgado-Pelton said.