The one-word sentence that you will be looking for as you open your application portal.
Though, with even a deferral or rejection to Penn, I hope you can still say the same to yourself.
As a reminder, the thinking goes along these lines:
No matter what, the decision here is the delayed outcome of your inputs, from as far back as you can think of. You have control of your own inputs, and for this, you can be proud.
Of course, acceptance is what you hope for the most. If you do see Congratulations!, get hyped! Give your loudest roar. Run around like a madman. Embrace your family. Call your friends. You won’t have to write another college supplemental essay for the rest of your life.
But, there must be a symmetry of logic. In the same essence of the all-too-familiar rationale of the non-accepted, it’s worth acknowledging the randomness of such an outcome. Schools like Penn could fill their class ten times over. After meeting a particular threshold, it’s more reasonable to say that you chanced from a variety of factors that came together in one room to give you this particular ternary output. Remember, the mountain is tall and the journey is long, and it’s always better to take each next step with humility.
On the same coin, you might face rejection, defeat.
You couldn’t have expected anything less. And, the decision is what it is. There are life’s controllables and uncontrollables (and things that we can influence), but exerting energy attempting to sway the uncontrollables has yet to be proven productive by mankind.
Think about it this way: the outcomes that happen just happen – they are neither lucky nor unlucky, as these things are assigned by the individual. This is promising, since this means we get to choose our odds of winning:
Rejected?
Congratulations! You have the freedom to apply to all the other schools you want to attend. You still have a chance at your second-choice major. You might miss out on sub-par dining and infamous pre-professional culture. Chin up.
Waitlisted?
Congratulations! Even better! You have all the benefits of rejection, on top of still being in consideration by Penn!
(Of course, there will also be the benefits yet to realize, all the ones from the seeing side of hindsight.)
Which is to say, why not always claim victory? To the universe, these are just the dice being rolled. If these values will not change, why not look at them for your own benefit? In all that comes your way, give it all a hearty Congratulations!
Psychologically, losses are weighed twice as heavily as gains. In reality, there is much to be bullish for. “We suffer more in our imagination more often than in reality,” as Seneca once said. Take the feedback where you can get it, and simply move onwards. The doing doesn’t get done by itself.
Regardless of the outcomes, I’m confident we will be in good shape:
Life doesn’t happen to you – it happens for you.
Best regards,
An optimist.
Hey Kevin! Thanks for sharing this letter! I really appreciate that you wrote this letter for all of us to view, especially in this season of decision results! As we see those around us receive varying results – some acceptances, some deferrals, some rejections – the pressure seems to be mounting day by day leading up to our decision release dates. I feel like letters like yours truly help us to take a step back, and really see that that one singular letter isn’t quite as consequential as we make it out to be. As you say, all three outcomes can be viewed as a blessing in many ways. I really admire and respect this mindset, and hope to apply it to whatever decision I get in the coming week! Best of luck to you this upcoming week!
Kevin, I’ve been pretty stressed wondering about where I will or won’t’ get in, so this was a nice read. Rejection can be pretty crushing to think about, so trying to find positive ways to look at it overall can often be comforting. I like to stop and think about the fact that, every year, there are hundreds of thousands of kids rejected from Ivy’s and the top echelons of schools. In fact, I’ll probably be one of them. But at the end of the day, life goes on. Not getting into these schools isn’t the end of the world for us. There are plenty of opportunities for everyone regardless of the pedigree of their college, so why get hung up over one rejection? I did the best I could, and so it’s best to take comfort in the knowledge that if I continue doing so, it’ll pay off someday.
Thanks, Kevin. I’ve been super stressed all week, and now that my college decision is coming out tomorrow, I definitely needed to read this. Thinking about the amount of stress that will come following rejection has only put more stress on me, however, this really calmed me down. I think I’ve started to accept the different outcomes that come through the college application process, and that at this point, my decision is not in my hands (I’m sure all of us have put in the most effort and work into our applications, essays, etc, in order to get the best result possible). I also find it really comforting that in a several years, most of us will not take a single glimpse back at these decisions. Everything in life is a process, and one decision won’t define who we are.
Kevin, this was such a timely and impactful blog. You know how after a relationship you suddenly see all their flaws? That is the same way I feel after being deferred from my “dream” school, even though on paper it is the best school for my major, it is not the best school for me. Even if I got accepted during a regular decision I don’t think I would attend that school: they have an elitist culture, a rat problem, and black mold. Why did I even think I wanted to go there in the first place? Quite frankly I think I dodged a bullet.
Kevin, I am so glad I decided to read this post today. I am anxiously awaiting my application results after a semester of hard work, and reading this before getting any of these answers is immensely helpful. You have an amazing outlook on these events, and you are completely correct. Life is simply an exercise in perspective, and these results are not a sentence nor a certification, they are simply the results of chance, and you can have the same positive experience at many schools. I am rooting for you at Penn, I do hope you see the infamous CONGRATULATIONS! but if you don’t, I know you’ll succeed wherever is lucky enough to accept you. Keep this amazing outlook on life, and you will never have any mountain you cannot summit.
Best Regards,
a thankful optimist
This is an incredibly insightful and valuable blog for us all. I think one of the things with the college application process is that it is fundamentally flawed. It is flawed from the process of selection, and the concept of selection itself. As you mentioned, “schools like Penn could fill their class ten times over.” So why aren’t they?
I think it comes down to the need to maintain low acceptance rates, to build a brand of exclusivity. This raises significant moral and ethical concerns. Shouldn’t colleges be making education more inclusive, not less? With their gigantic endowments, the top colleges all could significantly expand their class sizes.
Of course, it is interesting, but not ultimately useful, right now at least, to be considering these questions. After all, right now, we are just all cogs in a giant machine. Right now, all we can do is play the game.
Someday, we may have the power to change the game.
Kevin –
First of all, thank you. At times I allow my pessimistic thoughts to overpower my mind, and this mentality was clearly evident during my college application process. However, your post allowed for a potential, and necessary, change in my mindset, which is something that I express gratitude towards. I feel like many people need a reminder that college is not everything. We spend our grade school, and high school working towards high aspirations. Everyone seems to have their whole academic and extracurricular lives revolving around their desire to get into a prestigious college. However, when it comes to answering this question, they fail to have a proper response: What comes next? What happens after you get into your dream school? While my younger self would consider that as the finish line, my current self is aware that it is the complete opposite – it is the start of the rest of my life. Regardless of anyone’s admissions decision, the reality is that everyone will end up where they belong, the results of our “input” as you explain. And with that, I leave you the best of luck with the rest of your college application journey.