In the admission process, you are just a file.
Imagine you’ve just interviewed for a summer job as an ice cream scooper. You arrive at your designated time, and another high school student is finishing up their interview. Then, when you are winding up your chat with the store manager, another applicant enters the store. Wow! This job is a popular one. You feel confident with your qualifications and interview, but a week later you call to follow up and are told that the position has been filled.
How do you respond? Hopefully, you say “I didn’t get the job,” not “I was rejected.”
It’s an important subtlety and one that we share will all of our students stung by a “no” from one of their colleges. Rejection is personal; it implies dismissal, rebuff, even revulsion. Denial is different.
It always helps to remember that in the college admissions process, you are a piece of paper, not a human being. The college didn’t reject you; they denied a file. Of course, it is hard not to take it personally! But by removing rejection from your vocabulary, hopefully, you can move on and focus on the other wonderful things to come at the college that liked what they saw and accepted your file!