Some Things to Consider If You've Been Turned Down by a Highly Rejective College
Stanford University did not release its admit rate this year, but it doesn’t take much to dig it up: a quick look through the Common Data Set will show that approximately 56,378 students applied and approximately 2,075 were accepted. That makes Stanford’s 2023 admit rate 3.7 percent, which means that 96.3 percent of the students who applied were not admitted.
There’s a term for colleges and universities like Stanford: highly rejective schools. There’s also a Bible passage (Matthew 19:24) about a camel and needles and rich men, which can easily be adapted for our present moment: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a high school valedictorian to enter the hallowed gates of ____ [fill in the blank with the name of a college with an admit rate of less than 20 percent].”
And yet every fall, hundreds of thousands of students hurl themselves through application portals, hoping to enter the hallowed gates of those colleges, and people like me help them, and their parents lie awake at night and worry about their future. It’s a process that churns up angst and anxiety and longing, and culminates in either wild joy or crushing despair or, for the students who have been waitlisted, a slow-building sense of resignation as they commit to their second- or third-choice school. The accepted students (and their families) feel validated—they have beaten incredible odds, their hard work has been recognized, they have reached the pinnacle of success, and now they’re standing on that pinnacle clutching their golden ticket. The students who have been waitlisted or denied admission (“rejected” is a word admissions officers try to avoid) feel that they are somehow lacking, that they’ve done something wrong. That they have failed.
The truth is far more complicated. Stanford, and its peer institutions, could fill their class of 2000+ admitted students with students who were not admitted and be none the worse for it. The admission process is arbitrary—far more arbitrary than any applicant who has ever thought “Why not me?”—would like to believe. The decision might have been different if their application was pulled on a different day, in a different week, in a different context. The decision might have been based on opaque institutional priorities, which are intentionally opaque, because imagine what would happen if Harvard suddenly announced that they were looking for tuba players from the upper Midwest, or Yale announced a critical shortage of climate activists with an interest in childhood language acquisition in their student body. A decision from those schools is not a reflection of a student’s merit. It’s a reflection of how arbitrary and inscrutable and, yes, unfair the admissions process becomes when over 55,000 students apply for 2,000 spots.
To say, “It’s not you, it’s them,” is a worn cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason: they’re the truth on steroids. You did not do anything wrong. You are the best version of yourself that you can be at 17 or 18 (or 16, if you’re graduating early). You have a whole life ahead of you, and you have no idea how that life will unfold. You gave the highly rejective colleges your best shot and it didn’t work out, but if you are kind, curious, imaginative, and passionate, if you have goals and the willingness to work hard for those goals, if you don’t let this one moment define you—your life is not ruined. In fact, there might come a day when you’re a big deal inventor, or activist, or artist, or scientist, or entrepreneur, and the university that broke your heart invites you to deliver the commencement address and because you have so many other offers and you also believe that revenge is a dish best served cold, you tell them you’re grateful and deeply honored and you would love to but there are so many other demands on your time that you must regretfully decline.
(Originally published on Polygence.com)