How to handle bad news

Yesterday, December 15, was a day of good news for many college applicants. Thousands of students learned that their Early Decision or Early Action applications had been accepted. Congratulations to all of them!

But it was also a sad day for thousands more, who had their ED and EA applications deferred or denied. (Colleges use the term “denied,” because although they are denying you acceptance to their school they don’t want you to feel like it’s a personal rejection. Every student I know calls it “rejection,” because—at least at first—it indeed does feel like a personal rejection.)

If you got good news, you know what to do. ED applicants—you’re done! Enjoy your break and enjoy your spring! EA acceptances mean you have some place to go and some place to compare your later offers to. That’s a nice spot to be in.

If you got bad news, though, you may not know what to do. You may be overwhelmed with questions or disappointment. So here’s some advice on dealing with the bad news.

First, understand what you’re looking at: is it a no or a maybe? If you are denied, then it means they are not going to enroll you. You won’t be going there; it’s decided. But very often with ED and EA applications, they don’t actually tell you no. They instead defer you to the regular decision pool. Your application will be looked at again, and you still may be accepted—or waitlisted—when those decisions come out. You may still be going to your top-choice school.

Either denied or deferred, if you applied ED this means you need to make sure you have other applications ready to go for regular admissions deadlines, mostly around January 1st. That gives you several weeks. That’s not a whole lot of time, but you were probably working on them anyway. You’ve got time to catch up. Make sure that your applications include a wide range of selectivity. Don’t assume that because you got denied or deferred once that it means you “can’t get in” at a low-acceptance-rate school and decide not to apply to any.

You should also apply to at least one or two schools where you are very confident you will be accepted. For some students, this means making sure you include schools with acceptance rates over 50%. For some it means making sure to include schools with acceptance rates over 70%. For some it may mean applying to schools with acceptance rates over 90%. You probably know which category you fit in—for most, 70% is a good standard, just to be sure.

If you applied EA, this probably doesn’t change much. You were already working on other applications and weren’t completely sure you want to go to this one school. Otherwise, you would have applied ED. So you’ve got emotions to work through, perhaps, but you’re on track.

If you’ve got emotions about the bad news—and you probably do—then you should work hard to name them and understand them. Work on at least one sentence that follows the “I feel _____ because _____” pattern.

I feel disappointed, because I really wanted to go to that college, and they denied me. I feel discouraged, because this denial makes me question how well my other applications are going to go. I feel embarrassed, because I acted as though this was going to be my college, and now I have to find another one. I feel angry, because I think they underestimated me and are taking away an opportunity.

You’ll probably have more than one feeling, and they’ll change over time. If you’ve got negative feelings, that’s not a problem. Don’t listen to the people who tell you not to feel that way. You don’t, in fact, need to stay positive. But one of the most productive ways to make sure your negative feelings don’t sabotage your chances with future applications is to have a clear idea of what your feelings are and where they’re coming from. Naming your feelings is a way to help keep them from controlling you. You’ll probably want to discuss those feelings with someone you trust.

If you got bad news of any kind, you may be wondering what you did wrong. It’s normal to do this, to want to know that one thing that messed things up for you: they must not have liked my essay, or my test scores were too low, or even I know someone with worse grades who got in, so there’s something unfair going on. Let go of this thinking as soon as you can. It’s normal, but it’s not useful or productive. Holistic admissions means that there’s no one thing that you did wrong. It’s just not that simple. The truth, which you may find reassuring but may find frustrating, is that you probably did absolutely nothing wrong. It may be that you did everything fine, but the school had more applicants who did everything fine than they could accept. This is why, other than politeness, they don’t call it a rejection.

If you’re experiencing strong negative emotions and making strong negative assumptions—things like “I won’t be able to have a successful life now that I’m not going to my top choice school” or “I’m not going to be accepted to any college”—then you may need to work on what psychologists call decatastrophizing. You can search for “decatastrophizing worksheet” and find plenty of examples, and they all ask you to logically and honestly ask yourself what the worst possible outcome really is, how likely that worst-case scenario really is, and what you plan to do if that worst case does (or doesn’t) come true. No matter what it feels like right now, the odds that this one college decision will actually be your downfall and ruin your life are incredibly small.

Remember that you planned for this. You knew this might happen, and you planned for it. Even if you applied ED, you knew that you would need a plan B and had other schools in mind. If you applied EA, then you definitely had other schools in mind. You certainly hoped to get good news in the first round, but you knew that it might not be the case. You have a few weeks to finish other applications to most schools, and even longer for some schools with late deadlines or rolling admissions. This is disappointing, but it’s nothing you aren’t prepared for.

The only thing left to do is take the next step. And unless you applied ED to one school and haven’t got a back-up, you already know what the next step is. Feel disappointed or frustrated or sad or embarrassed or whatever else you feel, and then finish up those other applications if you haven’t yet. Don’t decide that you need to throw your entire plan out the window and start all over again at zero. Don't decide that you’re a failure. Don’t decide that you will not even bother applying to college. Don’t spend the next two weeks feeling too bad to do anything about it. Just do what’s next, the logical next step, and you’ll be fine.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts:

   What to do when you get waitlisted

   What are your chances of getting into your top college?

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

So NOW where do I want my kids to go to college?

About four years ago, I wrote a blog post about where I hoped my own two kids would go to college. I named three schools—Deep Springs College, St. John’s College, and Olin College of Engineering—but the main idea was that I picked those schools based on my own aspirations and prejudices, not anything to do with my kids. I warned students and parents to watch out for getting student goals too mixed up with parent goals. They often overlap, but they’re absolutely not the same thing.

My oldest is now a high school sophomore, so the “where do you want your kids to go to college?” question is a lot less abstract, and the consequences for my expressing too much of an opinion—or too little—can be much greater. So…where do I want my sophomore to go to college in two years?

The list is longer than three; there are around 25 colleges that would make me super excited to send my high schooler. And there are easily another few hundred that would make me happy. But now the list is based a lot less on my desires and lot more on my kid’s. They want a good school to major in mathematics, a low student-faculty ratio, and a small student population. Deep Springs, St. John’s, and Olin are all small schools with a great faculty ratio, but not as “math-y” as my kid wants. So my “dream school” for my kid has changed based on what they want to more closely align with their “dream school.”

That being said, I still have my own desires and blind spots I have to watch out for. For example, I don’t want them to go to Rice, because we live in Houston and I want them to go farther away from home. I also prefer a school with a strong humanities curriculum. I can say as much as I want that has to do with wanting a well-rounded experience for my kid, but we all know it’s because I’m a former English major and English teacher who wants my kid to take a lot more literature and art classes than they probably want to take. My kid’s probably going to be a full-pay student. I’m not necessarily looking for the least expensive option, but I’m going to make a big deal out of getting the most value for the money…even though I’m the first to admit that value is difficult to define.

There’s also a long-standing joke in our house that the kids can go wherever they want for college, as long it’s in a place their parents will enjoy visiting for a vacation. It’s just a joke—I won’t insist on California, the Rockies, or the New York City area. But man, I still hope they don’t end up in the rural Midwest.

I think I’ll be able to set my prejudices and aspirations aside and help my child choose the best option for them, but I know it’s going to take effort on my part. I have a lot of knowledge about colleges, and I have a lot of knowledge about my children. It would be irresponsible not to help guide them. But I also have my own interests that are separate from theirs, and that’s hard to let go of. It’s tricky work, and virtually every parent has to help their kid go through the same tricky work.

So what should families do?

Talk openly about the places where what the student wants differs from what that parents want. Make everyone aware of their own and each other’s dreams and blind spots. When it comes time to make difficult decisions, you can all keep each other honest and rational.

Identify dealbreakers for both parents and students. If parents have any “we will absolutely not support you going to _____ kind of college,” then they should state that as early as possible. For example, I worked with a student whose parents told her upfront that, although they could afford just about any school in the country, they were not willing to pay more than $40,000 per year. Nor would they support her applying for loans. So the student knew that she was welcome to apply to expensive private universities, but she would have to get scholarships to cover anything over $40,000. (She’s now at the much less than $40K University of Texas.) I understand that there are very few parents able to pay $160,000 cash for college, but it’s an example of parents making their dealbreakers known ahead of time.

I’ve learned over time that many students don’t have a strong geographic preference, but the ones that do don’t back down from those preferences. Students who say “I want to go to a small school” often end up at large schools. Students who say “I want to major in STEM” often end up with a humanities degree. But students who say “I don’t want to go to school in the South” don’t go to school in the South. If students have dealbreakers, they should make those clear.

Talk about money and understand what’s affordable. Every family has a line between “affordable” and “unaffordable.” The sooner you all know where that line is, the better. Affordability is likely to be the main factor for your final decision on where you go. So get the whole family used to that reality. But also make sure everyone in the family understands—really understands—the difference between list price and what you’re likely to pay. An admissions dean at a small liberal arts college once told me that they had students whose families could probably afford to buy the whole school, and they had students who literally couldn’t afford to go to the school if the school didn’t give them a full ride and pay for the bus fare to get there. The dean said it was important to have both kinds, and everything in between, for their mission. No student should decide not to apply to a college just because they don’t think they can afford it. But at the same time, no student should assume that a college will provide them with all the aid they need. You’ve got to spread a wide net.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts: Where do I want my kids to go to college? Three things parents should stop saying to their children, A good example of a family doing it right.

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

Dealing with denial

It’s December, so acceptance notices are coming in for early applicants. That means, of course, that denials are also coming in for early applicants. All denials—colleges use “denial” instead of the harsher and more emotional “rejection”—feel bad, but the first one feels the worst. It especially feels worse if it’s from an Early Decision or Early Action application and you were hoping to be done with the whole process by now. I spent an entire morning reading through web pages on “how to deal with rejection,” and most of them deal with being rejected by someone you ask out on a date or being fired from a job. So here is my college admissions-specific advice about working through your first—or second, or twelfth—skinny envelope.

First, understand what you’re looking at: is it a no or a maybe? If you applied EA or ED and you don’t get accepted, then they’ve probably deferred your application and will reconsider it with the regular application pool. If you applied regular decision, you may be placed on a wait list rather than be denied. The good news is that a deferral or a waitlist isn’t necessarily a denial—you might still be accepted. The bad news is that it’s still probably going to be a denial in the long run. Take a few minutes to do some quick searches and see if you can find any stats or statements about that for the particular school. Remember, though, that the percentage of deferred or waitlisted students who were eventually accepted last year doesn’t mean that’s how many will be accepted this year. But it will give you an idea of what you’re working with.

If you applied ED, then this means you need to make sure you have other applications ready to go for regular admissions deadlines, probably around January 1st. That gives you several weeks. That’s not a whole lot of time, but you were probably working on them anyway. You’ve got time to catch up.

If you applied EA, this probably doesn’t change much. You were already working on other applications and weren’t completely sure you want to go to this one school. Otherwise, you would have applied ED. So you’ve got emotions to work through, perhaps, but you’re on track.

If you applied regular decision and got put on a wait list, I think you should just probably tell them to bug off and not think about them any more. There are other schools that want you.

If you got bad news of any kind, you may be wondering what you did wrong. It’s normal to do this, to want to know that one thing that messed things up for you: they must not have liked my essay, or my test scores were too low, or even I know someone with worse grades who got in, so there’s something unfair going on. Let go of this thinking as soon as you can. It’s normal, but it’s not useful or productive. Holistic admissions means that there’s no one thing that you did wrong. It’s just not that simple. The truth, which you may find reassuring and/or frustrating, is that you probably did absolutely nothing wrong. It may be that you did everything fine, but the school had more applicants who did everything fine than they could accept. This is why, other than politeness, they don’t call it a rejection.

If you’ve got emotions about the bad news—and you probably do—then you should work hard to name them and understand them. Work on at least one sentence that follows the “I feel _____ because _____” pattern. I feel disappointed, because I really wanted to go to that college, and they denied me. I feel discouraged, because this denial makes me question how well my other applications are going to go. I feel embarrassed, because I acted as though this was going to be my college, and now I have to find another one. You’ll probably have more than one feeling, and they’ll change over time. If you’ve got negative feelings, that’s not a problem. Don’t listen to the folks who tell you not to feel that way. You don’t, in fact, need to stay positive. But one of the most productive ways to make sure your negative feelings don’t sabotage your chances with future applications is to have a clear idea of what your feelings are and where they’re coming from. Naming your feelings is a way to help keep them from controlling you.

Remember that you planned for this. In its current form, a lot of the college admissions process isn’t based so much on people saying Yes as it is on people saying No. Colleges get a lot of credit and prestige for denying people. “Elite” and “low acceptance rate” are almost the same thing, and a low acceptance rate actually makes more students want to apply to a college. While the majority of colleges don’t operate this way—around 80% of colleges and universities accept at least half their applicants—almost all student applicants plan on being told No and also plan on telling at least one college No. If you’re hoping to have more than one acceptance so you can compare quality and/or financial aid, then you’re essentially planning to say No to someone. So it hurts to be a student who hears No and has to wonder if they’ll get into a good-fit school. And it hurts to be a school who hears No and has to wonder if they’ll make their desired yield. But being told No is part of the system on both sides, and you’re prepared for that.

The only thing left to do is take the next step. And unless you applied ED to one school and haven’t got a back-up, you already know what the next step is. Feel disappointed or frustrated or sad or embarrassed or whatever else you feel, and then finish up those other applications if you haven’t yet. Don’t decide that you need to change your list based on this one piece of bad news. Just do what’s next, and you’ll be fine.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts: “What to do when you get waitlisted” and “What are your chances of getting into your top college?”

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Angela Elisabeth.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.