The Leading Edge - A College Rejection is Not the End of the World...or Your Life - Jobs

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After the initial disappointment of not getting into their top choice wears off,most college students feel like failures not from the rejection.It comes from internalizing the feeling they have let their parents down. These are the parents who were over-invested in the result from the start,who can't get over their disappointmentand will have a hard time hearing and accepting this.
- Dean of Admissions, Ivy League College

In my blog, "Did Your Kid Get Rejected from College?" I talked about turning college rejection into an opportunity for poise. I spoke too soon.
"Mark,you could provide a real service to students and their parents if youcould suggest two things to them. I can't do it, because I am currentlyfielding the 'why not my kid?' calls that I am being flooded with. Fewof them are ready to hear it and certainly not from me," a Dean ofAdmissions at an Ivy League college told me yesterday.
Heexplained that most college students that don't get into their topchoice, feel deeply upset and disappointed at first. It is natural andeven healthy to feel those feelings and even vent to their parentstheir upset. At that point parents should respond with: "Oh God, that'sawful I can tell how upset you are and I'm sorry." Then the parentsshould stop talking and let their kids continue to vent. In most casesthey will get it out of their systems in a matter of one to severaldays.
After their upset has peaked and is calming down, theyshould say something like: "I'm really excited about the choices youhave from the colleges that did accept you and the next four yearsyou're going to have will be amazing in ways you can't imagine." Youdon't want to say this too soon. If you do, it's as if you are tryingto talk them out of being initial upset, which they have earned theright to feel after all the work they put in at high school and going through the application process.
Thesecond suggestion had to do with something so very painful and so veryunnecessary that he sees so often. Within a few days, children areusually ready and able to move on past their disappointment. They beginto envision and enthusiastically look forward to going to thecollege(s) they were accepted to.
What gets in the way areparents who can't get past their own disappointment in the collegerejection. Rather than the parents and children accepting that collegeacceptance is very arbitrary and capricious, the parents continue tolook chagrined and downcast. They say they feel badly for theirchildren, when the parents are the ones feeling more upset and whocan't move on. He said that in such situations, students tend to lookat their parents and internalize their mother and father'sdisappointment into feeling as if the child has failed them.
TheDean concluded: "Getting parents to separate their own disappointmentfrom that of their child's is the single greatest obstacle to the childgetting over and past it."

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