<p>I decided to ask this here because I couldn't really find another suitable forum for it, and I also think advice from sensible parents would be nice :)</p>
<p>My problem is that college admissions have basically turned me into a whiny 13 year old with an inferiority complex. I don't have the greatest self esteem to begin with, so when I got denied from my first choice school (which is tough to get into and admittedly a reach for me) it hit pretty hard. I was moving on from it quite well, I thought, but I feel like reminders of my inadequacy are thrown in my face everywhere. One of my closest friends is going to that first choice school of mine, and another one is going to one of the best public schools in the country. I can't help but feel envious of both of them. It's gotten to the point where I don't feel proud of where I'm going, which is honestly a good school. I have been feeling "out of my element" lately, and a bit depressed; could that be contributing to this envy? </p>
<p>Basically, I just need help getting a reality check. I recognize how absolutely senseless I am being; I should be happy with where I'm going and happy about the privilege of going to college itself. Even though these two girls are close friends of mine and I love them, I feel so jealous. How can I move on from this? Parents, do you compare your childrens' colleges to other childrens', or do your children have this problem as well?</p>
<p>You are speaking very honestly about something everyone faces at times-- especially as an adolescent. I could give you great advice–get too obsessed with your own school to notice others’; pour yourself into your life, get lots of exercise because the endorphins are a great antidote… but I suspect you know these things.</p>
<p>You could think about seeing a therapist, to see if this is an offshoot of something deeper, or just to have a neutral, steady pal to go through it with. </p>
<p>“Living well is the best revenge.” And you will live very well–you will go to your school and find dear friends, encouraging mentors, new, exciting challenges, and interests you never knew you had. Maybe you’ll decide to transfer, or maybe you’ll love the place. You’ll live your life with energy and kindness and curiosity…you’ll learn so much and try new things and do things you’d never have dreamed. You’ll have a family you adore and experiences you’ll never forget. All these things will mean so much more to you than X college ever could have. </p>
<p>Just the fact that you look so clearly at yourself and this sadness bodes very well, if you ask me. There is so, so much ahead for you. Yes, I’ve certainly had moments of terrible jealousy, fury that someone else had what seemed more than I, or my child, did. We all have. And then moments of guilty or sad awareness that I or my child have more than others. It’s a bigger part of life than I wish it was. You have lots of company. </p>
<p>Many cyber-hugs to you, and wishes for a wonderful four years-- I’m betting you will have a great experience at college.</p>
<p>Don’t worry, once you get to school, you’ll be so involved being where you already are, you won’t have time to think about where you aren’t. In the meantime, maybe you should write an essay about it and send it to the New York Times. They might love to hear it. It’s a great topic, and it might get it out of your system. </p>
<p>Here is my advice: you are going to have a LOT more fun going to a college where you are not at the bottom of the heap academically. My guess is that your chosen school has a lot to offer, and if you go into it with the attitude that you are going to take full advantage of it (your chance to be a “big fish”), you will have a great experience.</p>
<p>D1 was also rejected from her first choice school, and ended up going to a school ranked quite a bit lower but with good merit aid. She has had a GREAT time, and will be graduating near the top of her college class with strong job prospects. Some of her hs classmates went to higher ranked schools – some did well, but some struggled & transferred. This is sort of like “loving the kid on the couch” that we parents advise each other to do… love the school you are going to.</p>
<p>The chatter about this dies down somewhat now that decisions are made. You might want to have your “elevator speech” ready about your chosen school. D1’s school is geographically distant and not well know in our area, so she says “It is like X <local lac=”“>, but in <state>. And they have a great <her major=”“> program, so I am really excited.”. That way you are ready when people do ask where you are going next year.</her></state></local></p>
<p>D1 says now that her reach school was right to reject her, and she would not have been nearly as happy there. You may be saying the same thing in a year :)</p>
<p>Agree with everyone above.
It’s time to look ahead and get excited.
Join the Facebook group for your admitted class at your college.
Buy your college’s logo sweatshirt, T-shirt, pen or mug.
Email groups you are interested in at your college and get on their email distribution lists.
Make sure you have turned in all of your housing forms and have fun planning your dorm room decor.</p>
<p>My daughter was rejected at her first choice school (where her older brother was a student) and felt quite embarassed as she had told her friends what was her first choice. She ended up going to her second choice. At this point she is glad she was rejected by her first choice. She is having a great time and is doing extremely well academically.</p>
<p>My wife and I feel that the school where my daughter is going would have been a better choice for her brother.</p>
<p>As as been said by previous posters, once you get to school you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>There is a lot of angst about college admissions, and it doesn’t end after the decisions have arrived and you’ve made your choice.</p>
<p>Lots of kids are feeling what you are feeling.</p>
<p>When you get away from the high school comparison environment, you will be fine. And the comparing - even where you are right now - will likely die down with a little passage of time.</p>
<p>Many adults go through their entire lives without ever reaching the level of self-insight, honesty, and level-headedness you are already displaying at your young adult age. This maturity will stand you in very good stead throughout your life.</p>
<p>It is 100 percent normal for you to feel the sting of jealousy, resentment, and embarrassment at your “rejection” from schools that accepted your friends. Let yourself wallow in these feelings for about 24 hours.</p>
<p>Then (sensibly) remind yourself that personal success is always forged by getting back on the horse and riding forward. Always. Those colleges that rejected you were making those determinations by looking at pieces of paper. You will create your own future, starting now.</p>
<p>We parents hate this time of year. Most kids these days are not getting into their first choice school, and there is massive amounts of conflicting emotions surrounding college admissions for both the students and the parents. We parents struggle with how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again (our kids!) Go easy on yourself, the years in high school leading up to college acceptances is a very competitive sport for many parents, so don’t think you are alone in this feeling.</p>
<p>S1 was crushed by not getting into his number one choice- I sent him to summer school at the number one choice his freshman summer and that settle it for good for him. He still loves the school- but feels it is best for graduate work. He loves, loves, loves his “default” school (which is a top 50 school, so lets get real here) and I imagine you will too. </p>
<p>Just do what we all do, fake it until you make it- practice being happy for everyone’s choices and soon you will be. </p>
<p>P.S. Your friends are probably feeling very bad that you did not get accepted- I doubt they feel superior- rather just darn blessed to be accepted themselves.</p>
<p>Rewind four years and DS was heading off to a great school. Most of his crowd had happy paths forward – but one young friend was reluctantly going to his financially affordable “safety.” Wow, was he morose for May. June was better as graduation fun kicked in. </p>
<p>Where is he now? He OWNS his campus. He raked in extra scholarship dough after his freshman year and is finishing strong, with faculty that think he’s great (super for those job/grad school letters). Not only that, several buddies who went to loftier burgs switched to come down to Happy College and be with Mr. Big On Campus. </p>
<p>So decide you’ll be a star. You are going to be the best thing that ever hit that campus and you are going to put that school on the map. Start there. </p>
<p>Eat some chocolate ice cream while you browse the online campus bookstore for University wear. Start cruising ebay to do your living space in (affordable) school colors. </p>
<p>And take a look at your high school parking lot. I promise you that most sophomores think that “everyone” who is a senior has their own (hot) car. Now that you are a senior, you can see that not only are there tons of seniors who are on bikes or feet, there are also a lot of minivans, dinged heaps and other non-hot vehicles in the group. Decide, right now, that thinking “everyone” has it better than you is a very sophomoric way to be. </p>
<p>I’m not really a sensible parent. I occasionally find myself freaking out about whether my child is as smart as my boyfriend’s children. For real! I have to do a fair amount of self-talk to put things in perspective when I go to that place. So, snsdgirl14, you are not alone, but being aware and acknowledging your feelings is brave. Definitely, if you’ve been feeling depressed, that could contribute to your bad feelings. In my experience, perspective is one of the first casualties of depression. I’d bet you big money that your friends don’t think of you as a lesser person. You might feel better (maybe not, but it’s worth a try) if you make a point of telling your friends how happy you are for them. I’m not advocating hypocrisy. Rather, I’m suggesting you dig past the jealousy to access the part of you that’s happy for them. This isn’t for them, it’s for you. Just giving room to the positive emotion could help diminish the hurt. And then you’ll go off to college and get swept up into the life of the great school that has accepted you.</p>
<p>I recently read a post here where one student, who had been waitlisted at her dream school, was determined to make it happen, finally was admitted after much effort, and someone responded to her that it was not a good school, after all. </p>
<p>My husband and I went to the same University and had completely, completely different experiences. You guys are 17/18 - you can’t possibly know which school is the true fit until you are there and even then maybe you really ought to be experiencing something else.</p>
<p>College is the one opportunity you have to open your minds - forget about what everybody else thinks and become yourself! In 4 years you’ll have to worry about how everybody else perceives you, but NOT NOW! </p>
<p>Really, could you just go out there and learn as much as you can while it’s available to you-
now is the time to be a sponge - at the cost of education you may never have another opportunity. It’s really, really important to drop the pretense and go after whatever knowledge is available to you. Check out the teaching staff, check out how many people graduate, check out what graduates have to say about their experience. College is the only opportunity you have to better yourselves in really significant ways and that’s a different standard for everyone. </p>
<p>Please, please, even if you are going to be a plumber (and I encourage you to do so) take a philosophy course during the only years that you can. In fact, be a philosophy major and then get a trade. It’s all good.</p>
<p>Ah I’m sorry to read how hard it is for you. Be assured you have tons and tons of company, you are just forthright and comfortable enough with yourself to admit it out loud…the exact kind of person who will soon get perpective and have this water under a bridge. It will surely come, as you get into and excited about your great school and put your high school experience behind you.</p>
<p>College admission is a crapshoot to a degree. As such this result does not at all mean you aren’t as smart, talented or special as your friends, and nor does it tell you anything about the success and happiness ahead of you in your life. Try looking up the many threads on CC about kids that went to ‘next tier’ or ‘second choice’ colleges and how they fared. </p>
<p>Look at where most successful people did their undergrad. Read the
forum and others on the Internet about kids going to your school and
focus on its huge pluses. Remember you also loved this school which is
why you applied there. Remember so much of the apparent differences
in these schools is branding imagery boosted by marketing hype, fueled
by teenagers fantasies and bumper sticker aspiring parents… reality is
so many great schools provide the same wonderful experience. The vast
majority of students really love their actual college experience. </p>
<p>Can you do a favor for the kids behind you? Can you come back on here
after you get settled into your college and tell everyone what you once
felt and how happy you are now that you are there? I’m so confident you will be!</p>
<p>When you get busy and involved in things in your life, the disappointment tends to fade. For many talented kids, this is the first time they did not get something they really wanted, worked for, and really “deserved” to get. They meet the stats–the top schools are matches according to the numbers. They did the absolute best they could. And the answer was still no. </p>
<p>This almost always is only the first time something like this is going to happen. You don’t get all of the jobs you want, the pay you want, the housing you want. You may not get the husaband you want or the kids you want. But life keeps one so busy dealing with what one gets that there isn’t much time or room to grouse over these thing. It can drive you mad if you do. </p>
<p>There are some people that cannot get over certain disappointments and tragedies in their lives to the point that it badly hurts their daily lives. In such cases, seeing a psychiatrist and getting mental health help is an avenue to pursue.</p>
<p>Lots of good advice. The feelings are perfectly normal, but they will fade. Even kids who get into their “first choice” have second thoughts over the summer before they go to school. The grass is always greener, and it’s very common to worry about whether someone else is going to someplace that would be better. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if (a) it’s a kid going to a small LAC who worries that the big public school would have been a better choice, (b) a kid going to a big public school who is wondering whether he/she should have chosen a more personal small LAC, (c) the kid going to an ivy who thinks that a high GPA somewhere else would assure grad school, (d) the kid who isn’t going to an ivy who is worrying that this would affect the rest of his/her life, (e) the kid going to school far away, who is worried about being homesick, or (f) the kid going to school near home, who is worried that he/she will just be continuing high school life. These are just examples. Almost everyone is having some of these thoughts at this point in the process, a/k/a “buyer’s remorse.” </p>
<p>I suggest reminding yourself about all of the good things about the school you selected. If you can’t think of any good things, work at finding them! Eventually you’ll find yourself being happy with your choice. This process will also help you tell people why you chose the school. Before you know it, it will sound as if this school was actually your first choice! Keep in mind that your school was someone else’s dream school.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster who mentioned that it is much better to be at a school where you’re academically a good fit, since it could be a little easier to get those all-important good grades. Once you’re feeling very successful at the school, have made some friends and are engaged in college-life, you’ll find more things to like about your current choice. </p>
<p>And if not, keep in mind that you might have the option of potentially transferring into your first choice school later (especially if your grades at School #1 are really good), or going there for graduate school someday. As you grow as a person, you could find that neither School #1 or School #2 is actually the best fit (it happens). This is just one of the first steps on a very long road. Make the most of your choice, and you won’t be sorry.</p>
<p>As you become an adult, friends will be skinnier/taller/shorter, have a better house, a better job, drive a nicer car, have smarter kids, more well behaved kids, etc. My sister-in-law actually told me that her cat was smarter than mine. True story!</p>
<p>My wish for you (and all young people) is that you gain confidence in yourself. You ARE good enough. Absolutely nothing positive comes from comparing ourselves to others.</p>
<p>Ha, ha. Well, for any of you who have dogs, yours are smarter, better behaved, better trained, better dogs than mine. The only thing he has over yours’ is that he is better loved by us than other dogs are loved by us. </p>
<p>As for our cat, the only reasons I know we have one is that the cat box fills up (too) quickly and the food disappears.</p>
<p>I won’t even go into the kids, but they do share that one claim that our dog has.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that there is no “top spot” in academia. If you were an undergrad at Harvard, grad students working on master’s degrees at all sorts of colleges would think you were a young and ignorant pup. And doctoral students would think the master’s students were punks. And professors would think the doctoral students were punks.</p>
<p>And people outside of higher education think professors are ivory tower twits who couldn’t make it in the “real world.” And it just keeps going. So unless you are have a PhD from MIT and are NASA’s top astronaut, and have made a billion dollars trading stocks online, and are a world champion tri-athlete, and are the one who put the bullets in Bin Laden’s head, SOMEBODY is going to think you are a slacker.</p>
<p>Just because Steven Tyler was never going to be Mick Jagger, it didn’t mean he was going to quit singing. And how do you think Kate Middleton feels? She marries the future King of England and all anybody can talk about is her sister’s butt.</p>
<p>I was initially feeling the exact same way, but after doing a lot more research on the university I will be attending, I am actually excited to get there. I still go through a few seconds of brief sadness over not going to a ‘better’ university, but I remind myself that I’m doing this for myself, and not for anyone else. If i base it on a better name, it would mean I am not being true to myself.</p>
True story!</p>