How to deal with the college admissions decision nerves?

<p>I have 1 month and 13 days left until I find out about my first choice college and 2 months exactly until I out about my 2nd choice school.</p>

<p>Needless to say I'm absolutely terrified. I stay up most nights playing scenarios in which I get accepted and, more often than not, scenarios in which I get rejected. It's even worse since all my friends are applying to the same schools and if they get in and I don't then I'm the stupid one.</p>

<p>So any advice on how to calm myself down? I'm spending all my free time on college chancing websites and even though I always get good results, I can't relax. I can't do this for another month. And to make matters worse, a lot of people I know applied to my 1st and 2nd choice colleges Early Action so they're getting their decisions now and posting it all on Facebook and I can't go on Facebook now without feeling uber stressed out.</p>

<p>Please help me....I'm losing it....</p>

<p>You can do NOTHING about this. Slowly back away from the computer… go do something else. If you have an EC, go work on it. If you don’t, join the school Robotics team if they have one (it is build season, and you can keep busy for every spare second for most of the time until you hear back!). They need even inexperienced people! Or go exercise, read a book, or… play video games. :D</p>

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<p>Well, for one thing, you could stop doing that!</p>

<p>What were the things you used to do before you started your college applications? Sports? Music? Youth group? Whatever you used to do, go back to doing those things.</p>

<p>haha thanks. It’s just hard because even when I’m hanging with my friends (in clubs or just in general) all they talk about is college and their grades and SAT scores…it’s so stressful. I guess it’s just part of life as a college bound senior.</p>

<p>Yes, it is just part of life as a college-bound senior. And, yes, the waiting can be crazy-making. </p>

<p>You can’t avoid some of it, as you noted. All your friends are talking about college, too. And your neighbors and your parents’ friends ask you whether you know where you’re going.</p>

<p>But all that chancing yourself online, and all that time on College Confidential? That’s just feeding the craziness. The less you do of that, the saner you’ll be. I mean, really, aren’t you way past the point where you’re learning anything useful from it?</p>

<p>Yeah I pretty much get the exact same response on every website I go on. I’m just completely freaked out. It’s such a big deal and I feel like my entire life is going to be based on whether or not I get accepted at my first choice school. Not to mention how awful I’m going to feel having to tell everyone that I didn’t get in and that I’ll have to tell my friends who got in that I didn’t get in and it’s just going to make me sick.</p>

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Its always hard to get perspective on our thoughts since they are, of course, ours. But I hope you can see that it is telling yourself things like this that is causing a lot of the excess stress. What is your evidence that your choice of school is so crucial? I’ll bet you’ve made a lot of predictions and assumptions about the opportunities you’ll have if first-choice school comes thru, what your time there will be like, etc. And again, what is the evidence these are accurate? That you can’t have just as much success at school #2 or #10? If you look up how to challenge beliefs on the web, usually discussed on sites about CBT, then you’ll have a handle on how to remove some of the thrall these beliefs have you under.</p>

<p>Well my first choice school has the best major/ minor, internship opportunities for me, etc. which is why I picked it. I’m 100% positive that I’ll be happy no matter where I end up. I love aspects of all the schools I applied to. I’m mostly dreading what will happen immediately after I get rejected. My best friend is applying to my first choice and if she gets in and I don’t she’ll talk about it all summer and it’ll really make me feel bad. I know I sound so stupid. Logically I’m completely aware that I’m being overly dramatic but I can’t shake it. I’m just so terrified that all the work I’ve done, all the APs I’ve taken instead of fun classes, will all be for nothing…I’ve gone through so much stress over the past couple years to get into a more competitive school. My back up choices are good schools but I could’ve gotten into them with half the effort and way less stress.</p>

<p>Actually, no work you’ve done will be wasted. You’ve learned things and done things and grown as a student and a person. That’s the reason for all of this.</p>

<p>Seventy percent of applicants get into their first-choice schools. Some of these are desperate to transfer by the end of their first semester. Maybe including your friends. Or you!</p>

<p>Your life WILL be ruined if you commit a felony, get caught, and spend the next eighty years in jail. Not if you end up at one school instead of another.</p>

<p>Think positive! You will get in! I agree with wordworker, you have enriched your life by all you work no matter what happens. But you know you are going to make it, keep focused on that, put the positive out into the universe!</p>

<p>And stop sitting in front of a screen, go outside…</p>

<p>Thanks everyone! But I’m afraid to be positive. I’ve been positive before and then the rejection came like a slap in the face so I think this time it’s probably best to expect the worst.</p>

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<p>I’m sure you do. But it really, really won’t. Your life is not something that predetermined or foreordained. Wherever you end up, you’ll make some choices about which classes to take and whom to live with and so on, and your life will unfold from there.</p>

<p>I did not get into my first choice, and, in fact, I applied to the college I eventually attended almost at the last minute–mostly to make my mother happy. I met my wife there. You just never know.</p>

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<p>Got nothing for you there. If it happens, that part will suck. For a while. And then you’ll pick yourself up, dust yourself off, go somewhere else for college, and your life will unfold as described above.</p>