The concept sounds appealing. I love it the concept specially the phrases like “You’ve been rejected, you’re too smart. Love, NYU.”
I’m considering about doing a rejection party, but we’re already celebrating the college selection -a really good one. So not so sure about the timing. At the same time, rejection is part of life such as college, jobs, etc., etc.,
This sort of thing always bothers me, tbh. If “you’re too smart” for X college, then the implication is that those who were accepted are not as smart as you. That just feels crappy to me - like building yourself up by tearing others down (even if it is only implied). Surely there are better ways to reconcile yourself with your outcomes…
Great point. I didn’t see that perspective until you mentioned it. Yes, it sounds like putting others down by bring oneself up. And it’s not the healthiest approach.
This just seems so obnoxious and pointless IMO. Something that a very specific segment of the population would consider a good idea.
I know I’m sounding harsh, but just accept you got rejected and move on. You don’t always need to be reminded that you’re great and it’s just shocking and puzzling that you were rejected.
Just celebrate your acceptance and call it a day.
A natural response to rejection is grief. In my experience, the culture doesn’t prepare people very well for loss. Throwing a party after being rejected feels a bit like buying a puppy to smooth over the pain of losing an older pet. It short-circuits the grieving process in a way that just delays the pain. (I haven’t read the article to know if this concern was addressed.)
My son’s reaction to couple of rejection/waitlists was: “It looks like I applied well. If I didn’t get rejected or waitlisted anywhere I might have thought I didn’t aim high enough.” He understood which schools were less likely acceptances upfront so maybe it was easier for him to just shrug it off. He also declined his one waitlist school saying “they had their chance.”
Anyway, he ended up at a great school so it was all good.
The important thing is to have the student understand at the star of the process that any acceptance/rejection decisions is not personal – the admissions officers don’t know them and have to base decisions off of a probably 10-15 minute read of an application. A rejection/waitlist should not impact their self-worth in the least.
A great response. The only thing I don’t like about this is the “high”, because it pushes the narrative the more highly rejective a college is, the better it is.
I honestly don’t think that a college rejection is a loss that should be equated with the death of a pet or grieving.
I think Rick Clark’s blog post about institutional priorities should be required reading for every student and parent about to start the application process.
I was lucky to have spent 20 years doing alumni interviews before my D applied and was able to make sure she knew that rejections weren’t personal and didn’t say anything about her hard work in HS or her future potential. Her response to her college rejection was “oh well”. She also declined writing a LOCI for the school that deferred her from EA and then laughed when they wait listed her later.
IMO, we need to be doing a much better job as parents about helping manage expectations and emotions around this whole process.
this is not different from sticking job applications/interviews rejections on one’s bedroom door during senior year in college. it’s called a celebration, but of course it is simply a release from the stress of being rejected. nobody prefers being rejected, but for most of it’s just part of life, and teaches one to understand how it is in real life
This is nearly identical to a study I read about in a book years ago. Maybe Dan Ariely?
The study was about taking a cruise at the end of the college year in celebration of good grades. So the cruise is a carrot for good grades and hard work (substitute have a big party).
Do you go on this cruise if you fail/ don’t make decent grades?
And as it turn out nearly everyone went on the cruise no matter the grades. Some to celebrate and the rest to drown their sorrows.
The points that I like about the article is the normalization of rejection. It’s part of life, and we all encounter rejection job searches, funding for projects, college admissions, the list goes on and on.
Guy Winch, psychologist, explains (he has a TED talk by the way) that rejection is a painful experience because it has a biological component. At the beginning of time, being rejected equated dead because we needed to live in a group to survive. We are hard wired to feel the sting of rejection.
Another point of the article, it is to take out the shame out of rejection. Of course, everyone is different. For some, rejection carries a lot of shame. And, when students/people don’t talk about rejection, it becomes even more shameful. And, talking about rejection takes away the shame out of it. And, thus the rejection party at this particular HS.
@CC_Jon, I can understand why you think loss and rejection may be the same. In a way, rejection is a loss of a path not taken. However, the article’s rejection perspective is not about grief.
This is exactly what my kid said recently. She even went so far as to add that she didn’t mind the rejections one bit and that, in retrospect, she should have applied to another reach and not so many matches.
Personally, I think a rejection party sounds fun. Any excuse for a party!
I love this. I couldn’t read the article because it’s paywalled. But I think “rejecting” the shame of rejection is important. If others in the high school witness this annually, they’ll handle their own rejections a lot better.
I didn’t think about it. It’s makes sense. It could help the future future seniors too. After all, everyone gets in the same boat eventually. And as Lindagaf said it -It’s another excuse for fun and party : )
I think college rejection is tough. It’s almost like “you’re not worthy”. Then we realize we’ve been played by the big college marketing machine. Once the dust settled, for us it was a celebration. Their loss, our gain!!
That was our experience - the feeling of not good enough. Then I started thinking if my kid should have taking AP’s since freshman year (not possible in our HS), is the very gpa/ wgpa not high enough now days? maybe should I a have trained my kid to sleep 3hrs a night; otherwise, how a kid will do more academics/EC?clubs/etc.? I’m kind of exaggerating here, but that is the point.
Then, we realized the college admission is a big marketing, money making machine. There are many variables at play - institutional goals, yield protection, admissions officers time constrains reviewing applications and their own bias (cannot deny the human factor), data sets, and more. Besides, there are parents who spent a lot money by hiring a private college counselor who start working with the student since freshman year. And, there are other parents who hire private college counselors for overall application review and essay feedback. So it is a gamble, and the students need to know how to play the game.
In our case, we were very naive thinking that admission officers will know and value my kid doing everything without any help. However, this is not how the game is played. The system is biased towards students who get help to fine tune the application -a dedicated HS counselor, parents/family who know the process, a kind HS teacher(s) who helps, private college counselor, etc.
And, yes, at the end, my kid and us, proud parents, are very happy with the college my kid will be attending.
College admissions are their own issues. What’s the really big money making machine is private college counseling.
Some groups go on bulk, so they provide resources and charge very little, or make money from ad revenue. However, when we talk about the “admitted to the college of your choice or money back” groups, well, that is truly Big Bucks. They are asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars and guaranteeing that your kid will be accepted to the college of their choice. I don’t know what happens if they accept a client whose kid is as dumb as a bucket of scrap metal, but either they are really good at convincing the parents that attending a “lesser” colleges is “good enough”, or they get more than one “mentor” to “help” the kid (AKA doing everything for the kid). They likely have to do both in some cases.
They’re charging lots of people tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and they are paying the mentors who actually do the work salaries of $40,000-$50,000 a year. That means that the groups themselves are making LOTS of money.
