Is it possible to get rejected from a college and then get accepted later on (when others decide not to attend)? Please feel free to share any of your experiences (whether this happened to you or not). It would also be nice if anyone could list some tips about college admissions and overcoming stress from rejections.
No, they take from the Waitlist. If you are denied, you can appeal the decision and ask if there is currently no space, could they consider you for the waitlist. I recall one year one of the UC campuses went through all their accepts and WL applicants and still did not fill the class. They DID take a lot of students for January entrance. You can also ask the university if they can move your application to the January applicant pool?
This was a long time ago, but when my mother was applying for grad school, she got rejected from Columbia and ended up at GW. Columbia later sent her a letter apologizing, saying that her rejection had been a mistake! (This was like the 70s though, so the process is probably way different now!)