<p>"With each maddeningly thin envelope, each remorseless rebuff from another top-choice college, Kellen Mandehr died a little death. In search of catharsis, the senior at Newton South High School posted the offending documents on the school's "Wall of Shame," a hallway bulletin board blanketed with dozens of college rejection letters."</p>
<p>I think this is a great idea for those kids who chose to participate. In college, we used to post the rejection letters from job interviews on our dorm doors.</p>
<p>In law school (UChicago) we had a Friday "wine mess" IN the law school. One week you got a free glass of wine for every law school rejection letter you brought. The invitation said, "Rejection letters from Harvard Law School don't count, since we all have one!" (not true, but funny nonetheless)</p>
<p>I posted this in another thread, but in B school we did a similar thing -- bring your "ding" (job rejection) letters to a cocktail party. Prizes for the best ding letters -- many were full of typos, grammar errors, etc. A friend of mine received one of the best of all time -- he was "dinged" by a firm he hadn't even interviewed with!</p>
<p>I first read about this a couple of years ago. Students began informally posting rejection letters on a wall in the guidance office. I think it is a great idea.</p>
<p>I really wish our school would do this! I'd be willing to post my rejection letters up, but it's already been over a week (wow, only that long? Feels like forever) since most people received decisions, and there would probably be weird looks if I started posting them now (like, "Dude, I already got over that!").</p>
<p>We used to have this in law school, for job rejections. The best (I mean, worst) I ever saw was one that said the firm didn't have a position for the applicant now or in the future.</p>
<p>Seniors do it at independent school my kids attend. It's been going on for a long time. I think that the administration wasn't too thrilled with this for a while, but it's taken on the identity of a "tradition" now.</p>
<p>A friend got a rejection letter from a medical school that ended with "good luck in another profession". Ouch!</p>
<p>When he got straight As in his first year of med school (a BETTER med school, by the way) we practially had to hold him down from going to the rejecting school to shove the letter down their throats!</p>
<p>Many years later, he's a leading academic surgeon. Revenge!!!</p>
<p>My law school did this--and took it one better. Not only were rejection letters posted on a wall, the students decided to have an academy awards! It was hilarious. The worst letters in every category--iL summer, 2L summer, permanent employment--were "nominated." Then everyone could vote. The "winners" were announced. A very famous professor agreed to be the MC and announce the winners. The rejected student applicant accepted the award on "behalf" of the employer and a photo was taken of this "acceptance." </p>
<p>All winners were then notified by mail with a letter and copy of the photo to the hiring partner! The award was known as the __ award. After a couple of years, some firms were sending out rejection letters beginning "At the risk of being nominated for the ___award.." </p>
<p>The winner my year was sent by a large corporation. It was addressed to "Unsuccessful Applicants from x, y and Z law schools." (3 law schools in the same city.)The first line was "Frankly, none of you was at all impressive." It was hard to top that!</p>
<p>We don't have this at our high school. I have heard of it before though. It may be a good idea insofar as students being able to see that others also got rejections and that rejections are inherent in this process. </p>
<p>One observation I have, however, is that the reason this likely has never been done at our high school is that thankfully, we don't have the competitive admissions frenzy that I observe goes on in other communities. </p>
<p>One big reservation that I would have is the TITLE of the wall. I would NOT be into a title of "wall of shame" as I see nothing shameful about getting some rejections. My kids were both involved in highly competitive college admissions processes and one has just been through a highly competitive graduate admissions process and in all cases, due to the low admit rates, we knew that some rejections were inevitable given the odds and there was no huge let down when they arrived as some were to be expected. They had very positive results but felt no shame about the rejections.</p>
<p>I posted above before reading the article. I just read it. </p>
<p>The one thing I cannot relate to is the line about how some have had their sights set on the Ivy League since grade school. While I have a child at an Ivy League school, she never had her goal as to get into the Ivy League. Not even as a senior in high school. She merely wanted to get into (in her words) a "good college" some day. Perhaps by not having a "must have Ivy" on the brain, the disappointment of rejection would not be so great as described in the article for some in that community.</p>
<p>At my D's school, there are many note-burning bonfires at the end of the year (whether real notes are burned is not certain, I never allowed my D to bring her real ones). Maybe this year's seniors can bring copies of their rejection letters for a ceremonial burning, in a safe place of course! </p>
<p>Love the inthebiz story - that's why you should keep the originals!!! Hope the surgeon has it framed in his office!</p>
<p>Soozie and 1moremom, you'd have to know the town where this high school is located to understand the "Ivy since kindergarten" mentality. Newton is a wealthy, high-achieving suburb of Boston. They're building a new HS which is going to be the most expensive HS ever built in Mass - current price tag $190 million and climbing (for about 1800 kids). Newton is next door to Brookline, and I read a quote from the Principal of Brookline HS who once figured out that an amazingly high percentage of kids in his school had at least one parent who went to Harvard (it was like 25% or something unbelievable).</p>
<p>Thank you sincerely for your interest in our program. We still have not heard back from all the offers we had made prior to interviewing you. We were hoping to recruit 6 new students for next year. We currently have seven acceptances with one more outstanding offer. It is highly unlikely that the last student will send in a rejection and that two or more of those who have made verbal commitments will back out. Maybe because of the economy, we had a larger number of very well qualified applicants whom also seemed well suited to our program. In addition, we had a higher percentage of acceptances than usual. Because of all of this we never made a second round of offers as we anticipated doing. </p>
<p>In light of this, we are not anticipating making any more offers for our Fall class. I am sorry that we cannot make you an offer. </p>
<p>I wish you the best, and regret not being able to make you an offer.</p>
<p>We tossed son’s rejection letters into the trash immediately! It was cathartic (for me, at least, lol). Funny, how getting a few really good school acceptances can make the later rejections almost meaningless.</p>
<p>Similar to the above post; I was at a job interview recently where the interviewer kept marveling about all the other ‘outstanding applicants’ he’d heard from (apparently, lots of unemployed people in the field, applying for jobs they are overqualified for). He looked at my resume and noted: “hmmm, you don’t really have any experience in this specific area…although you are very interesting!” </p>
<p>I just laughed. (And, thought: why exactly did I put on my suit for this little get-together? lol (not my cup of tea anyway…))</p>
<p>My son has a friend who wants to frame her rejection note from Harvard. And Jolynne is right about getting those acceptance notes. They make the rejections go away pretty quickly.</p>