How to Deal With College Rejection

Rejection Hurts, especially from a college your child wanted to attend.

While getting rejected from college can feel like the end of the world, I promise you it’s not and You are not alone. Tens of thousands of students are denied college every year. As a college planning consultant, I’ve worked with many students in your shoes. And believe it or not, most will still go on to live the life they wanted.

Here are a few tips on ways to move past this letdown:

Feel the pain.

Allow your child to take a little time to feel sad. We have all been disappointed before. If you don’t deal with your sadness in healthy ways, it’ll affect you and prevent you from thriving.

Don’t get stuck on the what-ifs.

One of the most frustrating things about getting rejected from college is you may never know precisely why you weren’t accepted. Colleges rarely give you a reason upfront.

You may have a few ideas on what caused your college rejection, such as our GPA and SAT or ACT scores were a little below the college’s average. Or your college admissions essays weren’t as strong.

Rather than dwell on the mistakes, learn from them and improve yourself.

Rewrite the narrative

While your child may have thought they knew what they wanted to study and what college was the best for that major.  Let them know that eighty percent of students change their major from what they anticipated learning in high school. And they will start a whole new adventure at the school that will turn out to be the very best for him.

This experience is an excellent transition from high school to college and, most essentially, to adulthood.

Get excited about new options.

Once your child emotionally and mentally processed the college rejection, please encourage them to start looking forward to the future. Please motivate them to look for other available options and start getting excited about them.

Few ideas to encourage new options.

• Start looking at other colleges on your list
• Transfer from a community college

Make a plan to get involved in college

Even if it wasn’t their top choice, whichever college your child attends, encourage them to make the most of their experience. And that starts before they even get there. Have your child map out a plan for what activities, clubs, and groups they want to participate in as a college student.

Getting rejected from college is hard. There’s no way around that. But your child will land on your feet, will have a great experience in college and most importantly, they will have a great future, especially with you by their side.