Turning Setbacks Into Life-Changing Opportunities

This month brings National College Decision Day. For many students and their families, this month marks an exciting milestone. That moment when they commit to a school.

But for every acceptance letter that a joyful applicant receives, there will be many missives that inform aspiring undergraduates that they were rejected from their first-choice colleges.?

Such unwelcome news can be devastating. I’m reminded of a hardworking teenager from Nebraska who had good grades and a stellar resume and who had dreamed for years of attending Harvard. He had placed all his academic hopes into that one basket only to receive bad news: His application had been rejected. He was overcome with disappointment and by the fear that he had let his father down.

It’s a story you hear a lot this time of year, even if you don’t work in the college admissions business like I do. And it can be especially heartbreaking if it’s your own child who didn’t get into their dream school.

While the disappointment can be overwhelming, it’s important to remember that a rejection letter does not foreclose the opportunity to build a successful, fulfilling life. In fact, there are ways to turn this setback into a life-changing opportunity.

Take, for instance, that precocious Nebraska teenager who was rejected by Harvard. That was Warren Buffett, widely regarded as the most successful investor of the 20th century, and still going strong. He and his parents did just fine—and so will you.

College admissions decisions often mark the culmination of years of hard work, an exhaustive search process, and a nerve-wracking wait while your teenager nervously checks an online application portal. When the news from their first-choice school is unexpected, you and your child may be awash in a range of emotions, from shock to sadness to disappointment.

How to Move Forward

Here are four steps that I recommend to my clients when they face this situation:?

PROCESS: All of these feelings are normal, and it’s okay to take some time to process the news and feel the pain. Allow your teen time to mourn. Remember that, while it’s hard to see their disappointment, it is crucial to model a positive response that lets them know you still support them.

PERSPECTIVE: Once you’ve taken some time to process the situation, help put it in its proper perspective. The rejection feels personal, but it’s really not. Colleges have highly competitive applicant pools and have to turn down scores of super-qualified applicants. In addition, they have institutional needs and considerations that have little to do with any individual prospective student. Anyone receiving a rejection from their top-choice school is in very good company. Most top colleges reject the vast majority of their applicants. Some Ivy League schools like Harvard take an obscenely small percentage—about 3 percent.

PIVOT: It may be helpful to point out to your children that a number of very successful people—including Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, and Nancy Pelosi—also didn’t get into their first-choice college. They had to pivot… and they did just fine. As their stories demonstrate, your child’s top choice is far from the only path to a successful college experience and a fulfilling life. Just as there are many fish in the dating sea, there are also plenty of good colleges out there that could be great academic, extracurricular, and social fits for your child. A student can accomplish great things at any number of colleges, and what they do during their undergraduate years—the classes in which they enroll, the grades they earn, and the extracurricular activities in which they participate—is ultimately more important, including to employers, than the name on the building.

But first you have to move on. It may be hard to accept, but here’s the truth: You will never know exactly why the decision was made, so there’s no use spending too much time wondering about it.

PERSEVERE: Focus on what you can control, and what you do next.

Perhaps your child is deciding to go to a school to which they were admitted… but one they overlooked.

Or maybe you and your child want to consider alternative arrangements, like a gap year, an internship, or a public-service project.

Or perhaps school is in the cards, but it looks different: attending a community college, or going to another four-year college and then applying to transfer after a year. ?

Remember (and I cannot stress this enough): None of these options means that your child has to give up on their dream school. If that is still the goal, there are ways to continue to pursue it. Just make sure that it’s your child’s goal and not just yours.

One of the best and most productive ways to keep your child’s dream of attending their top-choice college alive is the transfer route. I have helped dozens of students with this option, and while it is a road less taken, it is still a rich and underappreciated one. Transferring schools works especially well for students who are late bloomers, or those who peaked late in high school or even in college. Your child can make their transfer application extremely compelling by working hard their senior year of high school and freshman year of college and by keeping in touch with professors and administrators at their first-choice school—what admissions offices call “demonstrated interest.”

Even if the transfer option doesn’t work out, your child still wins: By working hard, your child has set themselves up to succeed at their current college and, by doing so, lay the groundwork for attending a new dream graduate school or for landing a dream job.

An Opportunity In Disguise

It's hard to believe at the time, but someday you will look back at this rejection as a pivotal moment for your child. Setbacks provide some of the best opportunities for learning and growth, and once your child acquires that resilience, they’ll carry it with them into every future endeavor and challenge.

Just ask Warren Buffett. He had nearly finished an undergraduate degree at the University of Nebraska at the age of 19 when he was rejected by Harvard Business School. Buffett responded by dashing off a late application to Columbia University’s graduate business school, from which he graduated before embarking upon his meteorically successful career in business and investing. He considers his rejection from Harvard a game-changing moment. “The truth is, everything that has happened in my life ... that I thought was a crushing event at the time has turned out for the better,” he has said. And his father, whom he was so worried about disappointing? He responded, says Buffett, only with love and “an unconditional belief in me.”

While you can’t eliminate the pain that comes from a college rejection, you can show your child your “unconditional belief” in them and set them on the path to discovering their resilience and resourcefulness—qualities that, ultimately, are likely to serve them just as well as an education from their top-choice school.