Bracing Students, and Parents, to Hear ‘No’
Today’s parents have raised their children to value self-esteem, a far cry from my own Depression-era parents, who raised me with equal parts fear and love. Self-awareness, self-worth and self-affirmation are all traits we strive to develop in children – both in school and at home. There’s a whole lot of “yes” in the lives of college-bound students. Which has me worrying: how will these students handle a “no” at the hands of a competitive admissions office?
How do we introduce rejection into a world where self-acceptance is the norm?
If you’re the parent of a senior who is putting the finishing touches on all of his college applications, or the parent of a junior who’s just beginning to put her college list together, I think you need to ask: How does my child handle rejection? Some students are quite resilient when they meet resistance or failure, while others need time to regroup from a tough call. Still others really falter when their best isn’t good enough.
Applying to college forces students to put themselves on the line, surrendering control over their futures to, in effect, the total strangers in an admission office. It’s scary.
I often worry about the student who compiles a long list of colleges where admission is iffy for every single school except for the one they have deemed their “safety school.” And I also worry that this same student knows every statistic about those hypercompetitive schools, but nearly nothing about that “safety,” which could very well be home for the next four years. Truly amazing students get rejected from equally amazing colleges every single year through no fault of their own. For some of these young people, it’s the first time they’ve been denied, and that can unearth their stability.
All that self-esteem can come crumbling down in April.
Yes, I know all about the importance of risk in a well-lived life. I know that you have to be willing to fail in order to succeed. My entire career has been an interesting balance of trial and error, risk and reward. And I privately worry that all this focus on self-esteem can lead to self-absorption. But adults deal with failure quite differently than adolescents. Over time, we learn how to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. But teenagers who apply to a long list of Holy Grail schools can come undone. Rejection stings, every single time.
It’s of little comfort that Nirvana U rejects more valedictorians than it admits every year; when you’re the one being rejected, it’s impossible not to take it personally. And when you’re 18, the sting is very powerful indeed.
Getting into college isn’t all about statistics and strategies for success; admissions isn’t a battlefield where the strong are victorious and the weak lose out. The college search should be a positive process of self-discovery. So, as your child makes a college list, please take more than a moment to gauge his or her reaction to setbacks and the ability to absorb a “No” in the land of “Yes.” And, parents, while you’re at it, maybe take a moment to gauge your reaction to setbacks as well.
Remember, the prize isn’t winning the admissions game; rather, the prize is watching your child go off to college, self-esteem intact.
NYT 15 November 2010
Ms. Biemeret is a post-secondary counselor at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill., and executive director of The Academy for College Admission Counseling, a nonprofit organization that provides graduate-level education on college counseling for counselors.
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