The Cost of Rejection

We’ve all heard about the rising cost of college tuition.  What about the cost of rejection?  It may not be measured in dollars, but it is still very real.

Students squeezed through the sausage grinder of the college admissions process often arrive on campus jaded and burned out.  In his March 16, 2001 piece for the New York Times, Andrew DelBanco quoted a Columbia professor complaining that, “Every year I read that our incoming students have better grades and better SAT scores than in the past.  But in the classroom, I do not find a commensurate increase in the number of students who are intellectually curious, adventurous or imbued with fruitful doubt.  Many students are chronically stressed, grade-obsessed and, for fear of jeopardizing their ambitions, reluctant to explore subjects in which they doubt their proficiency.”

Similarly, Barry Schwartz wrote in a 2007 LA Times article: “By making themselves so competitive, our selective institutions are subverting their aims.”  The article by Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, was appropriately named:  “Why the Best Schools Can’t Pick the Best Kids - and Vice Versa” (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/18/opinion/op-schwartz18). 

Perhaps the persistent branding sends the message that getting in is all that matters, not performance in college.  After all, even the worst Harvard graduate is still a Harvard graduate.  It is not surprising that students who view college as nothing more than a brand name will coast through their four years and probably not even realize what they are missing.

For rejected students, the cost is higher.  These students face the risk of not bouncing back.  I fell into this trap myself.  After pushing towards the singular goal of acceptance at Princeton, rejection left me questioning my efforts and hesitant to throw myself upon the unwelcoming world of academia.  I did not “attack” the college curriculum or outside activities with the same vigor I had in high school.  I shied away from risks like studying abroad, writing for the school newspaper or independent research.  I had a deep appreciation for learning, but couldn’t muster the energy for what seemed like jumping through even more hoops.  I looked at my fellow classmates with their eyes on graduate school, but refused to join them.  Why risk rejection again?  Why try when I was already told my best wasn’t good enough?

I doubt I’m the only student for whom the aftermath of rejection lingered throughout college.  I wish I could shake the rejection out of them and send them to college with a blank slate.  My wish for these students is that they give themselves a second chance.  Not doing so is a cost too high for any college. 

    

As Bill Mayher writes in The College Admissions Mystique, “In a generation or two, it will become clear how much we have invested in the madness surrounding selective admissions and how much we have lost.”