When Your Teen Receives a Rejection

This month many seniors will be receiving quite a few early action decisions from school. Those of you who have been following my page for a while know how much I value Dr. Lisa Damour’s advice. (She is a psychologist who specializes in adolescents.) Dr. Lisa advises that parents shouldn’t be more happy or more disappointed than their teenager is. If things go her way and she’s very excited, parents should certainly feel free to say how happy they are and ask how the teen wants to celebrate. If things don’t go her way, one way to approach it is to say something like, “I know this isn’t the outcome you wanted, and I know you’re disappointed. Trust me. I have every confidence that things are going to work out for you exactly as they should even though this moment isn’t going so well. What would help you feel better? I promise you that over time this is all going to sort itself out.” This is a very challenging time in family life for most families, and the sooner the parents can move on from a rejection, the sooner the student can move on.

In a similar vein, last week I attended a webinar hosted by Jeffrey Selingo, author of Who Gets in and Why. He is writing a new book and was looking for students who wanted to share their stories. He’s looking for stories of students who didn’t get into their dream school and love where they did end up. The tentative title is Dream School: The College Admissions Playbook for the Rest of Us. Receiving a rejection from a “dream school” can be very difficult for teens to deal with. Oftentimes, these are high achieving students who are used to being at the top of their classes and have never experienced a major rejection. If your teen is struggling with early action rejections, she might need some reassurance that she will end up at an amazing school that is thrilled to have her, and it is going to feel so good to be wanted by that school (especially when they throw in merit aid money to really drive home the point). Frank Bruni wrote an entire book about this called Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be. Many studies have found that it's not where someone goes to school, but what she does when she's there that matters.

Good luck to all my students anxiously awaiting FSU’s decisions this Tuesday and all the decisions yet to come in these next few months!