For many seniors, applying to college represents the culmination of four years of hard work in high school. The process can be one of the most arduous and stressful that students will have to go through, trying to encompass the entirety of their skills and passions and personality into a limited word count, followed by countless hours writing essays and  seemingly endless months of torturous waiting. 

As the winter months commence, those who took advantage of colleges’ early action and early decision deadlines are growing increasingly antsy in anticipation of admissions decisions. Portals are refreshed endlessly, hours are spent combing through the r/applyingtocollege subReddit, and students’ attentions are diverted at every buzz of a cell phone notification. Well, more than usual anyway. 

At a competitive school like NA, it comes as no surprise that a significant segment of the student population chooses to include “top 20” schools in their college list. These highly competitive colleges are characterized by sky-high standards and acceptance rates that dip well below double digits.

The latter grows even more true with each passing year as acceptance rates steadily decline, which is further exacerbated by an influx of applicants due to test-optional and blind policies. 

Alongside the triumphant acceptances will inevitably be disappointing rejections. These rejections may not be filmed or disseminated among the public like the acceptances, but they are the painful reality of the majority of students who seek to attend competitive colleges.

One of the most common intrusive thoughts upon receiving a rejection is the question: Why am I not good enough? The real answer, however, is that you might have been. 

Applicants’ scores and grades may have been well within the range of their school. Their extracurriculars may have been extensive and impressive. Their essays and rec letters may have been perfect.

But the reality is that at this point in the college admissions process, for every elite school there are now more qualified applicants than there are spots—which means that some qualified people will have to be rejected, for little to no reason besides lack of availability.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust has said, “We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians.” And indeed, Harvard rejects one out of every four people with perfect SAT scores. UPenn and Duke reject three out of five valedictorians.

When colleges have to choose perfectly qualified applicants to reject, their decisions come down to the most minute of details that have nothing to do with inherent intelligence or skill. Maybe the admissions officer was having a bad day. Maybe it came down to you or someone else and they happened to play an instrument the orchestra needed. Maybe the admissions officer who read your application didn’t let you in whereas another one would have.

Bottom line, these are all external factors that applicants have absolutely no control over. No amount of stressing or meticulous efforts trying to anticipate admissions officers’ decisions will bypass the aspect of pure chance that permeates the admissions process.

This isn’t to say that college admissions officers pick names out of a hat or throw darts at a board; the majority of accepted applicants are undeniably qualified and deserving of admission. I am only expostulating that this relationship is not commutative—if you were accepted, you are probably qualified, but the mere fact that you’re qualified does not mean you will be accepted.

From my few months in AP Stats, we’ve learned about calculating the probability of any given event. What is stressed however, is that when analyzing probability, the most reliable data comes from the average of many, many different trials. For example, if I were completely guessing on a test I didn’t study for, it is much more plausible that I could fortuitously get three out of three questions right than fifty out of fifty.

But in admissions, students only get one trial—one application, one applicant pool, one review. And when the already limited number of spots becomes whittled down even further as colleges must dedicate room for legacy applicants, recruited athletes, and international students, any applicant can’t expect a single trial to be indicative of their actual competence. 

The issue stems from the idea of painting college admissions as a pure meritocracy, when in reality it’s more like a poker game: skill and knowledge will get a student far in the long run, but their chance at success for any singular hand depends a lot on luck. This is the true challenge in the admissions process for high-achieving students—less you vs. the other applicants and more you vs. probability.

It’s completely normal and understandable to feel sad about not getting accepted into a school, especially when you’ve invested so much time and energy and when you truly believe that you deserve to go there. But it’s important to try not to internalize rejection or take it personally (I know, easier said than done) to the point where you lose sight of how much you’ve already accomplished.

This hard pill to swallow is a lesson that applies well beyond the college admissions process; whether it be auditions, tryouts, or interviews, sometimes results are more a reflection of limitations on the number of spots rather than a candidate’s quality. Sometimes, you did nothing wrong but still didn’t get what you wanted. 

But throughout this grueling process, it’s important to keep this in mind when setting your expectations. Know that a rejection letter doesn’t mean you were necessarily less deserving. And, honestly, even if you were, know that the college name in your Instagram bio does not determine your self-worth or capacity for success.