You Were Rejected from Your Top College Choice: What's Next?

Over the past several decades, the market for higher education has grown at an incredible rate. In 2022, people in the United States alone spent over $576 billion on colleges and universities.

One of the biggest reasons that there is so much demand for higher education now is that more high school graduates are deciding to go to college. However, this also means that competition is stiffer. On top of that, more people applying to college means that there are more students than ever before who need to know what to do when they receive a college rejection letter.

After being rejected from your preferred college, it can feel like your future plans have to be reworked from scratch. However, there is a lot that you can do to try to still get into your top choice for college.

You can also focus on accepting this obstacle and moving past it. So what can you do after you have been rejected from your preferred college?

Read on to learn all about the next steps you can take after receiving a college rejection letter! 

Don't Skip to Attending Another School

Many students pour their hearts and souls into their applications for their top college choice. Depending on your situation, you might feel certain that you will be accepted to your preferred college. However, the more certain you feel about getting into your top choice, the more shocking it can be to receive a rejection letter instead.

Many people respond to this kind of shock by giving up. Others end up making hasty decisions. However, that can come back to haunt you if you close the door to other opportunities available to you.

After receiving a rejection letter, you should take the time to learn as much as possible about your options. The faster you act, the higher the chance that you will act based on emotion rather than strategy. If you can keep a cool head and assess your options, you may be able to achieve an outcome that seems impossibly distant right now.

In particular, you want to avoid making any decisions that you can't walk back if you later decide you would like to do so. That means that you should be wary before you jump to telling another college that you will attend it. That goes double when it comes to things like sending off payments for tuition or housing.

In most cases, you will have weeks or months of time on your hands to reflect on your situation. Although you don't want to be making decisions at the last minute, it is also worth taking as much time as you reasonably can before committing yourself to any particular path.

Reach Out After a College Rejection Letter

At the end of the day, there is always someone in charge of making decisions. That applies to accepting students to a college as well as to everything else in life. That means that there is always someone who could reverse a decision if they decided to do so.

You should never think of a college rejection decision as final and immovable. Of course, that does not mean that it will be easy to turn a college rejection into an acceptance. However, if you are still interested in attending your top choice college, it is worth pursuing the options available to you.

One of the first things you can do is get in touch with the admissions office as soon as possible after receiving a rejection letter. Although you don't want to make hasty decisions that close off some of your opportunities, there is no harm in sending a message to your preferred college's admissions office.

Consider getting help from someone you trust as you compose a letter to your preferred college. In this letter, you will want to express how much attending your preferred college means to you. Of course, you will want to follow up with a lot more than your personal desires. 

Let your preferred college know that you still intend to apply to attend it in the future. Let them know that you are more than willing to attend if your rejection is later turned into acceptance.

Set Up a Meeting

Alone, it is unlikely that this will be enough to get you into your preferred college. However, you can also request to have a meeting with someone at the admissions office. It is much easier to write a letter that convinces someone to meet with you than to write a letter that changes their mind about accepting you to your preferred college.

Of course, there is always a significant chance that they will thank you for your letter and decline to meet with you. That is why it is worth putting a significant amount of time and effort into crafting your letter carefully. If you do so, there is also a strong chance that someone at the admissions office will agree to meet with you.

They may not expect to change their mind about your application, but they may want to explain their decision to you personally if your letter is persuasive.

Preparing for Your Meeting

If you get as far as having a meeting with the admissions office, you will want to start preparing to make the most of it. Among other things, that means coming up with a list of questions based on the idea that you will not be accepted.

You don't want to turn your meeting into a forceful attempt to change their mind. Instead, you want to use it to demonstrate your positive qualities.

You can ask them about other schools they think might be right for you. As you do this, you will want to display a combination of interest in attending your preferred college as well as acceptance of the decision made.

You can also ask about anything that might give you a better chance of being accepted to your preferred college.

As you engage in this meeting, you might want to avoid focusing too much on why you were rejected in the first place. Asking about why you were rejected can force the admissions officer to focus on why you may not be the best candidate for their university.

It can also make them feel uncomfortable as they will have to discuss unhappy facts with you. Instead, you want to aim at making this meeting as pleasant as possible for the admissions counselor.

Following Up After Your Meeting

After you are finished meeting with them, send them a thoughtful note expressing your gratitude for their help. You can also include some of your plans for trying to get into your preferred college in the future. Based on the advice they might have given you, you can also let them know if you have followed it.

This is a great way to show that you are proactive and mean what you say.

Throughout this process, you will want to avoid pressuring the admissions counselor to change your initial rejection to acceptance. Instead, this strategy will help you come to mind first if any slots open up for new admissions to your preferred university.

If someone already accepted cannot come, then the admissions office will have to think about who to let in that was not initially accepted. If you can make a positive impression on someone in the admissions office, then they may recommend you in such a situation.

On the other hand, this whole process can also come in handy if you later apply as a transfer student or wait to reapply again later. Once you have someone in the admissions office who has a positive opinion of you, there is a higher chance that you will succeed in the future.

As time goes by, you might also want to send follow-up messages to the admissions counselor you met with. You can let them know about the progress you are making and continue to thank them for their generosity in meeting with you before.

Try Reapplying to College as a Transfer Student

Even if this strategy does not get you into your preferred college this year, it may be key to helping you get in later. If your application was not impressive enough to be accepted, getting started at another college for a year can give you another chance to demonstrate your academic virtues.

If you apply again next year with a 4.0 GPA at college, that can cause your preferred school to reconsider your application. Of course, that goes double if you have someone in the admissions office who is inclined to help you.

Spending a year at another college can also help you learn valuable life skills and enrich your experiences. That can help you to write a more persuasive personal letter in your application next year for your preferred university. You can also focus on practicing writing effective college application essays.

You can even pull up your college application from time to time and work on polishing it. Having a whole year can give you the time you need to brainstorm ways to make your application as convincing as possible.

Try Getting Into College Next Year

On the other hand, you might consider applying to your preferred college again next year without attending another school in the meanwhile. This may be an especially powerful choice if your initial college application lacked a certain amount of real-world experience. If your academic achievements were stellar, then lack of other experiences may be the reason you were not accepted in the first place.

On top of that, having a whole year of free time can go a long way toward helping you learn new skills if you are proactive. Think about how impressive it might be to your preferred college if your next application includes the story of how you started a business during your gap year!

Although this might sound difficult now, it can be much easier than you think. Many people assume that starting a business requires coming up with some kind of new invention or idea. However, starting a business can be as simple as offering your services mowing lawns or sharpening knives.

This may not sound glamorous at first, but there is no denying the real-world experience that you can gain by creating a profitable service business. On top of that, over the course of a year, you might be able to grow your business enough to start hiring employees or contractors to help you. That can help build your leadership skills.

You can learn about how to market your simple service on social media or other platforms. You can learn about customer service and the power of doing quality work in a reliable way. All of this is exactly the kind of experience that even the most academically successful student often lacks.

Aim At Higher Test Scores

You can also use your extra time to try to achieve higher standardized test scores. In most cases, you can continue to take and retake these tests. Then, you can use only your highest score for your future application.

With months of study dedicated specifically to your weak points on these tests, you might be surprised by how much you can improve your score on them.

These days, standardized test scores can have a huge impact on whether or not you get into your college of choice or not.

Working on improving your test scores can also help you make up for any weaknesses in your application. It may be too late for you to change your GPA, but achieving a higher score on a standardized test can be the perfect way to prove that you have learned your school material better than before.

Taking this kind of initiative can also impress your preferred college with your ambition and willingness to study hard.

Consider Your Other Options for College

On the other hand, it might be better for you to focus on one of your other college options. That goes double if the difference between your top choice and your second choice is only minor.

In many cases, students imagine a whole future at their preferred college. However, going to the exact college you want to is not always as important as it seems.

You might want to take some extra time to learn more about the colleges that have accepted your applications. You might discover that they have a lot more to offer than you realized at first.

Coping With Being Rejected From Top Choice Colleges

Some people find it difficult to accept being rejected from their top choice for college. This makes sense as rejection is difficult for most people to handle.

On top of that, being rejected from your preferred college can mean rewriting your whole future in your mind. The good news is that there are some steps you can take to help you deal with rejection.

Let Yourself Take a Break

Many people have the idea that they should focus on confronting unpleasant facts as straightforwardly and as quickly as possible. However, this is often wiser to do later on.

When you are first dealing with rejection, it can be appropriate to shut out painful thoughts for a while. Once you have given yourself some space to think and feel, you will be better prepared to absorb the meaning of your rejection.

Let Yourself Feel Your Feelings

Once you are ready to confront being rejected from your preferred college, start by focusing on your feelings. You may not know what the solution is right away. However, you don't need to.

Instead, emphasize listening to your emotions. Notice what kind of thoughts and ideas provoke the strongest emotional reactions in you.

It can be tempting to run away from painful feelings at first. However, after giving yourself some time, it is worth facing your feelings directly and feeling every part of them. If you don't do this now, there is a good chance that you will find these feelings intruding on your thoughts later on.

Don't Take Your Rejection Personally

As you start to process your feelings, it can help to get a new perspective on your rejection. Your rejection may not be as much about you as an individual as you might think.

If you worked in an admissions office, you would discover how hard it can be to figure out who to accept and who to reject. You would also realize that there is a long list of reasons that some applications are rejected.

Speak With Others Who Can Understand

At the end of the day, you are not the only person facing rejection from their preferred college. Consider getting in touch with others who are confronting similar emotional turmoil. This might include peers as well as adults who were rejected from their preferred colleges in years past.

Speaking with peers can help you appreciate that your feelings are normal. You can also learn about how other people are handling this situation and learn from them.

Speaking with adults can help you appreciate how they have built a life even after being rejected from their preferred college. That can give you added perspective and help take some of the sting out of your rejection.

Ask for Advice From Those You Trust

Everyone deals with difficult emotional problems at one time or another. However, people tend to find ways to cope with them. You might consider speaking with people you trust about the hardest times in their lives.

Learning about their stories can help you appreciate how often life can be hard. However, you can also ask them about the lessons they learned and the techniques they use to manage difficult emotions. You may be able to copy some of their techniques if you find that they help you manage your own difficult emotions.

If this works, you can even carry this valuable wisdom with you for the rest of your life. Many people express a certain amount of gratitude for their past challenges because of what they are able to learn by going through them.

Assess Your Options and Opportunities

When you are first rejected from your top choice for college, it can feel like you have nowhere to go. However, it can help to make a list of all of the different options and opportunities that are still available to you.

You might even want to flesh out in your mind how you might go about pursuing some of these opportunities. This will help make them feel more real to you. As you realize how many other options you still have, it can help calm some of the sting of rejection.

Focus On the Positive

When you're first dealing with a difficult emotional problem, it is often a mistake to try to focus only on the positive. However, after you have felt your feelings and learned how to deal with them, focusing on what is going right in your life can help restore enthusiasm and energy to your life.

Accept Early Decision Rejections

At the end of the day, if you can't get into your preferred college, that is a fact that you have to accept. Acceptance is one of the most powerful ways of reducing suffering. Even if that acceptance means accepting a certain amount of pain, it may still be more tolerable than trying to resist the facts of the situation.

Know What to Do After a College Rejection

Many students are stunned when they receive an unexpected college rejection letter and don't know what to do. However, many students are also surprised to discover how many options they still have even after receiving an initial rejection. Even if you don't end up getting into the college of your choice, there is a lot that you can do to help you get over this obstacle.

To learn more about how you can prepare for higher education with the Honor Society, check out some of our other posts here!