College Rejection

It's Just Another Part of the Adventure

We've been thinking a lot lately about parenting through the college application process. Decision time is when your anxieties roll in and you need to marshal all your critical thinking and parenting skills. So here are some words of wisdom culled recently from better wordsmiths than we.

Don't miss Joan Didion's reality check on her denial from Stanford:

Required Reading for Parents

"And of course none of it matters very much at all, none of these early successes, early failures. I wonder if we had better not find some way to let our children know this..."

In 1968 in the Saturday Evening Post, author Joan Didion published an essay on being denied admission at Stanford University. It's timeless commentary on dealing with rejection and the complex feelings stirred by that bitter pill many applicants face at some point in the application process. Didion rooted out her rejection letter as an object lesson for a 17-year-old niece going through the process and then employed it as an opportunity to appraise the college admission landscape -- an appraisal that is surprisingly relevant in 2013. Enjoy...

On Being Unchosen by the College of One's Choice