I wrote this  post a  year ago, and the message is still 100% true now.  Most of you are getting great news from colleges this week and next, but among the letters that welcome you to the Class of 2016, there may also be a few letters of--well, rejection.

It will help you immensely to try to understand how admissions actually works, and then you ‘ll see that these rejections aren’t so much about YOU as they are the individual college’s way of managing its numbers.  Read on, and then let me know what you think.

This is the perfect time for seniors and for juniors to understand one important aspect of admissions that is often forgotten in the heat of discovery whether or not somebody “gets in.”  What I’m talking about is this: admissions decisions are not all about YOU. 

I know that might seem a bit contrary to an entire process that asks you to summarize the best achievements of the last four years of your life onto a few application pages, essays, and recommendations. But the truth is that admissions is really about creating a class of incoming students who, as a group, not only represent the ideals the institution wants to hold up for the world to see but who will also demonstrate a pretty good likelihood of matriculating.  In other words, students are almost always considered in the context of several hundred if not thousands (or even tens of thousands) of other applicants and against what’s known as institutional priorities.

If admissions officers were admitting students on individual worthiness alone, of course, you would be admitted--you are, after all, an amazing kid, right?  But the rub is that once an application gets past the first read, no matter who’s read it, that same applicant is still considered in a much larger context of additional students and circumstances that you’ll never know about. 

At some places there are--believe it or not--hundreds of amazing kids who have achievements and test scores similar to yours.  In that scenario, the decision to admit an applicant is much less about the applicant, but more about the priorities of the institution in shaping a group of incoming students who will represent the ideals of the college. I know that’s a difficult concept to internalize--especially if you end up not being admitted to a college you want to attend, but admission or denial isn’t as personal as it seems.  And the best thing you, your parents, and your counselors can do is to try to get a handle on that.  It’s not just about you.   

Instead, think of where admissions is about you, or where it is about your power of choice. 

Admissions is largely driven by certain goals that are very similar to the same goals any business strives to achieve--goals dealing with numbers, dollars, rankings, and ratings.  So, one of the first things important to any admissions office is to convince you to CHOOSE them.  In other words, colleges are dependent upon you to choose them to apply to.  The more kids who apply, the more selective the college becomes, thus boosting image and standing among peer institutions.  So colleges need you to apply.  They can’t make you apply; you make that choice.  And by making that choice, you give yourself over to being considered as a small component in a large, complex, and invisible applicant pool, knowing that the outcome is something out of your control. 

Then you have the choice to refine your application to early decision or restricted early action, which is another desirable outcome for colleges because it increases the likelihood of their yield, or the number of admitted students who follow through by choosing to attend. 

And of course, the biggest choice that you get to make is to commit to one of your admitted schools over all the others.  No matter how many great kids ABC University admits, none of that makes much difference if all the great kids choose to attend a different college, so the college is dependent upon you here. Again, you end up holding the real power by deciding which of the admissions offers you will accept. 

So, yes, waiting for the admissions decisions to arrive is stressful, and there could be some disappointment when the announcements are made.  But keep in mind that the decisions are not personal--no matter how personal they might feel. The decisions that admissions committees make are not about you as an individual; they’re about shaping a random group of people into a potential class.

And finally, keep in mind that, in the end, the real choices have always been yours:  where to apply, how to apply, and which offer to accept.  I hope you make your choices wisely.  Let me know what you think by emailing askjohnaboutcollege@gmail.com.  Thanks.