Month of Tough Decisions

April brings tough decisions for admission offices and high school seniors. Over the past two weeks regular admission colleges and universities have been releasing their decisions to students. The news provided to students via emails, calls, and letters set into motion a domino effect of decision after decision.

A denial to a top choice will require a student to rethink their college list. However, an acceptance can sometimes create as much stress and rethinking as a denial as variables such as cost and the finality of making a college choice weigh down on a student. All of the decisions, by students and colleges, have a trickle down affect as colleges may be forced to go to waitlists while thousands of students pray that they do.

For those facing initial rejection, some words of wisdom from people much smarter than I. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, once denied admission at Harvard, "To allow other people's assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake. The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you". Just think Warren Buffet only attended Columbia University because he was denied by Harvard. The result, the Buffet family donated more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008. Buffet on coping with his denial, "You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity.".

What about the "lucky" ones? (Those with the fat envelopes or the phat package according to envelopes sent out by Ithaca College this year) Most students waiting for a decision for a regular admission school already have contingency plan created and admission from a rolling admission school. An acceptance(s) forces students to take a look at all options especially when cost becomes final. The cost variable can force a student to decline their dream school (something that must be agonizing) and can also vault a 3rd, 4th, or 5th choice school up a list in a hurry. Take Michael Greshko who is chronicling his college search in the New York Times. Mike was accepted to his first choice school, Yale, but is being enticed by a scholarship offer from Vanderbilt. While his initial reaction to admission was probably euphoric, his prolonged stress may be greater than that of a student who was denied by their top choice school.

Regular decisions don't apply to two groups: early decision admits and students applying only the rolling admission schools. The first, they've been sitting pretty for months. While the rolling admission admits are in the same boat as those "lucky" regular admission students. They are weighing admission offers and financial aid packages, and perhaps revisiting first, second, and third choice schools, and panicking over making the right or wrong decision.

So now we are in the sprint to the finish. More college visits, financial aid phone calls, family discussions, smiles, tears, and everything else that comes with a college search. And that's even for the students that get in everywhere. The college search has become too glorified, too stressful, and too competitive. The only people that can de-glorify and de-stress the process is the families that are actually going through it. How do you do that, talk as a family at the beginning, middle, and end of the process. Put the search into perspective (like Lee Bollinger and Warren Buffet) and realize that there is more than one college out there to fit a student's needs and desires.

For families just starting the college search if you are a family that would like to see that they aren't the only ones going through the search, visit The Choice, the New York Times blog my over glorify the process and make you feel like everyone applies to Harvard. But, if you read it within your own context, it is chalked full of good information and can be good therapy for stressed out students and families.