• I'm a college admissions coach and have read thousands of applications.
• Successful students have proven adaptability, intellectual vitality, and executive functioning.
• These soft skills aren't easily listed on an application.

After working in college admissions for decades, one thing has become clear to me: The students who stand out are not necessarily those with the most polished résumés or perfect grades.

I've worked on Ivy League admissions committees and as a consultant, so I've reviewed thousands of applications. The strongest candidates almost always have three soft skills: adaptability, intellectual vitality, and executive functioning.

These traits are not always the most visible on paper, but they show up in the choices students make and the stories they tell. When I consider any college application, I look for these three traits to see how the students would adapt to college life and the real world later on.

In my book "Get Real and Get In," I focused on individuals who demonstrated these skills and got into their dream schools. Let's look at how past students exemplified these traits, even before their careers took off.

Adaptability: Turning a "no" into a "yes"

For my book, I spoke with Aaron Kirman, who is now one of the top real estate agents in the country.

He struggled with learning disabilities and a speech impediment throughout his school years. He was held back in first grade and often felt like an outsider academically and socially. He was rejected from every single school he applied to, including the University of Southern California.

But Kirman didn't give up. Fueled by what he described as "a mix of anger, disappointment, and desperation," he wrote a heartfelt letter to USC explaining his challenges and his determination to succeed. That letter made the difference. USC reconsidered and admitted him through a support program for students with learning differences.

As a former Ivy League admissions officer, I would have taken note of this kind of self-advocacy immediately. We looked for students who showed adaptability, resilience, and resourcefulness.

Of course, not every student will have the opportunity to transform rejection into acceptance. But the most compelling stories often emerge when students adapt to everyday challenges — maintaining focus during academic struggles, demonstrating meaningful growth over time, or navigating personal obstacles with grace and purpose.

Intellectual vitality: Asking the bigger questions

Raya Bidshahri, founder of multiple educational platforms, is known today as a futurist and science communicator. But her journey began with a deep, sustained curiosity about the world.

In her Dubai high school, Bidshahri demonstrated remarkable intellectual vitality through several initiatives, most notably, co-founding Intelligent Optimism with her mentor Rohan Roberts. This social network centered a rational, evidence-based, and positive outlook on human progress. The network expanded internationally, eventually growing to hundreds of thousands of followers.

This curiosity and initiative beyond the norm of expectation is what admissions officers call "intellectual vitality." That mindset is gold in admissions.

Bidshahri's entrepreneurial and education-driven projects played a major role in her admission to Boston University. Her application stood out because it reflected an authentic pursuit of knowledge and impact that extended far beyond the comforts of her own mind and community.

Executive functioning: Turning vision into impact

Katlyn Grasso began college thinking she would do both business and pre-med, but she quickly realized her true passion was entrepreneurship.

In high school, Grasso transformed her leadership roles into vehicles for real impact. She co-founded two nonprofits to earn her Girl Scouts Silver and Gold Awards, served as class president, and captained the softball team. What truly distinguished Katlyn wasn't the titles but the substance behind them. Her ability to organize thoughtfully, lead authentically, and follow through relentlessly set her apart.

Whether launching a community program or rallying her teammates during a tough game, she demonstrated a rare combination of strategic vision and execution skills. She lived her values and turned her commitments into meaningful action. In her applications, she was intentional about highlighting her core passions: leadership, business, and learning.

She then framed her activities through that lens, proving executive functioning. It helped her gain admission to Wharton.

As someone who's reviewed thousands of applications, I can say that executive functioning often gets overlooked. But it's a hidden driver of success.

These stories show that getting into college isn't just about what's on your transcript; it's about how you think, adapt, and follow through. For students looking to stand out, cultivating these traits is one of the most powerful ways to show colleges who you are and what you're capable of becoming.

• I'm a high school teacher, and I see many of my students opting out of college for the real world.
• I wish they understood that college is so much more than earning a degree.
• It's a time to meet new people, explore interests, and experiment for your future.

Editor's Note: The author, Ashley Archambault, left her job as a high school teacher in January 2025.

As a high school teacher, I'm often surprised by how many of my students have no intention of going to college. Every year, more students turn to the real world instead.

I understand the practicality of that decision since a degree doesn't always guarantee a job, and the cost of tuition is unfeasible for many families. But for the students who are wavering on the decision, I always try to convince them that the college experience is irreplaceable.

I tell them that college gave me the privilege to pause and consider my future. College was the only time I got to slow down and exist in a protective bubble.

Even though many of them just want to rush into adulthood, I try to explain all the benefits of college — beyond earning a degree.

College classes are more geared toward your interests

For me, the main difference between high school and college was that in college, I had chosen my classes and schedule. It felt like I was designing my own life for the first time. Schoolwork stopped feeling like something I had to do and became something I looked forward to. I began to value what I was learning and took my education seriously.

I remember going out to dinner with my uncle back in college. He asked me if I loved my classes, and when I said I did, I meant it.

I had never enjoyed school as much as I did then because I was finally studying the subjects that interested me. I wish students who were avoiding college because they hate school understood this.

College's slow pace lets you connect with people in ways you can't in the real world

I made all of my closest adult friends while in college. I think that's because I met other like-minded people while studying my areas of interest.

Plus, there seems to be more time in college to foster relationships. Without being thrust into full time careers or having our own families, there was a better balance between obligations and time off, allowing for a more memorable time with friends.

I don't want my students to miss out on this important part of their social lives.

College gives you the space to be curious

Many of my students want to work immediately or attend a technical school. They don't view college as a time to explore their interests.

The beauty of college is that your future is open-ended. You can experiment with your major, your classes, and your interests because anything is possible.

I changed my major a few times, and each time, I felt that I was getting closer to figuring out what I really liked doing. I wouldn't have been afforded that flexibility in the real world.

College is of so much more value than simply a degree

I understand many of my students are opting out of college because of necessity, thanks to rising tuition costs. But if a student can figure out a way to enroll, I always try to push them in that direction. To me, the value of college goes beyond an end to a means.

Many of my students seem to be in a rush to get to adulthood and to make money. However, if they knew what I know now, they'd see that the time between high school and adulthood is a healthy pause.

Ultimately, the opportunity to explore one's interests before making a career choice was more important to me than the degree I earned.

• My daughter was accepted into the University of Chicago, her dream school.
• Once we laid out the costs, she wasn't comfortable with the price tag.
• She decided to reject the offer, and now she's a freshman at the University of Texas.

The trajectory of the college search changed the moment I heard my daughter gasp from her room: She'd been accepted by a highly selective college at the top of her list.

I rushed to her desk to see the message for myself and even asked her to replay it so I could watch the digital confetti scatter down the screen of her laptop. We were both excited and overwhelmed; I was bursting with pride.

Given the prestige of the University of Chicago, I was certain it was where she would end up. I silently started to convince myself I'd be OK with my baby girl moving 1,000 miles away from home.

As exciting as this moment was, the memory of it made it all the more difficult when she eventually rejected their offer of acceptance.

Finding the right fit was more difficult than we thought

There are so many factors to consider when deciding where to apply to college — size, location, cost, and area of study, to name a few. For my daughter, what mattered most was academic reputation, cost, and social life.

After all the applications were in, the tours were done, and acceptances were sent out, her top two choices were the University of Texas at Austin, our state flagship school, and UChicago, the school I was certain she'd pick.

My daughter graduated fourth in her class, so we expected plenty of merit-based scholarship opportunities for her. What we learned was that the availability of scholarships was directly proportional to the college's desirability. In other words, if it's a place lots of students want to attend, there aren't as many merit-based aid opportunities. Of course, my high-achieving student preferred the highly desirable schools.

Lucky for her, we had been preparing for that her whole life. But it wasn't that easy.

Cost became a factor we needed to prioritize

To better understand the financial impact of each choice, my husband created a spreadsheet, comparing the cost of each school to what we had in her college savings account.

This method laid out the information in a way that she couldn't argue with: UChicago, the prestigious school that selected her and made her heart go pitter-patter, was roughly double the cost of the University of Texas.

By including the cost of travel to and from Chicago with the cost of attendance, any possibility of us helping her pay for graduate school in the future was basically eliminated. She wasn't entirely comfortable with that.

Once she was accepted into the University of Texas honors program, there wasn't much left to debate. Being part of that honors program nearly leveled the playing field between UT and UChicago as far as undergrad academics were concerned.

That left cost and social life as the two remaining factors. The cost was pretty clear, thanks to the spreadsheet. Social life? She knew no one attending UChicago, but one of her best friends from high school would be at UT — and needed a roommate.

We had to embrace what was truly the best fit for our student

Once she officially chose the University of Texas and rejected the University of Chicago, I worried that my daughter would regret saying no to a college that was such an honor to be accepted into.

However, once she committed to the University of Texas, she was all-in. Now a college freshman, she's doing well at UT. She's achieving her academic goals, has a circle of friends on whom she can depend, and isn't stressed about her finances.

One thing she hadn't counted on was meeting other students who'd had a similar experience to hers; she's met several people in her honors program who also rejected offers from prestigious colleges.

I'm thankful we took the time to figure out what mattered most in our daughter's college search. I'm even more thankful that she's way less than 1,000 miles from home.

• I ensured my daughter was on top of the college admissions process since her freshman year.
• It was a stressful process, but my daughter eventually got into her dream school.
• I thought the stress was over, but she had much more to do in applying for scholarships.

I feel like I did everything right in helping my teen get into college. We started prepping four years ago in her freshman year of high school. That's when I encouraged her to create a spreadsheet of her activities and awards that she could add to every year.

My husband and I took her on college visits during her sophomore and junior years. We toured small colleges close to home, medium size universities a bit farther away, and a large school across the country. We also contacted admissions counselors and professors in her area of interest to ask questions and learn more.

The summer before her senior year, I nudged her to start writing her essay for the Common Application. After all, a college planning website recommended this timeline to prevent the stress of trying to write it once school was in session. We even attended a seminar on how best to describe each activity on the Common App within the 150-character limit.

She submitted her applications in the fall of her senior year, and we were ecstatic as the acceptances rolled in, including to her dream school. But little did I know that was only the beginning.

The applications and essays didn't end there

Once the college application process was over, I felt joy and relief. However, I was surprised and stressed by what came next. Neither her hard work nor my oversight of her journey to college were done.

First, she committed to her dream school and decided to apply to their honors college. This application required an academic statement about her proposed field of study, a teacher's letter of recommendation, and an essay. We hoped she could repurpose the essay she had already written for the Common App, but alas, there was a different prompt to address.

She spent weeks on this application, compiling and refining it — all while juggling school, a part-time job, and a varsity sport. It was like applying to college all over. I hovered in the background, offering support and proofreading services, plus some nagging to get it done.

Shortly after completing the honors college application, she focused on the university's scholarship application for various awards. Thankfully, the main part of this application was similar to that of the Common App, with a list of activities and awards, but there was a requirement for yet another essay — with a different prompt and word limit.

The housing application came next, which seemed early to me. However, my daughter's school of choice had a priority deadline of January 31. If she wanted the best chance of getting a primo dorm room, then she needed to describe her living habits, rank her top five dorm choices, and submit the down payment.

It was one more application to keep track of, complete thoughtfully, and submit on time.

Lastly (we hoped) was her high school's local scholarship application. While it was amazing that so many community organizations wanted to award students $500 or $1,000 scholarships, it was yet another lift to apply for them.

Although we were both getting burned out with the process, I encouraged her to keep going and offered proofreading and emotional support.

After scanning through dozens of descriptions, she found several local opportunities for which she was eligible. One required a 200-word essay about perseverance, and another requested 1,000 words about what sports have taught her. She also needed an additional letter of recommendation — this time from a coach rather than a teacher.

As she clicked submit for hopefully the final time, we both exhaled and hugged each other.

The end is in sight

It's the spring of her senior year, and we are waiting to hear the outcomes of everything she applied for after getting accepted into college. These applications took effort, so this period of waiting seems almost relaxing.

Of course, there are still things to do. We'll need to decide when she will attend orientation, and we are exploring disability services. Then, there will be typical college preparation tasks like shopping for her dorm room and taking math placement tests.

I felt like a project manager overseeing my daughter's work on these extra applications. They surprised me because I thought the biggest stressor would be applying to college — but I was wrong. It seems the application process for college is a much bigger task than I ever could've comprehended four years ago.

Thankfully, my daughter tackled these additional tasks with maturity and perseverance. For that, I am grateful and proud.

When Em graduated from the Pratt Institute in May 2020, two months into the pandemic, there were simply no jobs for a sculpture major, even in New York. "That absolutely set the tone for the rest of my attempt at a career," Em, now 26, says.

So they took an intensive nine-month coding boot camp and started applying for tech jobs. After they got rejected from about 10 roles, the entire tech industry was besieged by mass layoffs in 2022, leaving Em even more dispirited. "It was just another pathway to shit," they recall thinking. Eventually, they found work as an office manager at a nonprofit for a while and quickly lost their coding skills. Last year, Em applied to more than 400 jobs across the communications, administrative, and service industries — and was rejected by every one.

"I am miserable, and it is breaking my body down," Em tells me over the phone from California, where they've been living at a relative's house scraping by on $700 a month from contract work. They add, flatly, "I am not living a life that I feel is worth living at this moment."

Em's experience with such unrelenting rejection may sound extreme, but their story speaks to a panic and despair pervasive among members of Gen Z. Lately, I find that the tone people over 30 most often use when talking about today's young adults is less a reflexively finger-wagging "kids these days" and more a genuine sympathy over (mixed with relief to have dodged) the particular set of historical circumstances they've faced as they've come of age: COVID-19, climate anxiety, the chaos of the Trump administrations, the internet's wholesale usurpation of IRL culture, AI's potential to upend entire industries. Gen Z has been called the most anxious generation, the most risk-averse generation, the most stressed generation, the most burned-out generation, and the loneliest generation. Last year, the World Happiness Report dubbed Zoomers the unhappiest generation.

But there's another superlative — one exacerbating all that stress, anxiety, loneliness, and burnout — that's so far been overlooked. By several measures, Gen Z may be the most rejected generation in human history.

Every cohort believes it has drawn the shortest straw; as Will Smith, a Gen Xer, famously groused, "Parents just don't understand!" But as Gen Zers strain to establish themselves, they face a uniquely fraught tension between unprecedented technology-enabled opportunity — infinite possibilities a click, swipe, or DM away — and an unprecedented scale of rejection. From education to careers to romance, never before have young adults had this much access to prospective yeses. And, in turn, never before have young adults been told no so frequently.

What does the experience of this new scale of rejection do to a young person's psyche, and to Gen Z's collective state of mind? And how will it reverberate through the rest of society as Gen Z eventually takes the reins of power — when the rejectees become the rejectors? In interviews with psychologists, therapists, guidance counselors, career coaches, and more than a dozen Gen Zers (most of whom, like Em, requested I use their first name only to not hinder their job hunt), the ascendant generation's worldview-warping experience of mass rejection in the dating scene, college admissions, and the job market came into focus. At stake is not young adults' egos or sense of entitlement but our expectation of agency in an increasingly mediated world.

Through the 1960s, most Americans got married in their early 20s to partners they met through their social circles. Today, they spend nearly a decade longer dating; the median age for first marriage is 31.1 for men and 29.2 for women. During that additional eon, they're also equipped with an arsenal of apps that can summon — and terminate — new prospects on a daily, if not hourly, basis. If we tallied up the literal sum of all the unreciprocated swipes, DMs, follows, or texts that create today's ambient mode of romantic rejection, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that a typical Zoomer on the apps is getting rejected by, and rejecting, more prospective partners in a week than a typical married boomer has in their entire life.

The paradox of online dating has been thoroughly documented: Despite having more access to potential partners than ever, young people have invented vocabularies to describe the endless purgatorial disappointments of "ghosting," "situationships," "breadcrumbing," and the hellscape of the apps themselves. Last year, Hinge surveyed 15,000 people about their dating views. Ninety percent of Gen Z respondents said they wanted to find love, and 44% said they had little or no dating experience.

"That was a surprising number for me," Logan Ury, Hinge's director of relationship science, tells me. Much of that gap is due to Gen Z's heightened risk aversion, Ury says, something she attributes to a social-media-augmented awareness of the world as a scary place and widespread "overparenting," or helicopter parenting. "Rejection is intimidating for everyone, but Gen Z daters seem to feel it more acutely," she adds. Fifty-six percent of Gen Z respondents said that fear of rejection held them back from pursuing a relationship, compared with 51% for millennial respondents.

So as young people relentlessly reject each other, many are too scared to risk truly putting themselves out there in the first place. "It is so easy to get involved with someone and then detach," Catherine, a recent Barnard grad, says. "I have friends who have been texting with people that they met on dating apps for weeks or months, and yet they have never met in person. I actually had a friend who had a date all set up, and she went to the restaurant, and by the time she got there, the guy unmatched her and blocked her on everything before they even had a date."

Gen Z has normalized mutual risk aversion, says Jeff Guenther, a licensed therapist who counsels millions of lovelorn Gen Z TikTok users as @therapyjeff. "It's this funny situation where it's OK to not get back to people, he says. "Sometimes that's empowering, but then there's the negative effect of all these little mini rejections that eventually cut so deep that somebody might not decide to be vulnerable." No wonder that breakup coaches who talk in therapy-speak and dating influencers who claim they can definitively discern "green flags" versus "red flags" have proliferated, each of them promising to demystify the romantic ambiguity plaguing Gen Z.

Guenther says today's young adults seem quicker to discard connections in favor of the seemingly unlimited reserves of suitors awaiting just a swipe away. "There's the resilience that comes from the frequent rejection that makes them great at moving on, but then they're less equipped for the real-world relational challenges that require compromise and patience," he says.

But Natalie Buchwald, the founder and clinical director of Manhattan Mental Health Counseling, says she sees a distinction between healthy resilience and the blasé, noncommittal attitude she sees many Gen Zers deploy to cope with rejection. "I'm finding there's more of a pervasive numbness that looks like resilience," she says. "But that's not resilience; that's disconnect."

Meanwhile, more technology-augmented opportunity has also bred much more rejection in the college admissions industrial complex. Until 1960, more than half of all college applicants applied to just one school. In the 2023-24 admissions season, the average applicant applied to 6.65 Common App-affiliated schools alone, up 7% from the previous year. Just in the past two decades, the number of applications to the country's 67 most selective colleges has tripled to nearly 2 million a year. Gen Zers are knocking on more doors to their future than ever and, in turn, having more doors slammed in their faces. For some, this is shaping their core beliefs on motivation and merit.

Dylan, a 22-year-old New York University student whose high school credentials included varsity rugby and a 4.7 weighted GPA, tells me that he applied to roughly 20 schools — including most of the Ivies and Stanford — a number he felt "insecure" about compared with his peers. "I know a lot of people who applied to 20 to 40," he says. In the end, he received only three or four acceptances, which was demoralizing. "I just remember feeling like it wasn't necessarily our qualifications that mattered, that it was just like, hopefully, the right person read it on the right day."

Ella, a 20-year-old from Allentown, Pennsylvania, applied to 12 colleges and got rejected from 10. "I had so much hubris and unfounded confidence," she says. "I just thought, well, I'll only want to go to college if I can get into a 'prestigious school.' They ask, 'Why us?' obviously, and I couldn't tell them why besides it's Harvard." In a Substack post she published before her high school graduation, she described how at odds her tenfold rejection was with her belief in simply working hard to succeed. "I thought that I was going to be someone," she wrote. While she's now a junior at Bryn Mawr, Ella tells me she still hasn't gotten over the sting of going to a seemingly less elite school.

Others have taken rejection to court. In February, an 18-year-old from Palo Alto, California, who applied to 18 schools and was rejected from 16, sued the University of California system and the University of Washington, alleging racial discrimination against "highly-qualified Asian-American candidates." "When the rejections rolled in one after another, I was dumbfounded. What started with surprise turned into frustration, and then finally it turned into anger," the student's father told the New York Post.

As a millennial and former teenage overachiever, I also call up the best expert I personally knew: my high school counselor, Kim Klokkenga, who has helped wrangle the collegiate aspirations of the student body at Central Illinois' Dunlap High School for the past 30 years. In her view, the commercialization of college applications is as much responsible as a new generation of helicopter parenting, along with the technologically mediated literal ease of application.

"Back in the day, I would literally ask a student how many envelopes they wanted," Klokkenga says. "I didn't have people applying to 20-plus schools, like now. It might've been 10 or 12, and that was outlandish!" (In case you were wondering, I'd been one of her favorite nut jobs, with a total of nine applications in 2010.)

When I ask if she thinks Gen Z students are handling rejection better or worse than previous generations, she says she can't say for sure. "I have fewer students come in devastated that they didn't get into their schools," Klokkenga says. Perhaps they were already steeling themselves against rejection — another shade of disconnect. "I am hearing students say, 'Well, I wasn't expecting to get in; I just wanted to apply to see,'" Klokkenga adds. "I think they're just throwing them out there sometimes to see what'll stick."

Barry Schwartz, a psychologist who famously observed the relationship between consumer choice and satisfaction in his 2004 book, "The Paradox of Choice," distinguishes two types of people: the "maximizers," who want the absolute best option, and the much-happier "satisficers," who go with the "good enough" option. Today's perceived infinite-choice standard seems to have given rise to legions of maximizers among Gen Z. Per Schwartz's central argument that overabundance of choice tends to lead to more disappointment, this does not seem to bode well for their general well-being.

But what happens when one's choices are preemptively limited, perhaps relentlessly, via rejection? "It's possible there's a kind of resilience that people develop when you're applying to 50 schools and it doesn't hurt anymore to get rejected by 47," Schwartz tells me. But, much like Buchwald says of rejected romantics, he sees the "whatever" reaction among rejected applicants as a "very self-protective response."

"If you minimize the significance beforehand, then the pain of failure will be less consequential," Schwartz says. "It kind of drives me crazy to see people doing this, especially if it's a reflection of their effort to protect themselves rather than just their cynicism about living in modern society."

College is its own gauntlet, but the scale of rejection in the job-hunt is an order of magnitude more hellish. Via LinkedIn, Workday, and the ubiquity of other online job boards, many Zoomers apply to more jobs in a day than many lucky Boomers have in their lives. In February 2025, the average knowledge worker job opening received 244 applications, up from 93 in February 2019, according to data the hiring software provider Greenhouse shared with BI. That's 243 nos — or ghosted applications — for every yes. This scattershot reality is not specific to Gen Z, but it's the only reality that the incoming workforce has known.

Among the Gen Zers I talked to, their "body counts" of submitted job applications were regularly in the hundreds. Christopher, a 24-year-old who graduated with a finance degree, says he'd applied to 400 jobs in finance and 200 in merchandising before finding a job that still wasn't what he really wanted. His computer science grad friends have been sending applications in the thousands, he says.

Even though the logistics of applying are more or less streamlined, Gen Zers note the disconnect between the effort they're expected to make versus the consideration given in return. Colleges at least have to formally tell you no, while jobs, like a dating app match, tend to ghost at any point in the process. Is it really a mystery why some Gen Zers have started ghosting employers back?

Since graduating from Barnard last year, Catherine has applied to 300 jobs and interviewed for 20 of them. The 23-year-old says her college counselor's advice to deeply invest in her job applications — via networking, seeking referrals, getting personalized feedback on résumés — has come to feel ridiculous, given the fact that you could sit through six rounds of interviews, a practice test, and more for a single role and then, after months of waiting, not even get a proper rejection email. For her, the resounding lesson is hard to ignore: It's better not to hope for too much or to try too hard.

"You have no idea if you're even doing it right," Catherine says of the impersonal process, which is often mediated by an unknowable (and highly fallible) screening algorithm. "You don't have any ability to get feedback. It feels like being in a hedge maze, and there's probably a path through, but you feel like you keep running into walls and you're like, 'Man, if I could just talk to the person who built this.'" She adds: "I worked so hard for four years, and I built this great network and support system, and now I'm just sending applications into the void."

For Gen Zers, the disenfranchising reality of chasing entire flocks of wild geese has diminished their self-esteem. Lanya, a 22-year-old who graduated last year with a degree in media studies, tells me she thought she had done everything right as a first-gen college student who counted a Nasdaq internship among her achievements — and feels incredibly guilty that she has yet to find a job. "Self-worth-wise, this is the lowest I've ever felt," she says. "This is my time to say thank you and pay them back by showing them what they sacrificed was worth it, but I can't help them the way I want to."

Dylan, the finance grad, says the job hunt made him modify his expectations for the future. "I just remember applying to so many and feeling like: I don't care what I get. I just need to survive. I'm not scared of failing; I'm just scared of dying."

For others, mass rejection can be liberating. Several Gen Zers tell me their collection of "we regret to inform you's" in their inboxes has inspired them to invest more deeply in passion projects, move abroad, or start their own businesses. For many Gen Zers, the influencer economy is the one job market that seems legible to them — and it's always hiring.

As Gen Z grows older, the rejection and risk they face could easily compound. If you're starting out with a high degree of risk aversion, any pedestrian experience of personal rejection might harden that stance — which means we could end up seeing Gen Z calcify into incredibly risk-averse adults (and parents). Those who are resilient enough to weather the new standard scale of rejection — those who continue to shoot their shots — will eventually gain a firm foothold. But in college, careers, and romance, it's often less a matter of perseverance or merit than it is pure luck. For much of Gen Z, success is increasingly boiling down to a numbers game.

Is the real problem simply the overabundance of options, which puts Gen Zers' expectations on a collision course with reality? No help, of course, is the 24/7 firehose of comparison and fantasy provided by social media — which has shaped Gen Z's construct of reality pretty much straight from the womb. Schwartz, the psychologist, acknowledges that a zillion potential mates, schools, or careers that are seemingly so accessible are liable to make us all feel disappointment. "Some of us live in such a culture of abundance that even if you find some way to limit the options, you are thinking about what's out there," he says. Here, I think of a line from Tony Tulathimutte's aptly titled 2024 book, "Rejection," an interlocking series of horror-esque stories of young people who are puzzled by and rage at the world for their arbitrary exclusion: "His sadness, he knows, is a symptom of his entitlement, so he is not even entitled to his sadness."

But Schwartz also believes that the experience of rejection is markedly different from that of disappointment. When you're underwhelmed by your Netflix selection, or when you order what turns out to be a disappointing entrée, it's easy to have order envy for your table mates' more tantalizing plates. But while making that choice was a matter of your own agency, "a rejection is a comment on you," Schwartz says. "It's very hard to just say to yourself, 'Well, Stanford rejects 96% of its applicants. It's impossible to get in," he adds. "It's not a statement about me; it's a crapshoot.' You can say all that stuff, but my guess is you don't really believe it."

This, for me, is the most tragic element of Gen Z's rejection arc. We can expect experiences with personal rejection to trigger material consequences and a formative reckoning with one's self-worth or belief systems — taken as a collective, it's what shapes each generation so that they can turn around and bray at the next one about what they've survived.

But for Gen Z, their fates are increasingly shaped by the uniquely depersonalized, and depersonalizing, forces of technology, primarily the algorithms that pervade modern dating, college admissions, and the hiring process. These algorithms set the rules of engagement for nearly every aspect of Gen Zers' lives, making once analog processes utterly streamlined yet mystifying. No wonder various corners of the culture have responded with cottage industries of layoff coaches, résumé consultants, professional matchmakers, emotional "courses" and boot camps, and countless influencers who espouse how to "hack" life's algos. For now, the onus is still placed on the individual Gen Zer to buck the system and learn the hacks; it remains to be seen whether Gen Z will collectively reject the very sorting mechanisms that are failing them.

"There's this technology, whether it's the algorithm or AI, that's sort of against you, and that's something to take into consideration," says Guenther, the TikTok-famous therapist. "You're not being rejected by actual people, but you're being filtered out or rejected by technology. And maybe the anger should be directed at Apple and Google and Tinder and Facebook or Meta."

Yet this anger is curiously absent in all my conversations with Gen Zers. For one thing, they're savvy enough to understand that technology itself isn't worth blaming if you aren't addressing the human biases codified in the automation. Instead, the predominant mood was one of resignation, or perhaps acceptance. "It's a numbers game," one current college student says, or a "waiting game."

When we speak again several months after our first conversation, Em has a promising update: After applying to more than 400 jobs, they've found a position at a perfume shop in Oregon. Amid the grueling job hunt, David Graeber's book "Bullshit Jobs" dramatically reframed their view of careerism. "He talks about how humans feel when they can't make an effect on anything — it is not only psychologically traumatizing, but it creates physical problems," Em says, adding that the perfume shop was one of the best jobs they'd ever had. It's 35 hours a week with no benefits. But, Em says, "every single day in this job, I get the chance to make someone's day — to actually see my impact on the world, even if on a small scale."

Delia Cai is a writer living in New York. She runs the culture and media newsletter, Deez Links.

• I work in college admissions, and one of my students used ChaptGPT to write his essay.
• I was angry, but then I saw all the ways AI can help students during the admissions process.
• Students can use AI as an idea generator to help organize all their essentials.

When ChatGPT first entered the scene, I rolled my eyes.

As a college admissions coach and author of "Get Real and Get In," I've always believed in the power of deep reflection and authentic storytelling. The idea of using AI felt like a shortcut that stripped away the most valuable part of the process: helping students discover their unique voices.

Everything changed with one student.

He was bright, but his early drafts were choppy, unfocused, and thin. He struggled to get his ideas on paper, and deadlines loomed. Then, suddenly, polished essays appeared in my inbox. They were formulaic but well-structured. An AI detector confirmed my suspicions: 100% AI-generated.

I was furious — not just at the student, but at the idea that AI might undermine the very foundation of my work. I emailed him a stern warning that we would not be able to support his work unless he stopped using AI.

To his credit, he listened. He scrapped the AI-generated drafts and worked harder to infuse his personality into his writing. He wound up producing essays that showcased his intellectual depth and unique perspective. And guess what? He got into his dream school — an Ivy League.

That experience forced me to rethink my stance. I wondered: Was I resisting AI because it threatened my role — or because I hadn't learned how to guide students on how to use it?

After experimenting with Generative AI in my own workflow—using it for email responses and project timelines — I saw its potential to streamline processes. This inspired me to integrate AI to make the admissions process feel less overwhelming.

AI could be a stress reliever for students applying to college

As someone who works closely with high school students, I know firsthand how stressful the college admissions process can be. I've seen students stress out and sometimes opt out of the process altogether because it's just too much.

College admissions should not precipitate a mental health nightmare, although I know all too well that it can. When I applied to college, I got stress-induced pneumonia due to the pressure.

While AI won't change the stakes of college admissions, I've realized it can help reduce stress and overwhelm by handling repetitive, time-consuming tasks, allowing students to focus on the deeper, more meaningful parts of their applications.

Some schools and professors outright ban AI, fearing it will lead to plagiarism. But let's be real: AI isn't going anywhere.

Instead of treating AI like a forbidden shortcut, we need to teach students how to use it ethically.

AI will not write your essay, but it can help brainstorm, refine ideas, and suggest edits. AI will not replace human mentorship, but it can free up time for deeper conversations.

How AI can help students with the admissions process

Students have to answer a lot of prompts when applying to colleges. Many students can get stuck generating interesting, unique ideas to write about. That's when they can turn to AI.

Here's what students can type into ChaptGPT: "Help me generate outlines for three unique essay topics based on my experience with [insert key event, passion, or challenge]."

Additionally, some of my students struggle with executive function. Executive function is what Harvard researchers liken to an "air traffic control system" for the brain. These struggles — often linked to PTSD, anxiety, ADHD, or depression — make it harder to stay organized.

AI can serve as a life-changing accessibility tool for these — and all — students.

For example, Fyxer provides a structured pre-loaded response to emails so students stay on track with admissions and school correspondence.

Voice-to-text AI through Google Docs allows students to dictate their thoughts before organizing them into an essay.

Additionally, generative AI creates bullet-point responses to common interview questions. Students can use their own voice and style to practice the points aloud.

We need to integrate AI with human connection

AI hasn't replaced human connection in my coaching; it has deepened it.

By reducing logistical overwhelm, students can focus on intellectual depth.

By offering adaptive support, students with learning differences and mental health challenges can engage in ways that work for them.

By streamlining tedious tasks, I can dedicate more time to meaningful mentorship.

The future of education isn't AI vs. human connection; it's both.

For students, this means less stress and more creativity. For educators, it means focusing on what really matters: supporting students to self-discovery and to build real-world, future-ready skills.

The college admissions process doesn't have to be a mental marathon. AI — used wisely — can refocus students on the journey of self-discovery, intellectual curiosity, and confidence — exactly what admissions officers want to see.

• I had doubts about attending the University of Connecticut, a state school.
• Before jumping at the chance to transfer, I decided to try to make the best of my current college.
• I ultimately decided transferring to urban Boston University was the best decision for me.

I always knew that the University of Connecticut wasn't the right place for me.

Despite UConn's stellar academics, its rural campus offered little appeal to me. Plus, its emphasis on science and engineering didn't align with my creative interests.

I had been rejected from all three of my top schools and only landed on UConn because it was the cheapest tuition. With my decision to attend UConn, my dreams of leaving Connecticut and going to school in a city came to a swift end. That was a hard pill to swallow.

Nevertheless, in August 2023, I packed up my bags, stuffed them into the back of my mom's car, and started my college journey. I joined clubs, made friends, and even pushed myself to take on new challenges. However, despite trying to make the best of UConn, my desire to go to a different school persisted.

I originally struggled to adapt as a freshman

As someone who never quite found their place in high school, I romanticized the idea of college. Coming to UConn, I had very rigid expectations for myself and my experience.

I never stopped to consider the challenges I might face or the possibility that I wouldn't love every minute of my time there. I expected everything to fall into place as soon as I arrived, and when it didn't, I felt lost.

I knew I wanted to be somewhere else, but I had no idea what that place was or how to get there.

I turned to a close friend, who had transferred the year before, for advice. She told me that the key to a successful transition was to "make sure the reason you're transferring has something to do with the school."

This advice stuck with me. The transition to college is hard, and it's important to acknowledge that it's not always going to be a smooth ride. I had to make sure that the problem was the school itself — not my struggle to adapt to this new life change.

I knew then that I couldn't just flee UConn because I was struggling. I had to settle in and see if it really was the wrong place for me.

I tried to make the best of UConn, but it just wasn't the right school

Coming back from winter break, I decided to give my second semester at UConn my best shot. I came into the spring semester with a more open-minded approach. I hosted my own radio show, became the social media manager of one of my clubs, and continued to develop deep connections.

By the time April came, I had turned my experience around. Yet, despite my newfound happiness, my desire to transfer continued to linger.

The moment I truly knew it was time to transfer came in the middle of March. I was walking back to my dorm room after a night spent with friends, laughing. I remember taking in my surroundings, the cool winter air, and thinking to myself, "This is great, but I have to go."

I ultimately transferred because I was unhappy in a rural environment.

I'm glad I transferred colleges based on something I could fix — not because I was searching for something unrealistic or intangible. If I had, I might have experienced the same challenges I did at UConn.

I'm glad I gave myself the time to explore my options

I transferred to Boston University, and the urban environment was the right fit for me.

During my process as a transfer, I've learned that it's easy to want to leave when the going gets tough. But I quickly realized it wasn't just a difficult transition; my school of choice was the problem. It just wasn't the right fit.

Ultimately, you know what's best for you, but it's also important to give yourself time to settle and adjust — and then you can make a definitive decision.

The time I spent at UConn was definitely transformative. It taught me a lot about myself — how I handle stress, how I deal with new environments, and what I value in a community.

But it also reinforced the idea that if something doesn't feel right, it's OK to move on.

• My son just graduated from high school and is heading to college.
• He's making life-changing decisions, like what he wants to major in and where he wants to live.
• I'm excited for him, but it's scary watching my kid make such huge decisions.

Dominic, my oldest son, is 17 years old. He recently graduated from high school, finishing his senior year a semester early. He also recently learned that his ACT score and GPA earned him a great scholarship offer at the University of Nevada — right here in our hometown.

We're four kids into this parenting journey, and most of our parenting "firsts"— teething and ER visits and navigating the terrible twos and the even more terrible tween stage — have happened with Dom. He's our "learner" kid, the one with whom we largely figured out how we navigate this whole parenting thing. And now, we're learning again.

This time, it's how to parent an almost college student poised to spread his wings and make his way into the world. Forget sleep training — this is one of the most unnerving things we've experienced as parents.

The stakes are so much higher as my son prepares for his future

I've always been open to letting my kids fail. But letting a little kid struggle as they learn how to tie their shoes, pour their own cereal, or ride a bike is one thing. Standing back as your almost-of-legal-age son makes decisions that could affect the rest of his life is something else entirely.

Dom is in the middle of making some big decisions. He wants to pursue an engineering degree in computer science, possibly with a minor in electrical engineering, so that he can make enough money to fund his love of backpacking, climbing, and generally being outdoors.

He's thinking about living in the dorms, how to balance his job at a local hardware store with his classes, and whether he can make a semester abroad work with such a demanding major. Really, he's making plans to go and grow up on us, and I'm as proud as I am stricken.

The stakes are so much higher now. The decisions he'll be facing in the not-too-distant future have big implications. The idea of him living in a dorm — or, my goodness, halfway across the world — is equally thrilling and terrifying.

On the one hand, I think, "What an incredible opportunity!" On the other, I think, "He's only a kid!"

I want my son to enjoy college, but I have to let go first

I think back to my own college experience and the questionable choices I made at times. I lived, I learned, and I have hilarious stories to tell. But picturing my son in those situations kicks my protective parenting instincts into overdrive. I want him to have funny stories that he can look back on in equal parts amusement and disbelief. But I also want to keep him safe and protected and home with me forever — even though I know that's neither doable nor what's best for him (or me, to be perfectly honest).

I keep coming back to the same thing: He's a good kid with a good head on his shoulders. He's serious, kind, and empathetic. He's scarily driven when he's focused on something. He repeats the advice we've given him time and time again: Do the right thing, even when it's not the easy thing.

Wherever he's living and whatever choices he's making, all I can do is trust that the skills we've worked so hard to impart — resilience, work ethic, and a strong sense of who he is — are enough. When I think about it like that, all those big decisions he's going to make don't seem quite as scary.

• I decided to attend the University of Georgia, a state school.
• Now that I'm in my fourth year, I know I made the right decision to go to a public school.
• It was cheaper, I had more opportunity to explore my interests, and I'm ready for my career.

Deciding where to go to college was one of the most important — and stressful — decisions I have ever made.

I considered many factors — from cost to location to school spirit. After carefully weighing my options, I chose to attend my state school.

Now that I'm in my fourth year at the University of Georgia, I know I made the right decision. Here's why I think everyone should attend state schools.

Affordability

One of the most compelling reasons to attend a state school is affordability. In addition to lower tuition for in-state students, my state has a lottery-funded scholarship that covers full tuition for many students.

This financial support has not only reduced my debt but also given me the chance to do an intensive study abroad program in Hawaii and the flexibility to consider graduate school without significant financial stress.

Flexibility in academic choices

Early in my first year, I realized something that many college students can relate to: My initial college major didn't align with my career goals.

Fortunately, my state school offers hundreds of majors. With the help of my advisor, I transitioned seamlessly between colleges, going from environmental economics to management and eventually to my current major, management information systems.

Diverse course offerings

In addition to a broad array of majors, my state school offers a wide range of electives.

I have been encouraged to step outside my comfort zone and discover new passions in global agriculture, ecology, jazz, ballroom dance, and golf.

The unique courses I took during my first year ultimately led me to add two certificates — sustainability and leadership — to my degree.

Campus life and resources

With hundreds of student-run clubs and organizations on campus, state schools offer endless opportunities to pursue even the most niche interests. I am involved in athletics (Club Tennis), professional groups (Women in Technology and Women in Business), community building (Honors Student Council), and volunteering (Serve UGA).

I'm also a member of the Honors College, which gives me a smaller group in a larger student body and the opportunity to take advanced courses.

The resources available on campus are equally impressive. My school has multiple dining halls with diverse cuisines, spacious libraries, a state-of-the-art gym facility, and a comprehensive health center.

These amenities have helped me maintain my physical and mental well-being while prioritizing academics.

Career and networking opportunities

Attending my state school has been instrumental in jump-starting my career. The active alumni network is an invaluable resource, with many alumni returning to campus to help with recruiting efforts.

When I reached out, alumni were more than willing to conduct mock interviews and guide me through the job application process, which was incredibly helpful.

Additionally, my state school's strong regional reputation has made identifying and targeting companies easier during my job search. Employers see firsthand the impact of my university through our well-prepared graduates, giving students a competitive advantage in the job market. This helped me to secure a full-time consulting offer before graduation.

Proximity to home

As the oldest child in my family, I was nervous to be the first to leave the house and head off to college. I was afraid of feeling homesick and isolated from my family. Attending my state school allowed me to stay close enough to drive home on weekends during my freshman year, which eased my transition.

As I became more involved on campus and found my place, I now go home infrequently as a fourth-year. However, knowing that home is just a short drive away if needed is comforting.

Attending a state school has provided me with an affordable, flexible, and enriching college experience. From diverse academic offerings to career opportunities and a strong sense of community, my decision to enroll in a state school has been one of the best choices I've ever made.

For students weighing their college options, I strongly recommend considering the many benefits of attending a state school.

• I was accepted into the Beacon School, one of New York City's most competitive high schools.
• The teachers were free to create unique curriculums, which were difficult but inspiring.
• My classmates were very successful, pushing me to a higher level of achievement.

In many ways, the Beacon School is a New York City public high school like any other: fluorescent lighting, student competition, and bathrooms that smell suspiciously of bubblegum.

But one thing stood out when I first toured Beacon in middle school. It wasn't the neon lockers, the museum-worthy student artwork, or even the basement dedicated to music production. Instead, I noted that out of all of the tours I'd been on — and as my parents can attest, I'd been on many — Beacon's student tour guide was the only one who spoke with true confidence, knowledge, and passion. She exuded preparedness and resilience like she could take on any challenge.

"That's what I want to be like," I said to myself. "I need to go here."

Getting into Beacon was my hope and dream for months, but I knew it was one of the most competitive schools in the city. When I finally found out I got in, I cried. I knew Beacon's reputation as a top New York City high school ensured an intellectually challenging road ahead, but I also knew that I would be all the better for it.

The curriculum was difficult but inspiring

One of Beacon's most unique qualities is that the students are exempt from most New York State Regents exams, so we didn't waste time with scantrons and multiple-choice quizzes.

It also gives our teachers more freedom to design classes however they want. In my sophomore year world history class, for example, my teacher had us read "Al-Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern" by John Gray. This book is not an easy read for a 10th grader, as it discusses difficult subjects like terrorism and modernism. This was the most challenging piece I'd ever read, and yet, since my teacher assumed we could do it, my classmates and I were determined not to disappoint.

With such high expectations, my head often felt like an overstuffed suitcase. Facts about the Silk Road, geometric logic, el subjuntivo, and "The Great Gatsby" were packed into every nook and cranny of my brain. The end of each school day assured me that I could and would master challenging concepts.

The competition was fierce because my classmates were so successful

Attending Beacon often felt like being at the forefront of something electrifying. My friends were inspiring activists, professional journalists, well-practiced soccer stars, and documentarians in the making. They were photographers, bandmates, and award-winning debaters.

Such people were the best part of Beacon and gave way to what every student should experience: the feeling of being surrounded by people who are so smart and driven that you can only hope to keep up.

These students would have been successful no matter where they ended up but put them all together, and you get graduating classes whose ideas, passions, and futures have been molded, influenced, and made brighter by those around them.

Because of the high-achieving people I was surrounded with, however, Beacon sometimes felt like a bubble. Since everyone was so ambitious and determined to get ahead, the competition for limited AP class seats, teacher recommendations, and leadership positions could get intense. I sometimes felt like I was falling behind, and when I wasn't accepted to an elite American college — a goal influenced by the expectations of those around me — I felt like I was less than my peers.

Even so, if I hadn't been exposed to such competition, I never would have known I could reach so high or go so far.

I learned exactly what I needed to at Beacon

The day after I graduated from Beacon, I returned to fulfill one final goal of my high school career: giving a school tour.

As we made our way from the seventh to the first floor, I told a group of Beacon-parents-to-be about the teachers who changed me, the clubs I'd miss, and the friends I'd always keep in contact with. I felt every bit the confident, resilient person I'd first associated with Beacon.

I left knowing that every school should be as formative and every student as lucky to be given the power, strength, and potential that Beacon gave me.

Sophie Landis is a first-year student at McGill University in Montreal. Connect with her on LinkedIn here.

• All the Ivy League schools I applied to rejected me.
• My biggest mistake was not fully understanding Ivy League admissions.
• Now, as a college freshman at a different school, I understand that the Ivy League isn't everything.

I was so nervous I couldn't speak. All I could do was stare at the words on my screen: Brown University. View status update.

I closed my eyes, tried to calm myself, and told myself it would be OK. I opened my eyes and clicked the button.

Immediately, I knew something was wrong. There was no confetti, no congratulations, no "we are delighted to inform you…"

I pieced it together quickly enough: The Ivy League school rejected my application. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes and started to fall.

That was December 2023. A couple of months later, in March 2024, I'd be rejected by UChicago, Harvard, and Stanford. Dartmouth waitlisted me, and I held onto hope for acceptance until June. I was ultimately rejected there, too.

Admittance to these Ivy-Plus schools had been my ultimate goal, and rejection left me questioning what I had done wrong. How could I have failed when I'd worked so hard?

Was it my SAT score? Should I have studied more for a 1500 instead of a 1490? Should I have written different essays? Were my topics too niche? Did I put my extracurriculars in the wrong order?

With reflection and personal research, I realized that my biggest mistake was not taking the full picture of college admissions into account.

The chances of getting into my dream schools were always slim

After getting rejected, I started doing a lot of research into college admissions at Ivy League schools. What I learned was surprising.

Sure, we all know that legacy and athlete applicants have a leg up. What I didn't conceptualize was just how much of a leg up. I learned that 11% of Yale's Class of 2027 were legacy students. That's about 1 in every 10 students. At Brown, 8% of the Class of 2027 are legacies.

That may not sound like much, but the disadvantages for me didn't end there.

Analysis from Opportunity Insights, a research group based at Harvard, shows that students from the 80 to 90^th income percentile have the lowest Ivy-Plus college attendance rate — at little more than 10%. These are families wealthy enough to afford SAT tutors, private college counselors, and maybe even full tuition. But to universities, those families don't make enough to be considered potential donors.

These statistics put the whole process into perspective for me; it was no longer about me not working hard enough but about the universities looking for factors I couldn't control.

Of course, I always knew that getting into an Ivy League school was difficult, but I didn't know beforehand just how much the odds were stacked against me. Had I known, I might've made different choices during the admissions process.

I'm slowly acclimating to my college

I now attend McGill University in Montreal, sometimes referred to as the Harvard of Canada. Though it's not where I thought I'd end up, and sometimes I wonder if it's where I should stay, I've realized that no matter what, I have a duty to make the most of where I'm at.

When I first arrived at my non-Ivy League university, I felt intense loneliness, confusion, and sadness. I missed home and the feeling of knowing what each day would bring. I attributed this to not being at my dream university.

Eventually, however, I realized that these feelings were not place-specific; I would have been an equally undecided student at Dartmouth as I am at my current university. I would have felt the same bewilderment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Providence, Rhode Island, as I did in Montreal.

So, today, I'm looking at the brighter side of things. It would be a lie to say that where you go to college doesn't matter. But it would also be a lie to say that it's the only thing that matters. In reality, it's a bit of both.

What matters is part where you go but, crucially, what you do when you're there.

Sophie Landis is a first-year student at McGill University in Montreal and a passionate writer and reader. Connect with her on LinkedIn here.

• I saved a college fund for my daughter but decided not to give it to her.
• Instead, I'm having her apply for student loans so that she can learn financial independence.
• I hope this financial responsibility will help her become a better adult.

College was one of the biggest challenges when parenting my daughter.

High school was easy because we were a small, tight-knit family that followed a schedule.

My wife and I would do school drop-off every morning and then go to work. In the evenings, we would all meet back at home and talk about the highs and lows of our days. Weekends were rather adventurous. We would go out to explore new places, or our daughter would spend time with her friends. Everything was rather predictable.

Unpredictability set in just when my daughter was about to go to college. There were so many decisions to be made, and we were not all in agreement with them. My daughter wanted one thing; my wife and I wanted another, and it was a constant cycle of trying to figure things out.

Paying for college was our biggest hurdle to face as a family.

We saved for my daughter's college but then had second thoughts

One thing we were prepared for was the financial aspect of higher education. We knew the transition would be expensive, so we had set aside a college fund years ago to ensure we would all be comfortable.

However, I started reflecting on my life and the hardships that I had to go through as I grew up. For me, going to school was a privilege because I came from a middle-class family where my parents tried their best to give us everything we needed.

As one of six siblings, things were never easy. My parents provided my education by constantly applying for loans. This gave me a burning desire to work harder and reach my goals because there was no fallback plan.

Along the way, I learned significant money lessons that I've carried into adulthood — lessons I wish my children would equally learn.

Of course, the goal is always to provide a better life for your children so they don't have to know the difficult life experiences you went through but sometimes we have to make decisions they will be grateful for later.

Therefore, despite having a college fund, I encouraged my daughter to apply for student loans.

I hope she can learn financial responsibility

Apart from emphasizing savings and keeping piggy banks when she was younger, I never had real-life opportunities to teach my daughter about money management. Her journey to college was the best place to start. After all, she would be independent in a couple of years.

By encouraging her to apply for student loans, I was hoping to teach her to make important financial decisions in the long run and understand debt management.

As education is important, paying back the student loans will be equally important to her because the loans provide long-term educational value. Learning how to budget and manage debt repayments is a critical life skill for anyone.

To ensure our daughter was on board with the idea, my wife and I had an open discussion with her regarding this huge financial step. We also set realistic expectations on the loan repayment terms and exchanged ideas on how to manage finances post-graduation.

We agreed that she will look for jobs during semester breaks and will be able to save a little of what she will earn in a "loan payment" account that she will eventually have.

She was surprised and had to process it for a couple of days. But after many discussions, she understood and now does the loan applications herself — now that she's in her second year of college.

Owning a personal bank account and a loan repayment account will help her split the money she gets into two and make do with what she can.

Now, she'll be better prepared for adulthood

Considering that we can afford to pay for college, this may seem like an extreme measure, but it's one that we feel is needed. My biggest fear is raising kids who will not be financially independent when the time comes.

By taking these little steps, we hope our daughter will understand the importance of managing her finances properly, even if we won't be there to guide her. Life is unpredictable, and you don't want your kids to feel incapable of handling the challenges that may come their way.

What she doesn't know is that her college fund will remain untouched for her to receive in the future and that we will be a safety net if things get tough. But we didn't offer that upfront because we wanted to help her find her way and give her a start in this cold world.

• I received several rejections and referrals from colleges, including my dream school.
• I'm trying not to attach any meaning to my rejections, but I still feel like a failure.
• I'm trying to convince myself that who I become is more important than where I go to school.

Just a few months ago, I submitted my college applications to several schools, taking the early action route.

Recently, those decisions came in, and, unfortunately, my rejections and deferrals started piling up. Of the more than half a dozen schools I've heard back from, I have far more deferrals or outright rejections than acceptances.

I unfortunately was rejected from my dream school. Some schools I hoped (and believed) were my safety schools differed me. Those deferrals give me no greater insight into my academic fate; they just leave me on edge until final decisions are announced in April.

The sting of each rejection made it harder to believe that my worth was not tied to these decisions.

There's so much pressure to get into a top university

The narrative that success equals attending a "top" university often pushes my close friends and me to sacrifice our well-being for a résumé boost. All-nighters, overcommitment to extracurriculars, and constant comparison with peers have become normalized.

This isn't just stressful; it's damaging. The constant obsession with where I end up can overshadow the more important question: Who do I want to become? What do I want to achieve — both in college and for the rest of my life?

Each of us will decide the outcome of our next four years. But still, nobody is asking me, "How would you, Sarah, define personal success?"

Instead, the questions are about what university name will be emblazoned on the sweatshirt available for purchase in the campus bookstore.

It doesn't matter that some of the most successful people didn't follow a traditional path. Oprah Winfrey attended Tennessee State University, and Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College. But I'm not either of them, and I still have to prove myself a person of worth in the grown-up world.

I can't help feeling like a failure right now

I can't scroll through Instagram or TikTok without seeing videos of students opening their acceptance letters from Ivy League schools or hearing people boast about their 4.0 + GPAs and extracurriculars. Comparison feels inevitable.

It doesn't help that college has come to symbolize so much more than just education. To many students, it represents validation — proof that all our hard work was worth it. It's a ticket to a secure future.

When rejection arrives instead, it's hard not to feel as though we've failed — not just academically, but as individuals. After all, colleges claim they're looking for "the whole person," not just grades. What does it say about me if the whole person I've spent years becoming wasn't enough?

I'm now trying to move forward

As I sit with my rejections and try to process what they mean, I'm learning to separate my self-worth from external validation. It's not easy, and it's a lesson I suspect I'll be relearning throughout my life. But I'm also trying to focus on the bigger picture.

My worth isn't determined by where I go to college. It's determined by how I show up in the world, how I treat others, how I pursue my passions, and how I respond to challenges like this one.

As I send out applications for the regular decision round, I'm trying to approach the process with a different mindset. I'm focusing on finding schools that align with my values and goals rather than chasing prestige. I'm reminding myself that rejection is not a reflection of my worth or potential. And I'm holding onto the hope that wherever I end up, I will make the most of it.

• My twins had similar achievements in high school and applied to the same colleges.
• They received different merit scholarships at every school — sometimes a $13,000 difference.
• I will never understand how that happened because the merit scholarships are awarded in secrecy.

Understandably, merit scholarships are a hot topic in social media parent college groups. My twins applied to colleges simultaneously, so I was determined to learn as much as I could. Spoiler alert: It's complicated.

One thing I learned? Not all scholarships are the same. There are two main types: need-based and merit-based. Sounds simple, right? It's not. While both types come from the college after a student applies, they're awarded for different reasons.

Need-based scholarships are determined by the student's (or, more accurately, their parents') financial situation. Meanwhile, merit scholarships reward students for their accomplishments — whether that's grades, leadership, or athletic abilities.

Still confused? Don't worry, you're not alone. For now, let's stick to merit scholarships since my teenage twins didn't qualify for need-based aid.

How do you qualify for merit scholarships from the college you apply to?

This question often comes up in social media groups, and honestly, I don't think anyone knows the definitive answer. There's a lot of speculation, but unless someone from the college admissions office directly explains why your kid received a merit scholarship, it's really just guessing.

From what I understand, merit scholarships are based on how much a college wants your child to attend. If your child has qualities that the college values, they're more likely to offer a scholarship to encourage attendance. Some parents compare merit scholarships to Kohl's Cash or coupons — essentially, incentives to choose that school.

Somehow, they received different merit scholarships

My boy/girl twins seemed to have qualities colleges were seeking. Both were "high-achieving students," meaning they took advanced placement (AP) and honors classes. They were in the National Honors Society, with high GPAs that differed by only 0.20 points. They were also leaders; both were club presidents and captains of their respective tennis teams (boys' and girls' teams were separate).

I'm not sharing this to brag (though I'm incredibly proud!) but to give you an idea of the kinds of achievements that colleges might look for when awarding merit scholarships. Many colleges also like high SAT or ACT scores, but neither of them submitted scores.

My twins applied to seven of the same colleges, and each offered them different amounts of merit scholarships. Naturally, you'd think the twin with the 0.20 higher GPA would receive more scholarship money, right? That would make sense, but that's not what happened.

When I shared this observation with a friend, they suggested that the school might have been trying to increase enrollment for a specific gender since my twins are of different genders. It also could have been influenced by the majors they were interested in or the clubs they belonged to. Who knows? Not me!

Their merit scholarships were very different at some schools

For most schools, the difference was between $1,000 and $2,000, which is a lot of money, but not when you consider that some private college tuitions with room and board are over $90,000 per year. Suddenly, $1,000 seems like a small dent or pennies in comparison.

The biggest discrepancy in merit scholarships they received was at a small liberal arts college. One twin was awarded $13,000 a year more than the other, which is $52,000 over four years of college.

When I looked on the college's website, I couldn't find the name of the scholarship listed in their acceptance letter. The only information I found states that they offer merit-based scholarships based on achievement, which is pretty vague.

I still have no idea why the scholarship amounts were so vastly different.

I'm trying to move forward without answers

The results of this very unofficial experiment show that your child can qualify for a large merit scholarship if they have some sought-after quality. GPA is probably a key factor, but clearly, there are other mysterious variables at play because, statistically speaking, a 0.20 difference in GPA isn't significant.

So, what's the secret to cracking the mysterious merit scholarship code? I have no idea.

But if colleges are going to hand out merit scholarships like Kohl's Cash, the least they could do is toss in a 30% off coupon — or better yet, a BOGO deal for a mom of twins.

• My daughter is in her senior year of high school and in the middle of the college search phase.
• As her mom, I'm trying to be helpful while letting her lead the way to finding the ideal school.
• I'm only suggesting schools to visit and reminding her that I'm always here to help.

My daughter is currently in the midst of the college search phase, and with so many college and university options, you might imagine that this journey is both complex and exciting.

As a parent, I want to help make my child's senior year as stress-free as possible by assisting her during the process, but I also want to step back a bit as she begins the transition to adulthood. With this in mind, finding a way to be just the right amount of helpful is so important.

As my second child who's heading to college — her older brother is in his junior year — this isn't my first experience in the college search phase. However, as parents know, each kid in the family is different and has their own distinct style as to how they proceed with tasks and achieve their goals.

During her brother's college search, it was a new experience for all of us — including the path to finding the ideal university plus all of the other important parts of the process, including the application procedures, financial aid steps, and the final step of him narrowing down the options to his chosen school. This time, we have the experience and can pursue the college search phase with a bit more confidence. With that said, it's so important for me to take a step back and let my daughter find a school that works best for her.

I'm letting her apply to schools without setting too many restrictions

The first way I've taken a step back during this college search phase is by letting her apply to a wide array of schools without setting too many restrictions.

Of course, this doesn't mean that every school will be a top choice for her or that we'll be able to afford it. It just gives her more freedom to explore potential schools that may meet her personal requirements for a good fit and gives her peace of mind knowing she's considered different options.

From that point onward, we can discuss the finer details of each school, including the pros and cons and feasibility factors.

I'm suggesting on-campus visits, but enabling her to choose the must-see options

College visits have expanded in options compared to years ago when I went to school. In the past, you could visit the school in person or take a chance that it may be a good fit simply by reading the brochures.

Fast-forward to today, where prospective students have many exploration options, from virtual college visitation sessions to social media.

These are all excellent research options; however, I feel that it's always good to visit the school in person when able to do so. Therefore, I tell my daughter that we should visit as many schools in person as possible, especially if she's really interested in a few specific universities.

That said, she can pick the ones that really interest her, and then we'll go explore those colleges.

I'm still providing feedback with negotiable viewpoints

Although I'll stand back and let my daughter form her own opinions as to the individual schools, I'll always provide feedback.

This doesn't mean my view is the right one or that my feedback contains non-negotiable terms. I just think it's important to provide her with details she may not have thought of and also let her know my thoughts due to my experience and having gone through the college search process on my own — albeit many years ago.

The feedback will also revolve around cost and location. For example, even with access to scholarships and grants, attending certain schools may not be possible due to financial reasons.

I may also want to provide insight into the pros and cons of schools within driving distance versus colleges that require airline travel. In addition, safety factors may also be discussed when comparing different schools. However, I don't want this feedback to be a definitive response but instead talking points to discuss when deciding which universities and colleges may be right for her.

I'm reminding my daughter I'm always here for her

Most importantly, I make it a point to let her know that although she will take the lead in finding her ideal university, I'm always here for her when she needs advice, information, or simply a parent's loving guidance.

As a mom, I'm going into this college search process, hoping to provide the best possible guidance for my daughter as she takes the initial steps toward adulthood while giving her the space to find her way and make her own decisions.

Ultimately, I know that she will choose the college or university that is right for her as she embarks on this new and exciting journey.

• My twin sons graduated from high school and are choosing their college majors.
• One of my sons switched from wanting to study law to pursuing philosophy.
• Other parents told me it was a huge mistake, but my own college experience taught me otherwise.

My twin 18-year-old sons have just graduated from high school, and we've spent months navigating the college application process.

We live in Australia, and majors are chosen as part of the application process here, so there is a lot of pressure to make the right decision from the outset. They have attended college open days, and their school has run information sessions throughout the last few years to assist in decision-making.

While Thomas has been set on his choice for a long time, his twin, Charlie, has been more indecisive and unsure.

Charlie's journey started in a law firm but took an unexpected turn

In 10th grade, he interned at a friend's law practice and seemed destined for law school. His experience there was positive, and he spoke enthusiastically about pursuing a legal career.

We were shocked when, a few months ago, he told us he wanted to pursue a philosophy major instead. I was disappointed and very concerned that Charlie was limiting his future job opportunities, and we had many discussions asking him to reassess this choice.

My parents were particularly dismayed by this pivot and actively tried to dissuade him from making this choice.

My wife reminded me of my own college regrets

I had always wanted to be a writer, but my parents convinced me to enroll in an accounting and economics major as there were more opportunities in that industry. I hated those subjects and unsurprisingly failed — subsequently wasting a year of college.

Eventually, I switched to a marketing major, which I enjoyed, and my marks and experience improved accordingly.

Reflecting on that experience, I didn't want to push Charlie into a decision that would make him miserable at college, so we encouraged him to apply for whatever he was passionate about.

The reaction from other parents was swift and critical

Last month, at their high school graduation ceremony, I discussed Charlie's situation with other parents. While a few parents agreed with allowing Charlie to choose, most parents were shocked by our permissive approach.

We received lots of advice and were urged to ask Charlie to change his application. I was surprised at how worried other parents were. They were adamant that switching from law to another degree was a huge mistake.

It raised some doubts in my mind, but I knew we had to ignore them and stick with what we believed was best for Charlie.

Charlie is becoming nimble and adaptable

Reassured by the support of my wife and me, Charlie has switched majors — not to law but to sports management. I think he has visions of becoming Jerry Maguire.

When I updated other parents on this switch, they still said it was a mistake not to pursue law and that sports management is too niche of a field. I felt a little sorry for their children, who may be forced down a path they don't wish to undertake.

Reflecting on my own experience, I know what it's like to study a course you are not interested in.

Looking at Charlie's journey from law to philosophy to sports management might seem concerning to some parents. However, this exploration of different fields shows he's thinking about his future and aligning this with his interests.

The ability to adapt and pivot is increasingly valuable in today's workplace. Each of Charlie's shifts builds different skills that could serve him well in any future career.

My journey from failed accounting student to marketing professional to full-time writer proves that careers are adaptable. I spent 20 years in marketing before finally pursuing my passion for writing full-time.

What matters most isn't the major you choose at 18 but developing critical thinking skills, adaptability, and a passion for what you do.

Charlie has our full support, regardless of where his path leads

Whether he becomes a sports agent, a philosophy teacher, returns to law, or discovers an entirely different passion, supporting his choices now will lead to better outcomes than forcing him down a path he doesn't want to pursue.

We hope he is happy and loves his future job as much as I love mine now.