THE COLLEGE DECISION DOESN'T MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS—LETTING GO WHEN YOUR TEEN'S COLLEGE ADMISSIONS PROCESS FEELS SO BIG | EP. 299
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
If your teen is in the middle of college applications, or you're already dreading what this process might feel like, or maybe you have someone who already wants to transfer, I want to help you take some of the pressure out of it. Because I know so well that one college decision can start to feel like it means everything.
You question whether your kid's good enough, or whether they're going to be okay, and even whether you did enough as their mom. In this episode, I'm sharing what I learned after going through the college admissions process three times with my two boys, and how differently those outcomes looked once I had the benefit of hindsight.
By the end of this episode, you'll have a new way to think about the yes, and the no, and all of the meaning we attach to both, so that you can feel more grounded and less consumed by the outcome. Because that is going to influence how you show up for your big kid through all of it. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
We are back in college application season. And if you have a senior going through it right now, or even a junior, and you can already feel yourself starting to think about what's ahead. Or maybe you have a kid who's at college, but not quite happy to be there and thinking about transferring.
I know what an emotional roller coaster this process can be. I have now lived through this college admission process three times with my two boys, and every single time was different. With my oldest, he set high goals for himself.
And honestly, when I look back, the amount of stress we let him take on was enormous. There were so many times where I questioned those decisions. But I also knew at the time they were my son's decisions.
I remember so many moments when it felt like the pressure of everything he was juggling was almost breaking him. But senior year, he applied to his first choice school and he got in. It was a miracle.
Just like that, in mid-December, the process ended, with this miraculous confetti on a computer screen. It felt like all of his hard work paid off. And I don't think I'll ever forget the look on my son's face.
He couldn't believe it. We weren't even in the same room when he opened the portal. Our relationship was still really tense at that point.
But we heard him cry out when he got the news and we came running upstairs to his room. And there he was, staring at the screen with this look of utter disbelief. He had gotten in.
We hugged him and we jumped up and down, and I remember feeling this enormous wave of relief. After everything he'd put himself through, after everything we'd all gone through, somehow it felt like it had paid off. My younger son's experience was completely different.
And I had learned so many painful lessons from my older son's high school experience that I had approached his high school experience a little bit differently. That said, I did still try to push him a little more than I felt like he was pushing himself. But I often felt like I was pushing on a string.
Then, a series of disappointments and mistakes during his sophomore year somehow lit a fire under him. He started taking school more seriously. He took on harder classes.
And I think he took every single practice SAT that has ever been published. We actually created a huge bonfire with the books once he finally got the score he wanted. So then his senior year rolled around, and he also applied to his top-choice school, Early Decision.
He was deferred. It was a huge blow at the time. But a deferral isn't a no.
So my son picked himself up and he spent December and January and part of February applying to 15 other schools. And then we waited. In his mind, he divided all of the schools to which he'd applied into a list of top-choice, second-choice, third-choice.
I think there might have been a fourth-choice bucket. And in early March, he got into one of his third-choice schools, and we celebrated. And it was an excellent school.
So in my mind, the bar had been set. And my son was happy too, initially. But I think in retrospect, he was more happy that he'd gotten in somewhere.
So he had one acceptance. And then we waited. Slowly, the rest of the decisions started coming in.
A waitlist, another waitlist, a rejection. Then we left for spring break, knowing that almost all of the schools that he cared about most were going to release their decisions that week. And over the course of about two days, it was rejection after rejection after rejection.
It honestly was brutal. Every time one of those decisions came in, there was this tiny moment of hope. Maybe this one.
And then another disappointment. I remember getting to the point where I almost didn't want to hope anymore, because opening myself up to that possibility and then watching it disappear over and over again just hurt too much. Needless to say, it was not our favorite vacation.
But to my son's credit, he took it in stride. I know it was incredibly painful for him, but he worked through it on his own. He didn't want to talk about it.
Which was also hard, but I respected that that was his way. And he definitely had zero interest in me pointing out all of the good things about the school where he had been accepted. He just needed some space to let it all sink in.
And eventually it did. I mean, he had been accepted to an excellent school. But if I'm being completely honest, at the time, I know to him, it still felt like a consolation prize.
And as I look back on all of this now, I can see so clearly how we can get so caught up in the meaning we give all these decisions. As I tell these stories, it seems like what I've shared is that one of my sons experienced success. He applied early to his dream school and he got in, while my younger son's story looked like disappointment.
A consolation prize. And look, even at the time, I knew that where your kid goes to school has no tangible connection to their success in life. I mean, I've known people who went to top schools and wasted those opportunities.
And I've also known plenty of people who went to schools you've never heard of or who didn't go to college at all, and they went on to be wildly successful. I have seen this proof in real life over and over again. And yet, when it's your own child and you're watching them experience either the incredible joy of achieving something they've dreamed about or the crushing disappointment of not getting what they worked so hard for, it feels like it means something in that moment.
But what I can see now, in hindsight, is that neither of my boys' stories was anywhere close to finished. My older son did get the dream outcome, but getting into the dream school did not guarantee the dream experience. There have been parts of college that he has loved, and there have also been parts that did not turn out the way he expected at all.
Meanwhile, my younger son started freshman year at a school that he, quite honestly, had to make the most of. Even at the time we dropped him off, I could feel his sense of disappointment. I knew that he was going to have to figure out how to make the best of it.
But what I have been absolutely blown away to see is that not only did my son make the best of his disappointment, he used the experience to become a different person. Even in that span of time between that rejection and him stepping foot onto that campus freshman year, he made a decision to prove himself. He ended up writing a paper on funding for type 1 diabetes research.
He recorded a solo album. Then he got to school, and he threw himself into the experience. And he made great friends, and he took on leadership roles, and he absolutely crushed his grades.
And as I observed him go through this process, what I really think happened was that he grew up. The disappointment taught him that sometimes in life, if you really want something, you've got to work for it. And so he went into freshman year deciding he wasn't giving up.
On day one, he had already decided he was going to transfer. So even as he was throwing himself into the experience of freshman year, he was always focused on that goal. So then early this year, we went through round three of the college process.
Although I'll admit, I was completely removed this time, almost blissfully, because he didn't even let us read his essays until well after they'd been submitted. He ultimately decided to apply to three schools. The problem was they were all incredibly competitive schools.
And I'll be honest, while I prayed for the best, I did not know what to expect. He was rejected from the first school, and so we waited three more weeks. And then I got a call.
Ironically, I was in the very same place as I had been when he had called me about the acceptance to his first school. I picked up the phone, and I heard, I got in. And I thought, wait, what? It was like reliving that first moment with my older son, except this time I couldn't see the look on my baby's face, but I could feel it.
The absolute joy and relief. But here is what's so fascinating. After he celebrated and let the reality of the success sink in, as he thought about it, he wasn't sure he wanted to leave where he was.
The school that had once felt like the consolation prize had become a place where he had built friendships and really strong connections with teachers. He'd built a life at the school, and he wasn't sure he really wanted to walk away from all of that. A year earlier, we had attached so much meaning to those decisions.
The rejections felt devastating, because in my son's mind, it really did feel like they were saying something about what was going to be possible for him. But then he went off to school, and he had this incredible year. In fact, when I look back now, I almost see those crushing disappointments as part of my son's hero story.
It pushed him. It challenged him. It gave him a reason to decide who he wanted to become next.
I'd like to think that he would have gotten there anyway, one way or another. But it might have taken longer. And what is very clear, even to him, is that not getting what he really wanted changed something in him, for the better.
My friend, I know that when you're in the middle of the college process, it is almost impossible to see any of this with the benefit of hindsight. You imagine your kid getting the yes, and you getting to feel this incredible relief. Or you imagine them getting the no, and you're heartbreaking for them.
And even when we know, intellectually, that one decision doesn't determine our kid's future, that decision can still feel incredibly loaded in the moment. A yes can feel like proof that all of the work paid off, and a no can feel like proof that something went wrong. And so when all of this happens, there are three places our brains tend to go.
First, we make the decision mean something about our kid. And I remember feeling this way with my youngest when he received that string of rejections. It's like that mama bear wanted to come out and say, how dare you judge my child? You watch your kid work so hard for something, and we see all the ways that they're good and special and worthy.
So when a school says no, it can feel almost insulting. You can find yourself thinking, you don't even know my kid. How could you possibly understand what you're saying no to? And I think that's part of why these decisions can hurt so much.
It feels like your kid goes to such great lengths to put their very best into this application. And then they're judged by people who only see a tiny sliver of who they are. I think once that protective instinct kicks in, our brains start trying to make sense of the decision.
We wonder what that other kid has that ours didn't. We focus on all of the ways the system is rigged and unfair, which in many ways is true. But underneath all of that is this very human reaction.
This decision feels personal because it feels like someone made a judgment about my child. The second place our brains tend to go is that we wonder what this decision means about our kid's future. On the one hand, we're thinking about whether or not they're going to be happy at the school where they end up.
I remember one of the hardest parts about dropping my son off for his freshman year was knowing he didn't want to be there. I imagined him being unhappy. And obviously, as moms, this feels terrible for us too.
You imagine four years of them having to make the most of a situation they don't want to be in. But we can also start thinking about the future beyond college. We imagine that if they get into the right school, that they'll have the right opportunities and meet the right people.
But if they don't, our brains can jump to what they might be missing out on. It's hard not to imagine that this one decision is somehow going to change the trajectory of their whole life. The third place our minds go when we imagine our kids getting rejected from the place that they really want to go is that we wonder what that means about us.
And look, we know intellectually that this is our kid's journey. But let's be honest, we've also been there for everything that has led them to this point. We've tried to encourage them to do their best, to care about school and get involved, to take their future seriously.
And honestly, even when your kid really does all the right things, it can be hard not to have this nagging fear that it's not enough. What's really happening is that it's hard to separate our child's college process from our own sense of responsibility for how it all turns out. So when we imagine that decision coming in, it feels personal.
If they get in, you imagine this huge sense of relief, like, OK, we did it. All that effort and stress, it all meant something. But even ahead of time, as we imagine the fear of rejection, we're already thinking, should I be pushing more? Should I get my kid to take a harder class or sign up for one more activity? Should they take the SAT again? And I'll be honest, with my older son, I know I did this.
And even with my younger son, after the rejections, there was a part of my mind that wondered what could I have done differently to change the outcome for him. My friend, I know it's so hard when you're in the middle of the stress of this process, which can feel absolutely all-consuming. But my invitation to you is to be really mindful about how much meaning you give one college decision.
The hard truth is that a college saying yes or no is not actually making some sweeping judgment about your kid, even though I know it can feel that way. The reality is, most admissions officers are looking at an enormous number of applications. They're seeing one snapshot of your child, often for a very short amount of time, and making a decision based on that application and that admission cycle and whatever that particular school happens to need that year.
Sometimes they need more lacrosse players. Sometimes they need more people in their science program. That has nothing to do with who your kid is.
All that's really happening in that moment, given the pool of applicants and their institutional priorities, is that they made a decision. And I know that can sound overly simplistic when your kid is devastated, because of course it feels so much more personal than that. They put themselves out there.
In fact, they spend years crafting that application through their hard work and their effort. They put it all out there, and it feels like what's being communicated through rejection is, you're not good enough. I know when my son received those rejections, for me, this was the hardest part.
Because I know my child is exceptional, and I know I'm biased, but I see him that way. And those rejections felt like they weren't giving him the credit that he deserved. But you know what? At the end of the day, it was just a no.
It was an incredibly painful no, especially since there were so many no's. But at the end of the day, it was just a new reality my son had to face, and he had to decide what he was going to do with that. I'll admit, as I said, my biggest fear as we dropped him off was that he wouldn't be happy.
But that was also up to him. Ironically, my older son's dream acceptance didn't automatically make him happy either. Notice how the yes wasn't a guarantee, and the no wasn't a dead end.
Ultimately, how our kids face the reality of their successes and disappointments, it's all up to them. But let's be real. As much as we tell ourselves that this is our kids' process, we have a lot invested in how it all turns out.
We want to know that we've done enough. We want all those years of worrying and guiding and second-guessing ourselves to somehow add up to the right result. But I promise you, there is no admissions decision that can give you that reassurance.
Your kid getting in does not mean you parented correctly, and getting rejected doesn't mean you failed. And I think this is where the real work is for us. Because when you really think about it, there is a kind of elegance to being under the illusion that the right outcome will mean our kids will be happy and successful.
It's comforting to believe that there is a right answer. The problem is there isn't. Even the outcome we think we want can come with struggle and disappointment.
And the outcome we fear can lead somewhere beautiful we could have never imagined. That is actually the part that is so uncomfortable. We don't get certainty.
We don't get to know in advance which school will be the right one. We don't get to know whether a kid will love it there or whether they'll stay. We have absolutely no idea whether the setback they're facing right now is actually going to become the thing that changes them.
And yet, our brains keep trying to solve for it, to protect them from it. We second-guess everything. Is this the right school? Are we aiming too high? What else can we do here? What advice can I get? As if there's a perfect formula for getting the yes, behind all of the stress is the hope that if we can just make the right call, that maybe we can protect our kid from regret and disappointment, even that we can protect ourselves from feeling like we've failed or missed something.
My friend, this is about so much more than college. Because this is the same thing we're going to face again and again and again as our kids get older. They are going to face challenges, and sometimes they're going to be disappointed or decide to change direction.
And sometimes they're going to surprise us, and we're going to have to figure out how to want everything we want for them without being able to control how it turns out. So this is our work now, to stay grounded enough to let our kids have their own path, even when that path includes disappointment, rejection, and detours. Even the hardest moments in life don't automatically mean something has gone wrong.
The truth is, our kids are going to have lives that include all of it. The wins and the losses, the wrong turns. And our job isn't to prevent those things from happening, but to learn how to show up for our kids and ourselves when they do.
And my friend, this is the work we do inside of My Mom 2.0 coaching programs. Because the college process is such a perfect example of what happens in this stage of motherhood. Your kid is making bigger decisions and facing much higher stakes.
And you have far less control. Your brain desperately wants some evidence that they're going to be okay. So our opportunity is to learn how to be the moms we really want to be in the face of all of this uncertainty.
I am never going to tell you that you need to just learn how to stop caring and say, it's their life. But imagine what would be different if you knew how to care just as much without letting every decision mean something painful about your kid, their future, or the job you've done as their mom. Because whether it's college admissions or whatever comes next, you're never going to have complete certainty about where your kid's path is taking them.
But you can learn how to trust yourself in the face of that uncertainty. You can learn more about Mom 2.0 through the link in the show notes. So my friend, if you're in the middle of the college process right now, waiting on decisions or watching your kid try to figure out where they belong, I want to leave you with this.
The yes may feel enormous. The no may feel enormous. But neither answer is the end of the story.
Your kid is still in the messy process of becoming who they are. And one admissions decision tells you nothing about where that path is going to lead. I know that's incredibly hard to hold on to when you're in the middle of it.
But I have seen from my own journey, and honestly, I've seen this in countless stories of every mom I have worked with through the college process and beyond, the outcome that feels so important today may look completely different a year from now. Maybe all you need to do is trust that your big kid's story is still being written. My friend, your kid does not need the perfect college outcome to build a beautiful life.
And you do not need the perfect outcome to know that you have done enough. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
