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Everyone's had nightmares about that classic thin envelope. It's something you dread from the time college is a mere blip on your radar, to the moment you wait with your own children to hear from the school of their dreams. No matter which way you spin it, a college rejection is never going to be fun. But you need not worry, fellow dream school rejectees. Though the sting is still palpable, there are plenty of reasons why an initial rejection is not the end of the world. 1. These highly successful people got rejected too -- and look where they are today. Meredith Vieira, Warren Buffett, John Kerry, Katie Couric, Steven Spielberg, Tom Brokaw and Columbia University's President Lee Bollinger all got rejected from their dream schools. But getting turned down may have been the very thing that sparked all their eventual successes. As Bollinger put it, no one should let rejections control his or her life. To "allow other people's assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake," he said. "The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you." 2. The sting will prepare you for facing an unstable post-college future. A 2013 poll stated that more than 40 percent of college graduates were underemployed, and more than half of grads said getting a job was difficult. The market is still recovering, and there are twice as many college graduates working minimum wage jobs as five years ago. We know the rejection hurt, but you are so much better off having experienced it now so you are prepared for the turbulent future. | 
