The day I received a rejection letter from Washington University in St. Louis, I talked to my mentor, who currently goes to Harvard. He told me that it gets better after the first rejection.

Students have been confronted for generations with the question: “What do you expect to do with a degree in that?”

As part of an admissions practice that seems to be on the rise, many of this year’s admitted college applicants have learned that they must wait until spring 2014 to enroll, my colleague Ariel Kaminer reports:

In this admissions process, every choice I face means the stakes become greater.