College rejection letter party takes the sting out of 'Not accepted'

One by one, high school students on Sunday giggled with their friends as they walked up to a ceremonially placed paper shredder and dropped in their college letters of rejection.

What is normally a harsh experience, getting rejected, turned into a celebration at Downtown Magnets High School in Los Angeles.

Seniors at Sunday's "celebration" read some of their letters of denial out loud, coming from USC, UCI, Columbia, Reed College, Cornell and UC Irvine.

School Counselor Lynda McGee said rejection is part of life, and when students see so many other college-bound seniors face rejection as well, it's just not so bad.

"Well, the rejection party is to take the sting out of college rejections because rejection is a part of life and its time people understand that you don't always get a trophy," said McGee.

The students also talked about the schools that did accept them. One senior read her list of "no's" out loud, "Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and University of Rochester." She then topped it off with the school that did accept her, "I committed to Harvard," she said to a roomful of cheers at the rejection letter party.

Student Laura Sanchez, said "It was a really good opportunity for students, including myself to kind of forget about the rejections and celebrate the fact that we are college bound because I know a lot of the students from our school are first-generation, low-income so I know we should celebrate, and this is a great way to do that."