The crazy-long wait to hear from colleges is almost over for most seniors. Many of you have already gotten news, especially if you applied early action or early decision, but the majority of you are still waiting for THE WORD.

Unfortunately, for some seniors, the word will be “No.” And if your favorite college is the one dumping you, it’s going to feel devastating.

Now, I know as a professional working woman I should not admit this, but, here goes: I’m hooked on the television reality show The Bachelor. It’s a pretty much awful show with a lot of people acting badly. But from a sociological point of view, it’s kind of fascinating. Especially because it is all about rejection.

Think about it. Something like 25 women start on Night One of the show, all competing for one man, and at the end, 24 of them will have been rejected. That’s a lot of rejection going around.

Here’s the thing, though. On the penultimate show of the season, called The Women Tell All, almost all of those women who once went home sobbing in the back of a limousine have now happily moved on with their lives to something new and different. Many of them have made substantial changes because of their experience competing on The Bachelor. You could even argue that the real winners coming out of this show are all the losers.

That’s because they’ve had to do some soul-searching, some reflecting on what it is they really want, and whether or not one particular guy is the only guy for them, or if, in fact, there are many possibilities out there.

You see what I’m saying here, I hope. If everyone is trying to get into the same few “select” colleges, most of those applicants are going to be rejected. And when they stand back and take a good look around, they begin to realize that this one school is not their soulmate, not the only school for them, not the only wonderful college in the world.

In a few weeks, if you get dumped by the college of your dreams, have a good sob-fest, then pick yourself up and take a look at the other many wonderful colleges out there. There are so many of them, and they are waiting to welcome you, educate you and, yes — love you for who you are. You don’t need a rose, after all. You need a great education. And you are the one who’s going to make that happen, not any one single college.