Don’T Let A Thin Envelope Get You Down * Chris Peck Is Editor Of The Spokesman-Review. His Column Appears Sundays On Perspective.

Thin envelopes are one of life’s nasty surprises.

Sure, IRS refund checks arrive in a thin envelope.

Does the thought of the IRS really brighten your day?

Not much else worth a hang arrives in thin envelopes.

Notices of overdrafts.

Summons to appear in court.

Dear John letters.

And, for high school seniors in April, the dreaded rejection from a college admissions office.

Thin envelopes equal bad news, delivered the impersonal way.

Stanford University’s rejection letter gets right to the point: “I am writing to tell you that we are unable to offer you admission …” the letter begins.

It is signed by the dean of admissions, “with genuine respect and good wishes.”

Thin envelopes rarely feel like expressions of respect or good wishes. They more often raise big questions about your whole value as a person.

Luckily, the prevalence of thin envelopes in life means you don’t have to face them alone.

College admissions counselors, the very people responsible for sending out thin envelopes, offer some of the best advice for those who receive them.

At Whitworth College, dean of enrollment services Fred Pfursich reminds young people that colleges only know what they see in resumes, recommendations and transcripts, and this doesn’t necessarily capture potential.

“When we have to tell someone they aren’t admitted to Whitworth, our main purpose is not to say that a kid isn’t good enough, but only that we don’t want to set somebody up for failure,” he said.

Thin envelopes, in other words, are often kindly wake-up calls.

Fat envelopes reinforce all the great things we often think about ourselves.

Thin envelopes contain a dose of reality, a polite suggestion that it’s not going to be as easy as you might have thought to get where you want to go.

College-bound kids probably learn more from thin envelopes than fat ones.

They learn whether they have the grit, courage and resourcefulness to face disappointment and move ahead.

And moving ahead is the key when a thin envelope arrives anytime in life. One thin envelope is not the end of the world.

“Despite what many young people think about there being just one college that is right for them, there are many colleges where a young person can go to be successful and happy,” explained Phil Ballinger, Gonzaga University’s dean of admissions and records.

It pays to learn early that there is no future in standing outside and staring at a closed door. Always, the better choice is to whisper a quick cuss word, perhaps shed a tear, then look rather quickly for another route that will make progress toward your destination.

But what destination? And how to get there?

These are the really tough questions.

Identifying a likely career and assessing what it will take to get on that path are topics that too often get paid lip service for the benefit of parents, peers and teachers.

Sometimes, the people sending back those thin envelopes pick up on this superficiality or confusion.

“When we read through applications we’re always trying to figure out what attracts a student to Whitworth and whether we have programs that match those interests,” said enrollment guru Pfursich. “We can usually tell whether this is a hot prospect or whether this is a student who doesn’t appear to have any connections to Whitworth.”

Yet another thin envelope life lesson.

Successful people most often are focused on where they are headed.

Once they are focused, they do the homework, develop the skills and make a better impression.

In college admissions offices, as in the workplace, applications that show a sustained commitment to a cause or craft are the applications that get the first look.

Put another way, it’s not easy to parachute in to success in a career.

Of course, there are some idiots in the world. Sometimes the idiots get a break, or fool someone.

Life is like that. We can’t do much about the idiots, just as we can’t do much about the geniuses.

Stanford had 3,000 applications from kids with SAT scores in the 90th percentile or above, 5,000 applications from high school seniors with perfect grade-point averages and 10,000 applications from kids in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

All for only 2,500 slots.

It’s not worth much breath to blame thin envelopes on the judgment of idiots or the advantages given the more brilliant.

Recall the advice from college counselors and from every successful person who has faced a thin envelope.

They say without question that in college and in life it is up to each of us to make the most of our own talents. Give it your best shot, no matter where you go to college or what you pursue in life, is their bottom line advice.

If we truly and sincerely apply ourselves then college and the rest of our lives usually work out just fine.