Help me out here. The good, the bad and the ugly…
Your kid has safeties that s/he likes?
"There, there…you didn’t really want to go to some stinky 379 year old school anyway. We can find a newer school that you’ll like more.
@JustOneDad - Good one! :))
@ucbalumnus I’m being tongue-in-cheek. But yes - kiddo has cast a wide net so something should pan out. I just see some of the kids posting on the RD forums and it sounds like they’re wearing their finger nails down to the quick worrying about their dream school. A little absurd parental pep is just the tonic I’m sure.Or maybe not…
Tell them about a time when you didn’t get something major that you wanted (a certain college, job, house, etc) and how, looking back, you’re really glad things worked out differently. Because otherwise, “I’d never have met your mom” or “we’d never have met these great neighbors.” Remind them that things tend to work out for the best.
I suspect with my kid, anything I say will be the wrong thing. My plan is to stay quiet and offer listening and hugs.
Re unaffordable but otherwise very nearly perfect dreamy school:
Mom, “Well that stinks. I say kick it to the curb and move on.”
Kid, “Yup. If they don’t like me enough to make themselves affordable, I’m happy with the other place. But I’m sill keeping the cute stickers that came in the admissions package.”
I plan to make brownies that day. Good news they’re celebratory, bad news they’re comfort.
Oh, and maybe offer a voodoo doll and some pins. J/k
“it is the school’s loss”
“you will do great wherever you end up”
" (about the final choice) “I’m glad this is all settled, now why don’t you order a hoodie online right now”
I also tend to make things worse sometimes by trying to overtalk or overthink stuff with them, so I usually just go with “I’m so sorry”, “I know this was so important to you”, and hug as much as possible for the situations that make them sad or disappointed.
However, I’m bookmarking this so two years from now I’ll have a better arsenal of comfort.
“Their loss.”
My kiddo got into his two safeties accepted, out of the way. We jumped and cheered and so on, but even though we didn’t use the word safeties, he said, well that’s expected. Then he got rejected from 4 of his 6 reaches. Not a good day. Two days later he got into the last two reaches. But it is damn hard. The only advice I always give is not to talk about “first choices”. Leads to sadness.
I would probably be more upset if my parents told me that to be honest! It sounds too disingenuous in my opinion…
If you don’t mind rough language - look up “Hitler gets rejected from Harvard” on youtube for comic relief.
^It’s hilarious. I wonder what class they were supposed to be studying for when they created that. 
There’s this video where a girl is accepted to Harvard and she’s crying tears of joy and jumping up and down. It illustrated for me just how strong the emotions are around this process. And if the acceptances cause this kind of reaction - it seems only natural that the rejections could feel the opposite - especially for the kids that worked like rabid beavers to get into their “dream school”. So I’m not sure that a facile “oh well” is necessarily addressing the reality of the situation. In some ways the Hitler rejected from Harvard is closer to the mark!
I can’t remember what I said when my daughters received rejection letters, but I do remember that I accepted that it was their right to be mad, sad, or whatever and that I tried to convey that attitude of compassion and understanding to them.
Rejections and acceptances say nothing about you as a person.
You can attend only one school anyway, and there are many paths to a goal.
Speaking of which, it may make sense to speak about career paths/goals and interests (which delves in to deeper questions like “what makes you tick” and “what does it mean to live the good life or to be a good human being”. For someone as short-term focused as a typical teenager, that may be tough, but you can frame it so that where college acceptances/rejections there are just aren’t that big of a deal (which they aren’t, compared to what some other teenagers elsewhere in the world go through).
I believe in the power of ice cream. So my response would be simple, " Okay, who wants ice cream"