DR. WALLACE: Our son applied to attend Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and he is extremely disappointed that they did not accept him as a student. He is now saying that he doesn't want to attend any college or university and wants to be an auto mechanic.

My husband and I are at our wits' end and don't know how to motivate him to attend another college or university. He reads your column, so please give him encouragement. — Mom, Sacramento, Calif.

MOM AND SON: We all know that rejection can be painful — and there's plenty of pain being felt by students who fail to get into the colleges of their choosing. The pain is intensified if they believe that all future success depends on getting accepted at a "top" school.

In a report on college rejection, Paul Kelleher, the principal of a high school in New York, said that the pressure to get into a leading school is now more intense than ever. "This is a time of great financial stress in the country," he said. "Students now feel that if they don't go to one of the top 15 or 20 schools, college life is over."

Students who were rejected by their first choice admitted in an interview for the report that the shock had been difficult to overcome. "I thought my life was over," a straight-A student from New York recalled after she was turned down by her first, and only, college choice, the University of Notre Dame. "I had never felt so alone," she said. Luckily, she ended up attending Duke University and loving it. But her initial feelings of despair are shared by a growing number of students today.

Howard Green, a former admissions dean at Princeton University, emphasized that college rejection is not a personal putdown. "A selective college," he notes, "is one that, by definition, receives applications from many more qualified kids than it can ever accept. After the initial shock, many students come to realize that rejection is not the tragedy it first seems."

What counts for serious students, the experts say, are strong undergraduate achievements. They stress that "the student who works hard and does well at a less prestigious college has just as good a chance of getting admitted to 'selective' graduate schools as the student who attended a 'prestigious' school of higher learning."

Sometimes rejection can be a blessing in disguise. When forced to reevaluate their goals, many students are pleasantly surprised by the school they do eventually attend.

A community college can be a good selection. Courses taken there can be applied to a bachelor's degree at almost all colleges and universities. A friend of mine studied at a community college in Visalia, California, and then transferred to Stanford and graduated two years later with a bachelor's degree. He later earned a master's degree from this "prestigious" university.

If there is a will, there is a way! Go for it! The day you receive your diploma from a college or university and decide that being an auto mechanic is your ambition, I'm positive your educational experience will help you become a superb mechanic.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.