Before They Were Titans, Moguls and Newsmakers, These People Were...Rejected

Few events arouse more teenage angst than the springtime arrival of college rejection letters. With next fall's college freshman class expected to approach a record 2.9 million students, hundreds of thousands of applicants will soon be receiving the dreaded letters.

Teenagers who face rejection will be joining good company, including Nobel laureates, billionaire philanthropists, university presidents, constitutional scholars, best-selling authors and other leaders of business, media and the arts who once received college or graduate-school rejection letters of their own.

Both Warren Buffett and 'Today' show host Meredith Vieira say that while being rejected by the school of their dreams was devastating, it launched them on a path to meeting life-changing mentors. Harold Varmus, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, says getting rejected twice by Harvard Medical School, where a dean advised him to enlist in the military, was soon forgotten as he plunged into his studies at Columbia University's med school. For other college rejects, from Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and entrepreneur Ted Turner to broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, the turndowns were minor footnotes, just ones they still remember and will talk about.

Rejections aren't uncommon. Harvard accepts only a little more than 7% of the 29,000 undergraduate applications it receives each year, and Stanford's acceptance rate is about the same.

'The truth is, everything that has happened in my life . . . that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better,' Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach 'lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity.'

Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn't have been a good fit. But at the time, he 'had this feeling of dread' after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago, and a fear of disappointing his father.

As it turned out, his father responded with 'only this unconditional love . . . an unconditional belief in me,' Mr. Buffett says. Exploring other options, he realized that two investing experts he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia's graduate business school. He dashed off a late application, where by a stroke of luck it was fielded and accepted by Mr. Dodd. From these mentors, Mr. Buffett says he learned core principles that guided his investing. The Harvard rejection also benefited his alma mater; he gave more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008 through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, based on tax filings.

The lesson of negatives becoming positives has proven true repeatedly, Mr. Buffett says. He was terrified of public speaking -- so much so that when he was young he sometimes threw up before giving an address. So he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, Susan Thompson, a 'champion debater,' he says. 'I even proposed to my wife during the course,' he says. 'If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might not have taken it.'

Dr. Varmus, the Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was daunted by the first of his two turndowns by Harvard's med school. He enrolled instead in grad studies in literature at Harvard, but was uninspired by thoughts of a career in that field.

After a year, he applied again to Harvard's med school and was rejected, by a dean who chastised him in an interview for being 'inconstant and immature' and advised him to enlist in the military. Officials at Columbia's medical school, however, seemed to value his 'competence in two cultures,' science and literature, he says.

If rejected by the school you love, Dr. Varmus advises in an email, immerse yourself in life at a college that welcomes you. 'The differences between colleges that seem so important before you get there will seem a lot less important once you arrive at one that offered you a place.'

Rejected once, and then again, by business schools at Stanford and Harvard, Scott McNealy practiced the perseverance that would characterize his career. A brash economics graduate of Harvard, he was annoyed that 'they wouldn't take a chance on me right out of college,' he says. He kept trying, taking a job as a plant foreman for a manufacturer and working his way up in sales. 'By my third year out of school, it was clear I was going to be a successful executive. I blew the doors off my numbers,' he says. Granted admission to Stanford's business school, he met Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and went on to head Sun for 22 years.

Sue Shellenbarger

巴菲特(Warren Buffett)和《今天》(Today)节目的主持人维埃拉(Meredith Vieira)均表示，尽管被理想中的学校拒绝令人沮丧，但却为他们打开了另一扇门，让他们遇到了改变自己一生的良师益友。诺贝尔医学奖获得者瓦慕斯 (Harold Varmus)说曾被哈佛医学院拒绝了两次，一名院长还建议他去参军。但当他在哥伦比亚大学医学院全身心地投入学习之后，他很快就忘记了这一切。对于从 Sun电子计算机公司（Sun Microsystems，又名：升阳电脑)的共同创始人麦克尼利(Scott McNealy)和企业家特纳(Ted Turner)到电视记者布罗考(Tom Brokaw)等其他曾被大学拒绝的人而言，这只是他们仍然记得并将会谈起的一段无足轻重的往事。

拒绝是再平常不过的事情。哈佛大学每年收到29,000封大学本科申请，录取率仅略高于7%，斯坦福大学的录取率与之大致相同。

巴菲特说，事实上我生命中发生的每一件当时认为是毁灭性的事件最终证明都在朝好的方向发展。他说，除健康问题外，挫折教会你如何向前走。你了解到暂时的挫败不能持久，最终它可能会成为一个机会。

巴菲特认为他19岁被哈佛商学院拒绝是人生中一段关键的经历。他说，回首过去，哈佛可能并不一定适合他。但当时，在芝加哥的哈佛入学面试中被拒绝之后，他有了一种恐惧的感觉，并害怕会让他的父亲失望。

巴菲特说，最终他的父亲给了他无条件的爱和无条件的信心。在寻找其它大学的过程中，他意识到格雷厄姆(Benjamin Graham)和多德(David Dodd)这两位他所钦佩的投资专家当时正在哥伦比亚大学的商学院教书。他匆忙完成了一份迟到的申请，出于运气，多德回复并接受了他的申请。巴菲特说他从这些导师那里学到了指导他进行投资的核心原理。哈佛的拒绝也让他的母校获益良多；基于税务文件，2008年他通过巴菲特基金会(Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation)向哥伦比亚大学捐款达1200万美元以上。

巴菲特说他多次体会到"塞翁失马，焉知非福"的道理。他害怕发表演讲，以至于年轻时他有时会在演讲前呕吐。所以他参加了一期迪尔•卡内基（Dale Carnegie）的公开演讲课程。他说他在那儿学到的技巧让他能够向他未来的妻子苏珊•汤普森求爱。他说自己的太太是一位"冠军辩手"。他说，我在上课期间便向我的太太求婚了。如果我只是一名普普通通的演讲者，我可能不会成功。

诺贝尔奖得主、纽约斯隆-凯特琳癌症中心(Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center)总裁瓦慕斯医生曾两次被哈佛医学院拒绝。第一次被拒时，他感到沮丧。他更改了自己的申请，注册了哈佛的文学研究生课程，但一想到要从事这个领域的工作就提不起兴趣。

一年后，他再次申请哈佛医学院，又被拒绝。在面试时，一名院长认为他变化无常且不成熟，并建议他去参军。他说，但是哥伦比亚大学医学院的职员看来欣赏他在科学和文学两个领域的能力。

瓦慕斯在电子邮件中建议，如果你被自己喜爱的学校拒绝，便在欢迎你的大学里埋头苦干。在你进大学之前，两所学校之间的差别看起来如此重要。而一旦你进入那个为你提供了一席之地的学校，这种差别就显得非常不重要了。

麦克尼利被斯坦福大学和哈佛大学的商学院拒绝了不止一次。他所表现出的执着正是他事业的写照。他说他那时是一名莽撞的哈佛大学经济学本科毕业生，对一出校门学校就不肯再给他一次机会感到气愤。他一边工作一边不断地努力申请。他做过制造厂的车间领班，并在销售领域不断地成长。他说，在离开学校三年后，很显然我将成为一个成功的管理人员，远胜过我的同辈。被斯坦福商学院录取后，他遇到了Sun Microsystems的另一位共同创始人科斯拉(Vinod Khosla)，之后他领导Sun Microsystems走过了22年的历程。