“My name is Megan, and I got deferred from Princeton,” a grinning high school student announces in a TikTok video with nearly 400,000 likes, before inserting a toothpick flag with a tiger-print Princeton “P” into a rainbow sprinkled cake. “Yay!” a group of her friends cheer in the background.
In the video, captioned “Deferral is detour and rejection is redirection,” four other teens take turns sharing the institutions they were deferred or rejected from and inserting their own toothpick flags into the cake, receiving encouraging responses from their peers behind the camera and occasionally erupting into fits of giggles.
@babycakess222 DEFERRAL IS DETOUR AND REJECTION IS REDIRECTION #college #classof2025 #collegeacceptance #cake #viral #hearmeout #fyp
♬ original sound – LYLA G
“It’s OK if you don’t get into your schools,” one participant says at the end. “We are all on amazing paths.”
“Yeah, and everyone’s on their own journey to success, so don’t worry about it,” another chimes in.
Lighthearted “rejection cake” videos like these have been making the rounds on social media in recent weeks, as this year’s high school seniors hear back from universities and colleges — for better or worse. The trend is a cheeky, empowering counter to the plethora of college acceptance videos shared online — like this one from 2024, in which a student, surrounded by her family, captures the triumphant moment she learned she’d been accepted to MIT.
@kkatiee..k MIT ❤️🖤❤️🖤 #collegeacceptance #mit
♬ original sound – RobynSchallComic
There’s nothing wrong with sharing your wins, but as high school senior Ceci Skala explained to USA Today, it can be a little discouraging when it seems like the only videos showing up on students’ feeds are exciting college acceptances. “If you’re applying to a hard college and you’re seeing all these acceptance videos, it’s going [to] hurt, because it’s like, ‘Am I the only one rejected? Am I not good enough?’” Skala said. “You don’t see all the videos of everybody else getting rejected.”
Pre-social media, students might only have heard about their peers’ college acceptances at grad parties, or through high school gossip circles. But now, they have access to an endless feed of happy new admits at their fingertips — along with videos announcing other related accomplishments, like scholarships or SAT scores.
“It really is easy to get caught up in [admissions] being a student-wide competition,” Bronx high school senior Aaron Nadler told his student newspaper, The Science Survey. “You see your peers flaunting leadership roles and grades and begin to wonder how well your own achievements stack up compared to theirs.”
@ceciska12 Rejection cake!! ❌❌ (I promise shiran is going to college) #rejection #college
♬ original sound – ceci
And for many students, finally hearing back from colleges is the welcome culmination of a particularly taxing period. According to a 2023 survey from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 76% of students reported that finishing their applications felt like a decisive moment in their lives, while 52% said the process was more stressful than anything else they’d done academically.
Compared to the slew of acceptance videos, rejection cakes offer a more compassionate, human side of the story than just the highlight reel. They not only allow participants to come together, laugh off their rejections, and decorate a sweet treat, but also invite an abundance of encouragement and validation from strangers in the comments section.
“Very creative!! Love it. Those rejections are their loss and your gain for a new direction in your educational career!!” one commenter wrote on a March 28 video. On another, posted April 7, a woman said, “As a mom and a psychologist I promise you — we don’t get into places we don’t belong. There are reasons we just can see or feel at the time. (And I have 2 masters and a PhD and also was rejected).”
It’s reactions like these that help lessen the weight of not getting into a dream school, explained Skala, who will be attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall. “Sometimes admission processes are just a gamble, and your self-worth shouldn’t be defined by a school or a decision,” she told USA Today. “Having other people relate to it makes it easier.”
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