Here’s an interesting story I heard recently:
There’s an academic research program (I won’t name it) that’s incredibly popular. They receive far more applications than they can accept, and every single applicant is highly qualified.
Here’s what they secretly do: they send a rejection letter to every single qualified applicant by default, without exceptions.
Most people simply move on, accepting the rejection. But there are some people whose life dream has been to join this program, and can’t easily take “no” for an answer. They send a follow-up plea; the program then reviews their resumes, and invite some of them for interviews.
The takeaway here isn’t another “life hack”, like emailing back every rejection letter “just in case” – that would be missing the point. The takeaway is about wanting something so badly that you simply cannot accept rejection without trying again.