First ding of the season!!

Exactly 15 days after my first submit came in the very first 'ding'... hopefully the last too!
The Reliance Stanford full-ride scholarship (almost too good to be true) results were declared last Friday and I was not one of the finalists...

Takeaways from this experience -
1. there are 50 other Indians who are more smarter, poorer, more in love with India than I am and that they are now all super-excited.. I wish them all the best
Corollary - that only 1 in 5 of these aforementioned Indians would finally make it in.
2. essay writing, even if it is just one, takes more time than you think. Even though you might be thinking about it every waking moment, the progress is slow until you just get down to it
Corollary - stop procastinating
3. writing a short essay requires more work, more vocabulary, more thought and more precision. It requires even more re-drafts since your first attempt would probably have been 3 times the word limit
Corollary - less is indeed more!
4. Stanford is super-achieving, super-diverse, super-brand, super-selective and super-expensive and I am super-sure now that it isnt the one for me... a case of sour grapes, you say? Be that as it may, I think I was just chasing a dream and it was great while it lasted...
Corollary - Stanford is out

What have my other fellow dinged applicants learnt? I would love to know... And all you finalists out there in the blogosphere, please stand up! You deserve the applause :)