Hello, "no". Or, a nicely packaged and primly placed "we received a number of strong applications, but..."
Rejection is quite disconcerting. Especially when you think that you don't deserve it. While I can fume and fret and just agonize over a rejection, I think it's actually the most meaningful answer to receive. I haven't received many negatives in my time in college, and the memory of dreaming-thinking-trembling-ohmygosh-GAH! has left. Instead, I have the solid backing of success in my time here, where every door was opened, every program successful, and every endeavor fruitful.
But the biggest lesson here is: I forgot who gave this to me. I forgot that it was God who made this stubborn, prideful, self-conscious heart. I forgot that He gave these to me freely, and was present every step of the way. I have become so mired in my success that I cannot hear the voice of God anymore. Rather, I have become a despicably "entitled" persona-one who feels as if everything should come because of past successes.
It is not past success, but present passion and future greatness that are most important. I guess that's what "sitting on your laurels" really means. If I were a Nobel laureate and already had all the funding I needed just by signing a grant proposal, would I endlessly receive huge sums? Well, yes and no. I would at first because of the prodigious honor, but if I did not continuously hone my passion and mind so that I "graduated" from the past, eventually the money would stop rolling in. If I do not put my successes in the past now, there will be nothing for me in the future.
All this, and God is omnipresent. He is here, in my life-whether I honor Him, reject Him, or dishonor Him. In Sunday School, one of the young adults had quite the epiphany-that God's constancy is so amazing simply because He will never negate Himself, while fickle humanity vacillates from one end to the other. I have forgotten that this cell group is not my own, nor is it my creation-it is God's! These people do not follow me, as if I were some great teacher-but Christ living in me. They do not need me to take care of them; God is sovereign and omnipotent, and will work in their lives with or without my presence!
Similarly, the volunteer world (in the most formal sense) at Rice University is fine without me-in some ways, I am merely a hindrance. If I were awarded a spot on the Rice Service Council, I think I would impede progress-simply because my heart motives were not right in the first place.

Come to think of it, God has really revealed the paramount importance of heart motive in anything that I do. Whenever it has been flawed or tainted, God has forced me to relinquish it, or has pried it from my hands. Whether it be courses that I take "just to get a good grade," positions or internships that I apply to "because I think I can/deserve to get it," professors whose recommendations I court "because they've written good ones in the past,' or even projects done simply because I "think I could do it well." The common thread: my motives were based on a sense of self-entitlement, self-power, and self-direction. And yet, so many people around me do the same things, and come out in spades. Why is the opposite true for me?
I know that it is because I know God, I love Him, and I am His servant. For me to serve Him well, I need to be pure in heart, and second in my life. My life is no longer mine; today I was reading this awesome passage in Philippians 2
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
Who, being in the very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death--
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Christ Himself humbled Himself for the glory of God the Father. Yet, that allowed Him to be exalted and glorified above all else! I have been seeking glory for myself too much this year-it is time to look away from me and to others. God pierces my heart with His sword-may I be obedient to His calling.