Getting in this year or next year says nothing about what you’re worth. It’s a calendar, not a character test.

An admission or a rejection is a decision made by people with limited places and limited information, on a particular day, under conditions you will never see. It sorts applications, not people. Treating the outcome as a measurement of your worth gives a committee a job it never had and could not do.

If the answer was no, let it be a scheduling fact and grieve it as one. Ask what specifically you would strengthen, from someone who actually knows, rather than from your own worst reading. Then put the next attempt on the calendar and get on with the year in between.