Rejection

Here is a question, when a high school graduate apply to go to Harvard, and a couple of days later they get a rejection letter in the mail, why is it that they feel bad?
If I ask someone to go out on a date with me, and they say no, why do I feel bad for the rejection?

Before applying at Harvard, the high school grad was not into Harvard and after getting the rejection letter, they are not into Harvard.
Before I ask someone out, I wasn’t going on a date with anyone, and after they say no, I’m still not going out with anyone.

So why is it that we would be in the same exact place that we were before, but feel worse about ourselves?
Is the bad feeling, about being exactly where you were, or is the bad feeling about something else? Our ego maybe, expectations,…
Maybe we hate being rejected because it reveals something about us that we didn’t want to face in the first place, maybe we need to learn how to detach ourselves from the things we do; a better place to start would be, Harvard didn’t reject me, they rejected my application,…