Failure.

The word itself makes you want to sink into your shoulders, hide your face and waddle off in shame. However, failure isn’t always a bad thing.

When a defeat is taken as a learning experience, a person can actually benefit from his or her mistake and it can contribute to his or her success in the long run.

Additionally, this can make you more desirable to a college admissions officer or possible employer when it is evident that you did fail but managed to build yourself back up from it in and use your non-fulfillment of your goal as an advantage.

Cassie Nichols, a graduate of Princeton with a Masters of Arts degree in Education from University of California, Santa Barbara who has conducted educational research at Yale and UCSB, founded College Specific in order to guide students through the admissions process and hopefully to the college of their choice.

Additionally, Nichols wrote The College Essay Trap, a book intended to lend a helping hand to students writing their college essays.

Nichols believes that while an essay about personal growth that results from a mistake can be extremely powerful—it must be handled with care.

While Nichols stresses that admissions officers are humans just like everyone else and that colleges do understand that students have faults,  not every “failure” is necessarily college essay appropriate.

“If you’ve made a mistake that resulted in meaningful personal growth and if you really want to write about it, make sure the majority of the essay focuses on how you’ve recovered and what you’ve learned from your mistake and less on the mistake itself,” Cassie advises.

So the next time the word failure dares to show its scary face, don’t hide yourself from humiliation. Rise above it. Take it as a stepping stone to your success.