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Black Knight
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« Reply #17 on: April 29, 2008, 09:13:51 PM » |
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Interesting coincidence, I was just thinking of creating a topic along this skein. Then again I suppose it’s not really a coincidence, just that time of year.
I don’t really have any questions, but I thought I’d post my observations about this year and the process of applying to colleges, for anyone who’s interested or wanted another perspective.
I’m a senior in high school, so I’ll be graduating in June to move onto bigger and better things, and I decided a long while ago that college was among those things. So this year I’ve had the absolute joy of spending a whole lotta time figuring that whole application thing out. Now I live in Vermont, which is quite a small state, and my high school is equally small (my graduating class is about 106 people), so it’s not the hugest accomplishment in the world to do quite well ( It switches a lot, at one point I was first in the class, now something around third, but really no one cares anymore). I have also participated in a lot of extra curriculars like Cross Country, Track, plays and musicals, band, and I’m the student representative to our school board. All probably not too impressive, but in any case I still couldn’t help but feel I had a chance of getting into at least some decent colleges.
In any case I thought what the hell; I might as well try to go big. So I started looking at schools like Yale, Princeton, Brown, etc. I really didn’t know that much about college, I don’t have any older siblings, and my parents went to community college, so not much advice there. From my reading I learned about the abysmal acceptance rates of these colleges (Ivy leagues and other competitive schools can be around 9-10% accepted from a pool of very qualified applicants), and I knew this year was supposed to be particularly hard in admissions (indeed they all set records, Harvard's acceptance was 7.1%) so needless to say I was quite disheartened. A big reason I wanted to get into one of these big schools was the financial aid options, as most of the Ivy leagues will cover 100% of all costs, including living and books, for families with combined incomes under $60,000, which was a very alluring prospect.
So I worked my ass off from October to December filling out forms, retaking the SATs multiple times (my scores were actually alright, not AMAZING, but it could have been way worse), and I spent several months editing my essay. But even with all of these preparations, I knew admittance was a slim possibility to any ONE of these Universities. After all, they receive 25,000 applicants a year for only ~1800 slots, and Yale on average even rejects ¾ of applicants with perfect 2400 SATs. It’s fair to say the process is almost random when it gets down to weeding people out.
Now, like a true FESSer, the first thing I thought of when I heard there was a 10% hit chance was that even with those odds I’ve had my Lord hit by an axe wielder. So maybe... just maybe, there was perhaps a chance of RNG rape in my favor that some of the college admissions boards just might let me in. So my only conclusion was I had to apply to a lot of them, because getting rejected from one didn’t really mean anything, it was all mostly chance.
In the end, I applied to 18 schools, and that translates to a lot of admission fees, but if I got into one (aside from the obligatory back-up schools like University of Vermont…), I’d be quite set. After I got my applications done, and my financial aid information (another migraine), I had some colleges contact me about interviews. Cool. I knew they did it for all their applicants, but still I was excited. I always considered myself more of a personality in the flesh rather than in writing. All-in-all I talked to five alums, from Harvard, Yale, Duke, Dartmouth, and Princeton. I listed those in order of how well I think the interviews went. The guy from Princeton was just weird and creepy. The alumni from Harvard was wonderful, and I talked with him while sipping coffee at a local diner for about three hours, and I really think it went about as well as it possibly could have. They all reminded me afterwards that the interview was a minor part of the application, but I still felt like it might help.
So the school year went on, and I found it harder and harder to concentrate in class. I had a wicked bad case of Senior-osis. It felt like (still feels like) the teachers were keeping us occupied with menial busy-work because they’re just as aware as we are that school’s running out, and it doesn’t really matter once applications are in. Tortuous months later, I start to hear back from colleges.
First an acceptance from University of Vermont. Meh. Don't get me wrong, I was still excited, at least if all else failed I would have somewhere to go, but in reality I was basically guaranteed admittance being a mostly competent in-state resident. Then I heard back from McGill in Montreal, and got in there too. That one was pretty exciting too, until I got the financial aid and discovered Canadian schools kind of suck for giving out grants to international students (come on, Canada’s hardly international!). Then I heard back from the University of Chicago… rejected. But not to worry! Mid-March I hear from Northwestern, and I got in there. So now I had a serious school accept me, and I was quite excited. But then, even more rejections came in. Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams, Dartmouth, University of Virginia, Princeton…, all arriving in their little envelopes with just one piece of paper enclosed telling you how sorry they were. You knew before even opening it that it was a rejection, because it was so thin. Acceptance letters come in 12 x 8.5 envelopes, and most even say “congratulations!” right on the envelope. After my first few acceptances, I started only getting small envelopes.
But then I get three giant envelopes in the mail, and one was from Stanford, another from Columbia, and the final from Harvard. I quite nearly pissed myself. Turns out the numbers played in my favor, as well as perhaps a terrific interview with Harvard.
It was quite interesting though, because despite those absolutely amazing acceptances, I was still rejected/waitlisted at over twice as many schools as I got into (12 out of 18). It effectively demonstrated to me the random nature of college acceptances, and the fact that really anyone fairly competent could get into one of these schools. Not all of them, but as long as you didn’t pick a favorite, one is all you need.
So here’s the complete rundown:
Accepted: University of Vermont, McGill, Northwestern, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard
Rejected: Princeton, Cornell, Bowdoin, University of Chicago, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, University of Virginia
Waitlisted: Pomona, Brown, Duke, Yale
So now I’ve narrowed my decision now between Stanford and Harvard, both of whom expect $0 parent contribution and for me just to work on campus a few hours a week at 11 bucks an hour. Really not a bad deal, since in the ages past getting into Harvard meant you had to practically be a millionaire or be indebted for the rest of your life. I actually have to make the decision between the two of them by tomorrow (May 1st), and it’s a dead heat between them so I’m quite torn, but that’s not really the point of this post.
I didn’t post this to brag, but rather to encourage any juniors or other high schoolers looking into college that you don’t have to be afraid that you aren’t good enough to get into these schools, because I really didn’t expect to, but I put a hell of a lot of effort into my applications (not joking, just about as hard as I have ever worked. period.), and committed myself to applying to as many as possible, and hey, who can say I’m limited by the choices given to me? It's really possible for anyone who's willing to put in the effort, especially since financial concerns are becoming more nonexistent every year.
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