College classes:
- Calc. series (4 classes, 3 on trimester system, 1 on semester, through vector calculus)
- Differential equations
- Introductory Linear Algebra
- Intro to mathematical reasoning
- Linear Algebra (abstract vector space proof edition)
- Euclidean and non-euclidean geometry
- Mathematics with applications in the natural sciences (applied math course, goes over common modeling techniques, differential equations, markov chains, etc.)
- Abstract Algebra (groups, rings, fields, cosets, field extensions, etc.)
- 2 English composition courses
- 1 macroeconomics course
- 1 Shakespeare class
- 2 CS classes
- 2 US history classes
- 1 comparative politics class
AP classes:
Just AP Human Geography, 9th grade. My school doesn’t have many AP classes, and in that one the teacher covered less than half the material they were supposed to, even making exceptions for COVID. Got a 4 on that AP test.
SAT 1550, 800 math, 750 english, 1 try.
Been to multiple national and international competitions (VEX Worlds, National History Day Nationals) and gotten awards at them twice, although I didn’t win the whole thing, including one for sportsmanship.
Been a member of Key Club, NHS, and Boy Scouts for years. None of them were my main focus, but I’ve done quite a bit of community service through them all.
I applied to 13 places:
- Washington State University (accepted)
- Case Western (waitlisted but too expensive for me to go to regardless)
- Rice (waitlisted, 2/2000 got off that last year so pretty much a rejection)
- MIT (differed early action, then rejected)
- Georgia Tech (rejected early action)
- Reed (rejected)
- Northeastern (rejected)
- Emory (rejected)
- Johns Hopkins (rejected)
- Duke (rejected, although they were very nice about it)
- Princeton (rejected)
- Yale (rejected)
- Harvard (rejected)
Obviously the ivies were a reach, they are for anybody, but some of the others hurt, Reed especially. I know someone who got into Reed. They’ve taken far less college classes than I have, have participated in less competitions, and were considerably more willing than me to make compromises in their educational pathway.
I know academics aren’t the only factor, but they weren’t the only thing on my application, and I’m fairly confident most undergraduate applicants to most of these places aren’t learning the outer edges of Galois theory.
AP classes are generally “preferred” to college ones, or so I’ve heard, but there’s no way I would’ve learned most of the math I have if I stuck to those.
I don’t want to go to college, fundamentally, because I want a high paying job. I want to go there because I want to learn, I want to grow, and I want to be intellectually challenged. One of the main through-lines of all of my prior education has been boredom. Going to a great college has been my dream since I was in 6th grade because that was supposed to be the point where I’d finally, finally be in control of my education. I wouldn’t have to avoid learning things because that’d just make me more bored when they were taught again. I wouldn’t have to feel like I was only being assigned busywork. I’d actually be forced to really think. The only time I’ve actually sat down and studied in all of high school was during those first couple calculus courses, and only because the teacher didn’t say what would be on the exams and I was paranoid. The only thing that’s made a college workload difficult was because I would accept nothing less from myself than perfection, because that was the way to get into a good college.
I guess not. I’ve been taking classes at WSU for 3 years. I know exactly what to expect from it, and it won’t do any of those things.
I suppose this is mostly just me venting, but I do also have a question: what did I do wrong? Did I? I’ve read so many thing online about people complaining about not getting into the ivies, but still getting into someplace like Rice that I’d be ecstatic to be at. WSU isn’t a terrible school, but it’s also certainly none of the things I was looking for, and entirely invalidates all the effort I have put into, well, my life, for many years. Are my academics really bad enough this should have been expected? What else could have caused this?
At this point my best guesses are that I’m a poor straight white male, not adding to diversity and leeching grant funds, and that maybe my letters of recommendation were really bad. Because all of my favorite classes and subjects were taken at college, I never saw any of the professors I asked for recommendations for more than a semester, and the teachers running the clubs I participated in and actually knew me never actually taught me a class to be counted as teachers. My professor said it was “glowing” though, so unless they lied, that doesn’t seem right either.