To start, here are some quick stats for myself: 1520 SAT, 93 UW GPA, 113 W GPA, 6/355 in class. ECs included a part-time job, drama/musical theater, lots of music stuff like choir and a capella groups. (Subjectively) good essays and recommendations. Applied as a history major with music as a second choice for most places.
I was rejected from Brown, waitlisted at Bowdoin and Vassar, and accepted to McGill (denied my acceptance soon after realizing it’s not a good fit for me), Clark (couldn’t really afford despite large merit scholarship), and SUNY New Paltz. I’ll be attending New Paltz in the fall.
I can’t lie, I was completely crushed by the admissions process. As a high-achieving student throughout my life, I equated a lot of my self worth with academic success and prestige, and being waitlisted by Vassar especially made me feel like a complete failure. It was completely heartbreaking to feel like my hard work wasn’t worth it, and though I’m happy with where I’m ending up now, I still can’t help but feel some of those sentiments. I know I made some mistakes as I applied- I was probably overconfident, didn’t apply to enough schools, didn’t apply early enough (didn’t receive any merit aid at New Paltz because of that), and didn’t ask for any outside help.
But something I did right was apply to a safety that I could fall in love with. I never thought I’d end up at my safety, and I remember crying after all my rejections that I didn’t want to go to it. Now, I don’t even feel like I’m settling. I visited campus and loved it, loved the surrounding area, and can really imagine my life for the next 4 years being there. Admittedly, it feels strange to attend a safety, to think I could’ve got accepted with much lower grades, but I’m telling myself that I’ll just be much more prepared for college than many people there and thrive. My advice to any underclassmen is to love your safeties and prepare for any worst case scenario. Too often, I see people ending up at places they hated because they didn’t think they’d end up getting rejected everywhere, or they were unrealistic and get waitlisted/rejected from what they thought were safeties.
Even harder advice to take is to stop placing all of your self worth in the college process. It’ll inevitably hurt to get rejected, especially comparing yourself with your peers and every faceless account on CC, but you must remember you’re not the only one experiencing this and that your intelligence is not rooted in your college outcomes. Admissions officers know so very little about you, even if you poured your heart and soul into your applications. And most importantly, college is what you make of it. If you go to Brown and stay in your dorm all day, you will not get the connections or have the fun that everybody talks about. But if you go to your state school with the best outlook that you can and join clubs and make friends and build relationships with professors, you’ll have an amazing 4 years ahead of you.
Thanks for reading and I hope my rambling can help somebody. Go Hawks! 