Can't help but feel defeated...

Applying to College
81

<p>Don’t let what a college thinks of your application dictate your life. They don’t know you personally, and they don’t have that much space. They cannot accept many people. </p>

<p>Also, do you really think that going to a top school is that important? I know many people who went to good schools, like Ohio State or University of Oklahoma who are now extremely successful. One of my most brilliant friends was accepted by only his safety. He is now at a big state university, and not one of the impressive ones like UNC or the UCs. He took it all calmly and is just grateful one of his teachers told him to apply to a safety. I think in a few years, the schools that rejected him will regret it, but he’ll have all of the opportunities he could ever want and make enormous contributions to his field. </p>

<p>My brother got rejected from his top choice schools and ended up at a very lowly ranked LAC. He dropped out from lack of intellectual stimulation and is now a very successful professional poker player. He is also brilliant, but the idea of even applying to the Ivies would have been absurd to him. He didn’t even have a 3.0. Despite his lack of academic accomplishments, he’s doing quite well and teaching himself a lot of what a good LAC would, and much more, by reading a lot. </p>

<p>I think you should learn from your experience. Yes, it sucks, but you can take advantage of that. If you do take a gap year, don’t worry about stats or applications. Instead, try to understand what’s really out there. There are people far more brilliant than you and me. That doesn’t mean that you are stupid or unimportant. It doesn’t mean you are less human. They have their own challenges. There are also people who aren’t as bright. There are also people who would be, but haven’t had the opportunities. Going to a school that isn’t top tier should do you some good. You’ll meet geniuses there as well and many wonderful people, and learn more about the true value of prestige, rank, and “everybody knows it’s the best…”</p>

<p>Anyway, failing teaches you to take risks necessary to succeed. Sometimes you need to fail to get where you want. I struggled with school until high school, which taught me a ton. I learned that failing isn’t the end of the world. I fail a lot, but I succeed a lot. If you learn to accept failure, you’ll allow yourself to succeed. Many of my best projects, papers, and experiences have stemmed from “Whoops! That didn’t work so well…”. On the other hand, some of them still suck. But I’ve learned to see my mistakes as potential successes. I’d suggest learning how to make mistakes calmly. Learn to fall without hurting yourself. It’ll suck until you get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll be able to do what you never dared to try. </p>

<p>You tried for the impossible schools and it didn’t work. Congrats for taking that risk! It didn’t work; now learn to come out smiling. You’ll take more risks later. You’ll need to learn to make the best of them, whether you succeed or fail.</p>

82

<p>if it really bothers you, figure out what you did wrong, make yourself more competitive while in college and apply to the schools that you still want to go to as a transfer. it can be done, you just need to wait a while to get there. best of luck</p>

83

<p>I can’t help but notice that the OP didn’t post any stats or info at all, and says he had no guidance counselor. So maybe he over-reached and applied to very unrealistic places. How did this happen? Homeschooled, maybe? I imagine that many if not most people who are admitted to Ivies receive excellent counseling for all 4 years of HS, and a lot of them probably supplement their school counseling with private counseling.</p>

84

<p>Well, I think the OP should come here and update us of how is he feeling…probably this experience will help him to grow up faster than his peers.</p>

85

<p>Lots of people feel like OP because, for a while, it is a helpful strategy for them. In their small group or community, they are the best at something (or everything) that counts to them, and get used to valuing themselves because of that self-concept. Moreover there are positive points to being a perfectionist, because perfectionists tend to work very hard and do a good job.</p>

<p>I used to teach at an Ivy League school and live in one of its residential colleges as a faculty fellow. Each fall, freshmen would show up charmingly full of themselves, sure they could accelerate immediately into upper-level classes, graduate in two years, and so on. Their advisors, often to their great resentment, would force them to enroll in introductory classes. By October, they had gotten lots of Cs as their midterm grades in the standard freshman courses and were in deep despair. What had happened was that their frame of reference had changed, so that they were comparing themselves to the other kids at college rather than to the other kids in their high schools, where they had been at the top of the heap.</p>

<p>But not only is nobody good at everything, but you can only imagine yourself as “the best” even at the stuff you’re good at if you severely restrict your frame of reference. For instance, say you’re good at music–say, even, you’re a child prodigy! Good for you! But if you change your frame of reference, and compare yourself to, say, Mozart, you’re going to seem mediocre. Moreover you’re probably going to be bad at something else–athletic endeavors, say, or creative writing. One of the good things about a broad liberal arts education that includes a lot of humanities is that it exposes you to works of astonishing genius, beyond anything you could have imagined beforehand, much less created yourself. Knowing that such pinnacles of achievement are just not attainable can be very liberating to a certain kind of perfectionist person.</p>

<p>So–two pieces of advice from an old lady in her 50s. </p>

<p>1) The world needs lots of people and they don’t all need to be “the best;” they just need to do a decent job. Have faith that YOUR best, not THE best, will be good enough. Make peace with your level of ability, whatever it might be.</p>

<p>2) You are not, as a senior in high school, a finished product. Whether you will go on to be successful in life, whatever that means to you, has more to do with the choices you make henceforward than those you have made already. And success also, for even the most talented, has more to do with resilience and tenacity in the face of failure or perceived failure, than it has to do with winning every time. Everybody fails sometimes, and the most successful people fail the most often, because they’re always pushing the envelop.</p>

86

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<p>Unlikely. Most of his peers, I can only hope, didn’t have the same reaction because they are already grown up.</p>

87

<p>Hate to say this, but the OP sounds like a bigtime whiner to me…Getting rejected by Ivies doesn’t mean you’re average. There are plenty of successful CEO’s that didn’t graduate from brand name colleges. Just keep WORKING HARD, and never GIVE UP. There are people who have faced much worse than you, and succeeded in life. Getting rejected by an Ivy may be a setback, but that’s an incredibly lame excuse to give up on life and call yourself AVERAGE.</p>

88

<p>Maybe this is confusing to some people… but I don’t really care if you “think I’m a whiner” or a “baby” or “not an adult”. That’s fine. I don’t feel that way about myself and I don’t think your opinion is objective reality. Which I guess doesn’t really jive with the fact that I feel like crap after reading all those “no” and “maybe” letters, but I never claimed to be logically consistent.</p>

<p>First of all, I’ve had a pretty rough year due to some really ridiculous home circumstances that I never could have predicted. I’m doing my best to cope. I don’t think I’m mentally unsound or in need of counseling, but I would say that did cause some disturbance for me. Secondly, I guess what really irks me - and I’m sure there are people out there who can sympathize (but maybe not, since the general response seems to be to tell me I’m being childish) - is that I’ve spent my whole life feeling the only thing interesting or worthwhile about me is my intelligence. That notion has been reinforced over and over again. It has been an everlasting comfort. If all else fails, there’s that. And I feel like it has been ripped away from me.</p>

<p>I understand that getting rejected by Ivies doesn’t automatically make me stupid. But I’ve had this sneaking suspicion for my entire life that maybe, just maybe, I’m not really that special at all. And I feel like finally someone has agreed with me. I almost want to feel happy that someone finally agrees. It does feel kind of “right”, I guess, to get some negative feedback for once. At the same time, though - and I think a lot of people have missed this - what is the fate of the “average” person? For all intents and purposes, there is a thing, a distinction (in every area, no?) called average.</p>

<p>And if you are average, what happens to you? What does that mean?</p>

<p>And to answer someone’s question from some page or other… I wasn’t homeschooled. I go to a very large school. We have “guidance counselors”, but I have talked to mine maybe five times throughout my entire high school career. And that is by no means a personal failure. There are only a few counselors at the school and students are constantly being rushed in and out of the offices. You can’t really sit down and have a heart to heart. It’s pretty much strictly business here.</p>

<p>Oh, and I wasn’t only rejected by Ivies. I only applied to one Ivy.</p>

<p>PS, I’m female.</p>

89

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<p>Who cares? I mean, do you? What does it even matter? Practically, I mean? Because obviously you don’t care about anything that’s more substantial than labels that you arbitrarily associate with certain events.</p>

90

<p>Average generally means you won’t need to be mongering for “hours” at a retail establishment. </p>

<p>If you want to feel better about your intelligence, maybe you should become a tutor lol.</p>

91

<p>The truth is you probably didn’t do anything wrong. </p>

<p>Top colleges don’t even CLAIM they choose the most academically promising and/or the most deserving applicants. Instead they build a class. Think of it like casting the high school musical. The director isn’t just going to cast the 20 most talented singers, dancers, and actors in the high school. If (s)he did, (s)he’d probably end up with 16 female sopranos–who can’t really play the roles for males with a tenor or bass voice. </p>

<p>So, some less talented students will get roles, while some more talented ones won’t. There may just be more talented sopranos. Maybe the most talented soprano doesn’t get the part because she’d look just plain silly cast opposite the male lead. Or maybe the drama teacher picks a kid who has been in the musical every year and proven that she is willing to work hard in rehearsal instead of a more talented soprano who has never tried out before. </p>

<p>Colleges do the same sort of thing–they have to have people who can play field hockey and water polo, play the oboe, and have a demonstrated interest in ancient Greek. They want racial diversity. They want geographic diversity. They give a preference to legacies. The kid who is just as smart and hard working but hasn’t had the chance to learn how to play water polo or the oboe or study Greek may not get in. </p>

<p>Moreover, in choosing the folks who can play these roles, colleges rely on outside validation. It’s quite possible that a truly talented scientist has never heard of the Intel and certainly wouldn’t get any school help in participating. At other high schools, doing an Intel project is a course for credit. Some schools offer the AMC and AIME and push their kids to participate in ARML. (These are math events.) Some schools have great sports programs; others, don’t. Some kids have art classes where students are taught how to put together a portfolio. Some equally talented artists may not get much guidance. Some social studies teachers know about the Concord Review; others, don’t. Participating and excelling in programs like this can help an application. Some students never know they exist. </p>

<p>Add to this that you college app snaps a picture of you at one moment in time. Some people who are really outstanding at 17 or 18 continue to be exceptional. Some fade. Some kids who were merely mediocre suddenly catch fire. </p>

<p>So don’t take the thin envelopes as any indication of your worth. They really aren’t.</p>

92

<p>Skeletal, google “imposter syndrome.” It is often associated with perfectionism, especially in women. I know whereof I speak . . .</p>

93

<p>SkeletalLamping. </p>

<p>It takes a professional mentality to get into Harvard. You can’t be content with an A. It must be an A+. You can’t be content with a 700-780 on an SAT II, despite any praise you get from your friends. Remeber that you are competiting against the very best, and the most competitive. People that come from all over the world, who might have outstanding and over-achieveing communities and standards to live up to (asian). You can’t let someone else in your school win a common award without winning it yourself. It is a cutthroat game to get to the top. You have to think of your high school life as a chess game. You have to value every single second, every minute, use every opportunity that you have. Be kind to your teachers - they’re writing your recs. Apply to prestigious summer programs, and above all, you must make sacrifices.</p>

<p>The main sacrifice that I have seen that separates the top from the second tier Ivies (Columbia, Penn, etc.) is the sacrifice of sociality. The people that got into Harvard and Princeton this year weren’t the people that hung out with friends on Friday nights. They weren’t the ones who junked their time on Facebook or AIM. They were the ones who took more AP’s than recommended, people that did crazy things with their time.</p>

<p>You have to view high school as a nationwide contest, a four year-long contest. At the end it comes down to who can make it into the BEST college. Now listen, if its a four year contest, why waste your time doing other things that don’t contribute to the contest? Computer games or socializing or visiting family? Do these only when forced to, otherwise it lowers your competence. You have to value every hour, every minute. Every piece of time that you can use, use. </p>

<p>You lost the game, but it’s ok. You can always train up your kids to win it. But make sure that you adopt an under-represented minority. Otherwise it might be a bit harder.</p>

94

<p>Wow…I don’t see why there was such an outrage caused by the OP’s post…</p>

95

<p>

It means that you are comparing yourself to others and you are in danger of letting others influence your sense of self-worth.</p>

<p>You are what you make of yourself and how much progress you make in your life goals. And nobody can tell you that is average because it is based upon what you can do.</p>

<p>Please don’t let your life be influenced by others’ labels.</p>

96

<p>like alice walker said, “beauty (or success) is in the eye of the beholder”</p>

97

<p>I second post #92 - look at “imposter syndrome”. </p>

<p>Also, you wrote

Then your parents and teachers have done you a grave disservice. My son IS well above average in intelligence. But I praise him when he is kind, when he sticks with difficult tasks, when he is thoughtful or helpful - the parts of his self that he can control. I criticize him when he is rude or doesn’t do his chores. I don’t praise him for his 6’1" height or his intelligence or his thick hair, nor do I deride him for his bad vision or sinus trouble. Those are things he can’t control. </p>

<p>So now you realize that your intelligence, the only thing that you thought was special, may not put you in the top 1%. So what? You probably aren’t tall enough to be a basketball player or beautiful enough to be a model or rich enough to take your friends to a private day at Disney World. Why do those shortcomings not make you feel like a loser? They are no more controllable than your IQ, which, as you objectively know, is above average.</p>

<p>But you do have the ability to stick with difficult tasks, to be kind, and to learn. You do have the ability to help other people, and you do have very high intelligence or people wouldn’t have been praising you for it for so long.</p>

<p>And you’re way ahead of most of your agemates because

Those who got into the Ivies won’t discover that for another four years, when the employers don’t fall all over themselves to hire the shiny new Harvard grads. </p>

<p>So go to one of the schools that accepted you and do your best. Take a gap year if you want, to grow up a bit (not intended as an insult - my son’s doing that). And work on your kindness, and helpfulness, and perserverence, and you will find that there are more important parts to your self than your IQ, whatever it is.</p>

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<p>at this point what is keeping you down is your low self esteem. If you don’t think you’re special then who else is going to??? Those people who work at college admissions offices, yeah, THEY DON’T KNOW YOU! You were just a piece of paper to most of them. Their decisions are NOT a judgement of you in the slightest. And those supposedly “average” colleges that you DID get accepted to are probably the same ones thousands of kids would have loved to get into. </p>

<p>So take a gap year if you want. Volunteer. Get some perspective on life. And learn that worse stuff happens every day than getting rejected from an ivy.<br>
IT’S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD!!!</p>

99

<p>I haven’t read every post but this reminds me of Lake Woebegon, “where all the children are above average.” If you don’t want to be average, do something that matters, make a difference in other lives somehow, create something meaningful, make a change that will help. What do you know about yourself in your heart? What do you care about? What do you believe in? My cousin went to Harvard. He was an alcoholic and and a convicted felon by the age of 30. Life is what you make it.</p>

100

<p>Stop trying to cheer this guy up… if you didn’t get accepted to an Ivy League, MIT, Caltech, or Stanford… THEN YOU ARE A FAILURE AT LIFE AND YOU ARE AN AVERAGE STUDENT…</p>

<p>whether that sentiment has arisen because of parents, peers, or some factors which have led you to believe that top-tier schools are the end-all be-all. honestly it’s not the case.</p>

<p>For a time, I’ve viewed the past seventeen years of my life as simply a road that led me to that fateful 5:00 pm April 1st date. That all I’ve done for my entire life was to get that acceptance letter from some Ivy League school. Trust me, it’s not the case.</p>

<p>I’ll say this, I don’t know what you’re feeling right now. I applied to 14 different schools, I got accepted to 4: Rutgers, NYU Stern Berkeley, and Dartmouth. While that isn’t great, I did get accepted into one Ivy and both NYU and Berkeley are “top-tier” schools to me.</p>

<p>But in the end, as a person you are not measured by how many admission letters you received. Fifteen years from now, you and many others won’t care. It’s how you go about it now, whether that means studying hard in under grad or getting a good job later on. </p>

<p>Because at least you have one thing going for you. These “average” colleges at least have “average” tuition so you wont be taking a second mortgage to pay for them!</p>