<p>To be frank, college admissions is NOT about numbers. I would frantically dispute that. First, my numbers were considerably better than average at every school I applied to - I was admitted to 6 out of 13. If they looked only for grades and scores, I would have gotten into all of them.</p>
<p>I am merely trying to explain why I don't believe that the process is purely statistics-driven. You'll notice, frankly, that I am not accusing them of making the wrong decision. I think some of them made the RIGHT decision to reject me despite my better numbers. Perhaps, if I explain this, it will make what colleges are looking for a little bit clearer.</p>
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<p>I went to a good - marvelous, in fact - high school. I got good grades and good SAT scores - nearly perfect on all counts. I had one stellar extracurricular, and many assorted ones. I'm not ashamed to label myself a talented student.</p>
<p>But who was I?</p>
<p>I wrote a talented, well-structured, proofread personal statement that recounted a story about an intense debate I'd had about the nature of religion. By all accounts, it was a fine personal statement. There was only one thing it lacked: direction.</p>
<p>I was a very competitive young man. This is not a bad thing, but it is not automatically a good one either. At the time, I used it poorly. Even now, I struggle with that impulse. Rather than a drive to be the best person I could be, I used competition to try to prove myself better than others. Sometimes, I'm embarassed to admit, that involved frustrated rants at people I believed to be less talented or less worthwhile.</p>
<p>Would it have been wise to admit a young man like that to Harvard? The answer, frankly, is no. You don't take a young man whose impulses are inward-centric, whose competition is purely to prove himself superior, and give him what is often called the H-bomb. Harvard probably does do that quite often, because their admissions department is imperfect. I'm not saying they are consistent about making the right choice. I just mean to say that in my case, they did the right thing. It has taken me four years to understand this.</p>
<p>Who was I? I was a talented student who lacked direction. My commitments were not selfish per se, they were simply aimless because they were built around my own sensibilities of what was worthwhile. Harvard, whether they knew it or not, was not the place for me to find a genuine direction in life. Their school expects young people to be well-grounded first. Their school needs young people to be well-grounded first.</p>
<p>It was at Duke that I was able to find that direction. Duke is a warmer place, and its people pay more attention to the genuine growth of young men and women into well-rounded individuals. Here, you have more time on your hands to see who you ought to be and discover the right choices for your life.</p>
<p>Not all Duke students take advantage of this, and I submit that this is because our admissions department, wonderful as it is, is not perfect, either.</p>
<p>All schools look for academic talent, which is why SAT scores and grades matter so much. All schools look for passion, which is why extracurriculars matter so much. But it isn't just extracurriculars or grades or SAT scores that matter: what matters is how you will use them. At a school like Harvard, they are look for students who have already chosen to turn their talents out into the world at large. They are wrong about which students those are sometimes, maybe often. But they are sometimes right, too.</p>
<p>At a school like Duke, they can afford to be more patient with young hotheads. Duke is looking for potential, yes, of course. And they also are looking for students who will, someday, turn their talents loose into the world at large. But here, you don't need to walk in as a completed package. Sometimes, you can be a frustrated, directionless young man who hasn't yet known what it's like to be a part of something bigger than himself. Duke can afford to do this because it has a warmer, more nurturing climate. If you need it badly enough, you can actually feel yourself give a sigh of relief as you get off the plane.</p>
<p>In the rush to be more prestigious - in itself an aimless pursuit - students often masquerade as something that they aren't. And because admissions committees are not perfect human beings, sometimes they are fooled. I knew I was talented; I was hoping to fool an admissions committee into believing that I had a genuine passion and direction in my life. Whether I'm representative or not, the colleges I applied to understood who I was - incomplete, still raw - and made the right decisions.</p>
<p>I'm not saying I was a bad person; I'm saying that my potential was something Duke could work with and Harvard might not have been able to. It was never a question of how academically talented I was: it was a question of what school could really, truly be best for me. I thought it was Harvard. Harvard and Duke both knew better.</p>
<p>Some students out there will be turned down by Harvard because there were, like me, aimless and frustrated, and they will find themselves at institutions devoted to helping young men and women mature. Some students out there will be turned down by Princeton because, frankly, their academic struggles would overwhelm them, and they will find themselves at institutions that can better pace their learning. Some students will successfully fool admissions departments, and some other students will be squeezed out. I don't mean that you shouldn't be frustrated with the imperfections in the process, I mean only to help you understand that it's not a question of qualification but a question of match.</p>
<p>There are truly compassionate, wonderful people out there that Harvard won't have room for, because Harvard believes they can better use their spot on someone else. Sometimes, Harvard will be right. Sometimes, they'll be wrong. They aren't looking for cheaters and fakers, but sometimes the cheaters fool them, too.</p>
<p>The key is to prove, honestly, to colleges that you are the kind of young person who will lead our generation in a quest to better the world around us, and that you can best grow in that direction by going to that college. I convinced Duke of that, and - I hope - it has turned out to be true. Some students try to fill their hours with meaningless extracurriculars to prove that they are busy and important, but that isn't actually what schools are looking for. They are not only looking for nerds who score 99% on the SAT, but nor are they looking for young men and women who have "good social lives". It's not even about "trying your best". All of those things matter, but none of those really capture it. Schools want to see young men and women who care deeply, and whose caring can be harnessed to make our world better.</p>
<p>Prove to them that you're one of those students.</p>