<p>hey, guess what? your a sanctimonious preacher
"don't do it just to into college, do it cause you have a passion for it"
Almost everything I do to put on my college app is done just for college. If I wasn't trying to go to Harvard I'd get horrible grades and spend my time getting drunk and getting around... if you know what I mean... </p>
<pre><code> My big thing is research, in my school, which is pretty heavily into all this research crap I am the little poster boy for the research program. Look at him hes done so much blah blah blah. A little credibility to this is that I got into RSI (some super nerd program at MIT which is supposed to be more selective than the top colleges). You would look at me and say, oh he has a real passion for this research, he must really enjoy it. That would be true to an extent, it is quite fun to discover stuff and work on high science concepts and such. I also think high school science research is total bullsh!t but thats another story, maybe I'll start another thread when I feel like it.
If I didn't have to apply to college would I be doing this research? Wow, thats a good question I'm glad you asked that, the answer is, probably not, while it is cool to work on nanotechnology, it is infinitely cooler to hook up with cute chicks, no competition. And while it is possible to combine the two ;-), it doesn't usually happen.
About these extracurricular activities that everyone seems to have such passion for. People are like, oh I'm a member of this and that and you ride them for creating a laundry list of clubs with no real focus. No one cares about your focus, be the President of as many clubs as you can, you can always fake a passion in your application, its not hard. "Only do things that you have a real passion for." If anyone followed this advice I'd be willing to bet all of the clubs in every school would fail due to lack of members. Everyone is lazy, you're not special, no one likes to do anything extra beyond what is required.
Every passion on a high school app is faked. And for those of you who have real passion but didn't get in cause you were too narrow minded and the kid who had your achievements, but not your passion and other stuff besides that gave you what you deserved. I don't feel sorry for you, I laugh at you and your passion, I got into college I wanted, you didn't, You and your passion didn't play the game well enough.
Because that's what its all about, playing the game right and winning. If you know the rules it isn't that hard to push the right buttons and win that huge teddy bear prize. High School is the game, and College is the prize. For those of you who say it shouldn't be like that, and kids should be free to follow their passions, well, I say, can you come up with a better system? Didn't think so.
Don't tell people not to do things just for college, please people, do things just for college so you can get into the college you want to go to and do more things just for the sake of grad school. High School isn't about discovering yourself, it isn't about cultivating your bullsh!t passion, thats not what high school kids do, they experiment, are all over the place and do stuff so they can go to the college they want and discover themselves and cultivate their passion and find their goal in life.
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<p>Do things just for college, who cares if you like it or not.</p>