This is an update from a very old post that I had long forgotten about until I was reminded of it the other day. I wanted to post an update, but I neither remembered the name of the website or my old username - but eventually I found it!
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/12397665#Comment_12397665
I have to cringe reading back on how caught up I was on “prestige” of my college choice, but I was young. Anyways, here’s the rest of the story…
So as you can read in that thread, due to a clerical error, I was not given acceptance to Hutton. I talked with the administrator who said tough luck. I then proceeded to email the (then) president asking him if he could do anything. He was preparing to allow me in due to the oversight until that thread above started making rounds at Hutton and found its way to his inbox. So he asked me to call him, which I did. During the hour long phone conversation, he essentially scolded me for writing those things and said I shouldn’t have paraphrased that the secretary said “tough” when it wasn’t an exact quote - meh.
Then (and this is the part that DOESN’T make it into the thread update linked above) he essentially told me he would let me in if I TAKE DOWN the thread (of course he actually beat around that bush and when I said “so you want me to take the thread down then I can get in” he said “ohh, I didn’t SAY that” as if that exonerated him from the last 5 minutes of telling me exactly that). I told him that this website doesn’t allow threads to be deleted by users, which at the time it didn’t. So I told him I would write an update.
Looking back I can’t believe a dean of a college would literally trade censoring an internet post for admission into his college. In any case, I made the update in the thread above. However the next day he emailed me back saying that my updated post was not sufficient. I needed to write another update saying not to circumvent this Jill Baker person and that I also needed to apologize to her for writing the (true) post.
I may have been cringy, but high-school me at least had enough self respect to not roll over to that request. I would essentially have to lie and say it was a good idea not to bypass her when it was the only reason I had gotten a chance at admission to their college. So I simply never responded, I decided not to pursue admission to Hutton.
And now, having not gone to Hutton Honors College, I’m working at McDonald’s and am addicted to crack cocaine…Just kidding, it had no effect whatsoever on my career trajectory. I still took a lot of “honors” classes from different departments in undergrad, so I hung in the same circles as a lot of people in Hutton. Essentially I didn’t have to take any of the silly required honors classes and stuck to whichever ones I wanted (mostly honors chemistry classes). I ended up majoring in physics despite (gasp) NOT taking the introductory honors physics classes! Almost no one who eventually received a physics BS in my year actually took the honors version of the intro classes, and I don’t think it helped those who did because none of them was myself or the one other guy who received departmental honors at graduation. Now I’m in my 3rd year of medical school, just crushed Step1, and my biggest career problem is deciding what type of surgeon to be.
Moral of the story, don’t get caught up in this “Honors College” or “Honors Classes” business like I did. By sophomore year, no one even mentioned the honors college anymore - the benefits are so incredibly minimal. The difficult classes that will challenge a smart young freshman like yourself aren’t locked away in the honors college, and admittance isn’t a reflection on your worth. IU is a fantastic place with a never-ending supply of new experiences and challenges for you to surmount. Please please don’t reject IU because you’re not going to be in the “Honors” college like I almost did. It’s a racket for high-strung, gullible, Type-A young people like I was. So hopefully this helps someone come to IU even if for whatever reason they aren’t admitted to Hutton, and if that’s you shoot me a PM and we’ll have a dragonfly IPA on me!