<p>Hi, I basically made this account just to have somewhere to ask and freak out. And talk it out grrhhfnfhhhh.</p>
<p>I got away all of the material in time, unfortunately having to wait with form 1 and 2 until the last of February (the postmark deadline being at 1st of March). The president of my college wrote a personal and glowing recommendation letter on my behalf (pretty nice-nice for a 25,000 people college, eh!), and his secretary forgot to include the forms in the envelopes. Since it all went out anyway, I figured this wouldn't pose any bigger problem.</p>
<p>Here's where the fun begins!
My secondary school is in another country. One where you'd THINK the administrative employees would speak English. SOME English. One where you, in any case, would NOT think they'd manage to fill out the secondary school report + supplement in EVERY single way a form can POSSIBLY be filled out wrong. Oh dear God, it was so bad (at the level of checking either none of the "yes" or "no" boxes, or even checking both!). The worst part being, nobody seem to even consider filling out the evaluation/recommendation letter part, which was what I was really looking for them to do. The principal, who used to be my teacher, expressed a wish in e-mail to recommend me glowingly and that's what I counted on to upweigh my disasterous absence record back then.</p>
<p>So I call them, middle of the night. I'd had my parents call to double-check the status of the forms as they still live in that time zone, but neither had sensed anything wrong (it wasn't until I got the copies of everything they'd sent, yesterday morning, that I realized it was all **** waiting to hit the fan). </p>
<p>The woman/girl at the "administration" - apparently, they've fired almost EVERYONE since when I was there, and hired the principal's cousin's daughter - squeaked "ooooh you teh one with all teh FORMS? yesss wellll i don't really SPEAK ENGLISH so -- te-hee! -- umm I just checked in what I could!!! Hee... there was supposed to be a recommandation letter? Oops!" I've been real, real stressed this past week and really couldn't handle someone just laughing about something I've spent 2 years (away from my family at that) and a lot of student loan debt on accomplishing. For some reason she freaked out and started laughing hysterically the same time I started sobbing a little. Very uplifting!</p>
<p>Ok. I won't bore you with the sordid details. Point being: Yale has my secondary school grades, but no properly filled evaluation form, nor the actual evaluation (Jesus, why didn't they tell me and I could've found them a frikken translator or something). They say they've faxed SOMETHING over before the 1st of March passed, after me hounding the phone extensions for someone that knew what was going on, but I've no idea what it is they've sent or if it'll make Yale look past the horribly filled-out form. The whole mess doesn't do much to validate the "rigor of my secondary school curriculum", eh...</p>
<p>The general situation otherwise is, I'm originally from a war zone from where I fled at 6, lived in secondary-school-country until two years ago when I got myself to a community college in the US, a 4.0GPA, very very good teacher recommendations and the president recommendation. Also I am in the process of publishing an actual paper with a professor from UCLA. I know this all may seem pretty strong, but I've also skipped a lot in high school, have a 27 on the ACT (the math brought it down real bad) and have not been active in clubs at all in high school or here (I used to be very, very politically active before burning out, and wrote a little about that in the essays).</p>
<p>How bad is this? How picky are they? It's all just so frustrating and unnecessary.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading. It felt good writing it all out. Hgnhuh!</p>