<p>After I clicked the submit button for my last application today, I've been doing a lot of reflecting on the whole terrifying process known as college admissions. As a member of this forum for about a year and a half, I've seen millions of chance threads and help-me-do-anything-to-increase-my-odds threads from hyper-obsessed, over-stressed students worrying about getting in to their dream schools. After I allowed myself to get caught up in the frenzy of worrying myself sick about SAT scores, losing sleep over my grades, and wondering if I had enough ECs showed enough passion, I got deferred by my number one choice. I started doubting my self-worth because I had poured so much of my identity into trying to gain that one acceptance that I thought would guarantee me happiness. It took me a box of tissues and the movie It's a Wonderful Life to realize that no, my life was not over, and I already have everything I need to be happy. While I'm glad I came to that conclusion, I'm sad that it had to happen the way it did. In this process, I found that I didn't like the person that I had become-- a person so focused on the future that I forgot to live in the present. I was banking on letting college determine my life; my life at the present was on hold until I received an illustrious letter from a prestigious university. </p>
<pre><code> To all you who have yet to go through this process-- please think about who you want to be at the end of it. If you are basing your self-worth and happiness off the name on your college degree, what are you going to do with yourself if you don't get in? Or worse, what if you get in and find that it is not the picture-perfect haven you expected? (You may say, "OH, but it's Yale, there's no way I wouldn't looove Yale." Trust me, I know people that go there and it isn't the paradise they expected. No school is perfect.) Don't worry so much about getting into X university that you turn yourself into a sleep-deprived ball of stress. I recently read a thread in which a student professed to being a precocious suck-up (not exactly in those words) to her teachers-- it didn't bother her that all her peers hated her, she was going to get EPIC recommendation letters that would win over ivy league adcoms. Is this really the kind of person you want to be? Years from now, when you are telling your children about your time in high school, do you really want to say "well I was too busy focusing on getting a 2400/4.0/perfect resume to have any good memories of high school BUT I got into Harvard!"? If it is, then fine. Go on making countless chance threads and staying up all night to see your SAT scores (which by the way, won't come out until the morning no matter how many times you click refresh). Please don't think that I'm saying every student at HYPSMC is a social loser who spent too much time behind SAT prep books. I know there are awesome people who really can have a satisfying social and academic life, but they are not the majority.
Maybe you're reading this and thinking, yeah I've heard this 100 times, I get the picture, but I still really really want to get into HYP. I've been there-- I was the kind of person who reads The Overachievers and focuses solely on what schools the students attended. I just hope that one day it will make sense. I have no idea where I'll end up in the fall; I could get rejected from my top 5 choices, but it's ok! I am going to a college, and that is good enough.
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<p>Great post. Helps keeps things in perspective, although I was lucky enough to find huge non-academic passions in high school, and maintained close relationships with real friends. I definitely wasn't out partying every weekend, but that's my personality, I guess.</p>
<p>I just hope I can enjoy the spring semester of my senior year. I am elated to have everything (except 2 more...) done over winter break. Yes I think we all have made many sacrifices but it'll play off in the end.</p>
<p>Just want to bump this thread so more people can read it. I really hope it actually gets into their heads though...
Very well written & said, circumlocution2!</p>
<p>mistofthekane-- I was lucky enough to find good friends in high school too, but I wish I valued my friendships more. I think I spent too much time debating over whether I had picked the right high school (for competitiveness in college admissions) or not to really appreciate how good I had it. Although now, if I were given the choice again I wouldn't choose differently for anything in the world.</p>
<p>i really like this post a lot!
in my school its a dog eat dog world and its sad ..
classmates of mine would do everything in their power to prove to the teacher that the wording of an exam question was unfair just to get the 2-3 extra points on their test. i mean its nice to be hungry for success but in my school people really take it overboard and become what i like to call "go-hards". But i guess eventually reality will hit `</p>
<p>I can totally relate to circumlocution2 and simpliiswe3t1. I spent too much time (especially freshman year) thinking "I should be at X high school! Why didn't I get in?!" My dream high school is the #1 high school in the state, and was rejected (and ended up at the #2 high school. Big difference, huh? lol). </p>
<p>My high school has a lot of the "go-hards" simpliiswe3t1 mentioned. They suck up to the teachers, are VERY stubborn trying to prove the wording on a test is wrong, and are sometimes just annoying. But my school also has some very awesome people that I'm very happy I met.</p>
<p>I would never exchange my high school experience for the world.</p>
<p>^In defense of the "innocent until proven guilty" point of view, some kids who protest the wording of a question on an exam don't do it only - or at all - for the points. If one interprets a question a certain way and then is told that his or her interpretation was wrong, it can genuinely offend him/her because it's an insult to his/her way of thinking. I know that I've protested a few questions' wording not for the points, but for feeling that I was 100% right and that the question was open to at least 2 ways of interpretation. And then I turn to my friend behind me and say "This is why the class should be renamed 'Opinion Biology'" and then I let it go. Unless I win, which happened once.</p>
<p>This is true and all, but another observation is that a % of the population will always have that ambition in them, and that is fine. It is fine to want to go to a place where you believe you will get the best education, and yes it is only human to want to go to a place that has a beautiful campus and prestige. That's just some people's, including my own, cup of tea. I think at the end we have to just let obsess about what they want to obsess about. </p>
<p>In war movies, you know how theres always a new recruit who's like 'I want to get some action and glory on the battlefield!' right? Well there cant always be the old gruff vet to knock sense into their heads; you gotta just let people throw themselves into the fray. Let people chase what they want, even if they want the thing for the wrong reasons.</p>
<p>^
[quote]
Years from now, when you are telling your children about your time in high school, do you really want to say "well I was too busy focusing on getting a 2400/4.0/perfect resume to have any good memories of high school BUT I got into Harvard!"? If it is, then fine.
[/quote]
I'm only asking people to spend a little more time thinking about if it truly is what they want before they let themselves get swept away by it.</p>
<p>well then kara ...
on your tests because you absolutely know that your interpretation is 100% right then you should mark star on your paper and put a smiley face :D , or maybe make a list && at the end of the year show the teacher all your "opinions" on questions of past tests and maybe even get her to revise it for next years class !!</p>