This post is for high schoolers either in the application process right now, or ready to begin. What I, and i’m sure everyone else planning to go to college, is what is the single most important thing you learned AFTER receiving all your acceptances/rejection letters? How did you deal with the anticipation? How did it feel getting into your dream school? How did it feel getting rejected? What did you do to deal with rejection? What happens after the acceptance?
With all the hustle and bustle of application season right now, and all the worrying and “chance me”'s, what I want to know is what comes next. What do we have to look forward to or dread? What should we start preparing for?
If any freshmen in college or any other grade remembers what it felt like not during, but after the application process, please share! thank 
The anticipation was awful. Some days I felt on top of the world and really confident in myself; other days, I felt like I wouldn’t get into a single college. I got so anxious that I made myself very physically ill. While I was home sick from school with a skyrocketing fever, I got my first acceptance letter. It was from one of my safeties, SUNY Binghamton, but it was the most relieving feeling in the entire world.
I hear back from my other two safeties (Ithaca and RPI) by the beginning of March and got into both, which was also a relief (they also came with substantial scholarships, which was a relief for my parents!) But I didn’t hear back from the other 7 schools I applied to until the end of March, and I heard back from all 7 within a span of 3 days. It was the most stressful 3 days of my life. I can’t even explain to you how awful it was.
The first of the three days I raced home from school to find a large envelope in my mailbox that admitted me into Colgate. This was the first of my acceptances that wasn’t a safety, so I was really really happy. I now had a lot of options to decide among. Later that evening, I got an email that I was waitlisted to Vassar. I really had mixed emotions about this. I had prepared myself for dealing with acceptances and rejections, but I really hadn’t planned on getting waitlisted at all. It made me worried for my remaining schools.
The following day was so-called “Ivy Day,” the day when all the Ivies released their decisions. I had applied to Princeton (my #1 choice and so-called "dream school), Brown (I had fallen in love when I visited, but it was the farthest away of all the colleges I applied to so I had some mixed emotions), and Cornell (my other “dream school” that I had planned on attending since I was 5 years old). I spent a lot of time debating in what order to check the decisions in, and finally decided on Cornell, then Brown, then Princeton. The decisions all came out at 5 pm and I sat at my desk with my heart pounding counting the minutes. I had also given blood that day so I was pretty sure I was about to faint. Then 5 pm came and I logged onto Cornell’s portal, and I got in. And that honestly was the happiest moment of my life. I ran and told my parents and started crying.
I got rejected from Brown and Princeton, but I truly and honestly did not care. I thought I would be so upset, but I was so happy that I got into Cornell that I completely put the other two out of my mind. Later that night I got accepted to Hamilton and the following day I got rejected from Amherst. I was happy and sad, respectively, but I was still so caught up with Cornell that I didn’t care that much.
I am now happily attending Cornell, and I realize that it truly is my dream school, and the only school I could ever imagine attending for undergraduate. Despite all the anxiety and fear, it did all work out in the end.
I’m curious. Did you end up getting accepted by Vassar? I would have thought that Cornell is harder to get into than Vassar. Were your SAT scores better in Math than the other sections?
@WalknOnEggShells I actually opted not to remain on Vassar’s waitlist. I was very curious as to whether or not I would be admitted, but I knew that even if I was I would still choose Cornell. I decided to remove myself from the waitlist to allow somebody else who really wanted to get in the chance to get accepted.
Cornell’s acceptance rate is lower than Vassar’s, that’s true. My best friend from high school/current roommate applied to Vassar ED and got rejected and then got into Cornell RD. While both of us probably had most of the credentials to get in, obviously a number of factors come into play. We may just not have been seen as good fits for the school. We are also both white, middle-class girls from upstate New York, which is a very overrepresented majority of applicants to Vassar.
My SAT scores were 710 M, 710 CR, and 760 W.
Wow, that’s surprising. Your scores look like a great fit for Vassar. It must have been what you said about the diversity factor.
How are you liking Cornell?
@WalknOnEggShells I love Cornell! It was definitely the right choice for me for undergrad. I’ve lived in Ithaca my whole life and I really enjoy remaining here. I love the university, I love the dorms, I love the food, I love the professors, I love all the opportunities. It is an amazing university and it really did ending up being the best fit for me.
Hi @Ranza123, sorry for the delayed response. Just seeing this. That’s awesome that you are happy at Cornell.
I’m glad things worked out for you. Enjoy it. Wait a second, good food and good dorms at a college? Not at the college I went to! You’re very lucky. Enjoy it.
3.66 unweighted GPA, 4.29 fully weighted GPA, 4.00 capped UC GPA
2300 SAT score
800 on SAT Math II and 740 on SAT Physics
5 on both AP Calculus AB and BC exams
I had mostly “A’s” in high school, but I did have some “B’s.” As a result, i had a crap unweighted GPA. I took IB classes including HL Math. I think my extracurriculars are average, perhaps above average. I had many hours of community service. My essays were okay. I had some insignificant awards. I applied to the UCs and CPSLO. My intended major was computer science for most of the schools that I applied to. I did not have a dream school, and would probably be fine going to any of the UCs. As a result, I did not feel much anticipation. I never made a “Chance me” for this reason and also because I think people who make “Chance me” threads are stupid. I was rejected by UCB, UCLA, UCSD, and CPSLO. I was waitlisted by UCD and UCI. I was accepted by UCSB, UCSC, and UCR. Although I am fine with attending UCSB, I was disappointed by my rejections/waitlists. My disappointment made me feel like a loser and perhaps made me obsessed with college admissions. I studied scatterplots and looked at average high school GPAs to find a reason for my rejections/waitlists. My conclusion was that my GPA was crap and the UCs care about GPA more than test scores. Therefore, I am crap compared to the other applicants to the UCs. I deserved those rejections/waitlists because there are many students with a higher GPA who are much more deserving than I am for acceptances to these schools. My rejections/waitlists showed me that “B’s” can ruin lives and that I am indeed a mentally impaired loser for having so many “B’s” in high school. This fear of “B’s” is my motivation in college.
I’ll weigh in on Vassar because a couple of you have expressed being surprised to get into other competitive school s and not Vassar. Vassar is a formally women’s college that made a successful transition to being co-ed. It is among a very small group of schools to do so while continuing to be as strong academically and as competitive. Most tank in the transition. The success of Vassar is probably attributable to the adherence to its basic values. It is a school for intellectuals in the tradition of schools like Swarthmore. That has nothing to do with how smart the students are. Point by point, I’m sure students at places like Cornell and Penn are equally smart. You can be the smartest one in the room but not be the least bit intellectual. My guess is that a student with grades and scores high enough to get into some Ivys but not Vassar had an application that did not suggest she or he was very intellectual. In this context, I mean the term intellectual to convey a driving interest in understanding phenomena for the sake of understanding…who is driven to analyze, critic, consider important questions about the world, humanity, the human spirit…without regard for what they can get out of it or whether or not they will be tested on the material or even whether or not the material is useful to them. It’s that person who reads for the sake of it; who goes beyond a class assignment to mine the topic further; who comes up with alternative ways to view something and who you can almost see thinking about and considering things when others haven’t given something a second thought. It is almost the opposite of being p-re-professional, as a student. I bet Vassar faculty members don’t have to listen to whining about whether or not an assignment will be on the test or how many points are given for which questions. Having a college filled with intellectual students creates a very different atmosphere then you would get at a place like Penn or Cornell. Just when the typical students eyes are rolling over, the Vassar student is just getting started. Nice for the faculty there!
Interesting to read what Vassar students think of themselves. That may well be the case, but personally I don’t see much evidence. I think of PhD attainment as a manifestation of such intellectual orientation. You compare it to Swarthmore; the old list I just checked showed over 1/5 of Swarthmore students getting Phds over a 9 year period, vs fewer than 9% of Vassar students. Vassar ranks about 19th among LACs on that list, by this measure. Which is actually rather low IMO given its student body capability. In fact Cornell’s student body produced a (slightly) higher % Phds than Vassar’s did, despite the fact that only 1/3 of Cornell students are in its Arts & sciences college (the college there most similar to Vassar, with students least oriented to go get a job).
That same PhD thread showed that over a ten year period about 34,000 Cornell bachelor’s grads earned their Phd, which was third most among all higher education institutions in the whole country. That tells me there are plenty of intellectually oriented students walking around Cornell’s campus at any given time. Even if everyone there doesn’t share that same perspective identically.
Personally I doubt that there isn’t lots of overlap between Cornell CAS students and Vassar students on that particular measure. Though there are likely to be some areas of common difference, particularly in terms of preferred social milieus and social action. And of course preferred school size.
Fit is a big issue at many institutions,.and it is a particularly big issue for many LACs, no doubt about it. There are various ways somebody could fit better in one environment vs. the other. For some individuals it could be the issue raised in #8, Cornell students are certainy not uniform in that regard.
My guess is it could equally or more likely be something other, in many cases.
@lostaccount There are plenty of incredibly intellectual people at Cornell. I don’t disagree that there are plenty at Vassar as well. Not all Ivy League students are in it just to get the grades and be done. I haven’t heard any “whining about whether or not an assignment will be on the test” or anything of the sort. Plenty of people read for the sake of reading and learn for the sake of learning. I am in CAS, which is similar to a LAC in feel, but I really believe the same is true across all the colleges at Cornell. People seek out things that interest them, work in someone’s lab because they find the subject fascinating, explore different subjects just for fun, etc. Cornell really encourages an intellectual atmosphere, and I believe they have created one.
Upon further glance I find nothing elsewhere to suggest that lostaccount actually attended Vassar (and he/she certainly didn’t attend Cornell) so I withdraw the first sentence of #9 above.