Now that the craziness of admissions results is pretty much over with, and I’ve recovered a bit, I just wanted to share some thoughts with those of you who are still feeling bummed out about being rejected to your dream school(s).
Let me start this out by saying that I’m a pretty well-qualified student. 2380 SAT on the first shot, 780/770 on my chem and math SAT II’s, so I didn’t screw those up, and my GPA is a 4.0 unweighted. I also took 8 AP’s before this year (6 AP course-load this year) with 5’s on all the exams. Grades have never been my only focus, either, so I’m not one of those dull kids who just study all day; I have played violin for over 9 years in my school orchestra, honors orchestra, and pit orchestra (for 3 productions), been on my school’s debate team for 3 years (varsity 2 years), and been on my school’s mock trial team for 4 years (as a captain for the past 2 years). I also volunteered at my local hospital for 3 years each summer, gathering close to 200 hours thus far, so I had plenty of community service under my belt.
Having the grades for top schools along with a decent group of EC’s, I began to see schools like Hopkins, Cornell, and Penn as my only true “fits” even back in 11th grade, due to their incoming classes’ high academic stats and overall rankings. When people told me that I would be a shoo-in for such schools with all of my “well-roundedness,” my expectations only grew further, which didn’t help me once results came in. Rejected at Penn ED. Rejected at Swarthmore, Hopkins, Brown, Columbia, and Yale RD. Waitlisted at Cornell, a school which I truly thought I would be a shoo-in for.
When I saw these results, I got pretty frustrated; I thought that I did everything “right” when it came to grades, ECs, and even my essays, which I had reviewed multiple times by teachers and friends, so what did these colleges want from me? The truth is, that there is nothing else that I could’ve done to have gotten into those schools. College admissions are a mysterious realm at these top schools; there is no magic key to get in, and just because you didn’t have whatever your dream school was looking for doesn’t mean that you are any less qualified as an individual. Don’t let your college acceptances define your value as a human being, and don’t get hung up over brand-names like the Ivies; your actions will determine your future, regardless of which college you go to, and plenty of lower-level colleges have resources just as great as those of top schools if not greater resources for you to take advantage of.
And with those thoughts, I finally committed to Pitt earlier this week with a full tuition scholarship for all 4 years of my undergrad. Looking back, I’m pretty happy with how things turned out; now I’ll get through undergrad debt-free (would’ve had to pay full tuition at other schools w/ my parents’ incomes, but would’ve been tough since my family’s upper middle-class), and will be able to take advantage of Pitt’s huge research opportunities as well as Pittsburgh itself. I took a spot on Cornell’s wait list on the day decisions came out, but now even if I get off the list, I will still be attending Pitt. I didn’t even apply to Cornell because I truly liked the school; I only applied there because of its reputation, and now that I’m comparing Ithaca to Pittsburgh, I can’t imagine myself living in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farms. It’s not the college that you are going to which counts, but what you are going to do at there that counts, and since I know I will do more at Pitt than Cornell, I choose Pitt regardless of its lesser-known name, and I’m going to make sure I have the time of my life there. A dream school is still just a school; just because you didn’t meet a school’s “institutional needs” doesn’t mean that you should lose motivation in pursuing your own dreams; have fun wherever you go, because in the end, school is school, a place for you to chase your personal goals.
(Apologies for the length, but I hope this helps those of you who are still frustrated feel just a bit better)