What a fantastic post; An0maly, I have the greatest respect for you. After all the stress filled and statistic-drowned posts on CC, it’s really important for me to see that it is posts like these that are really what CC is about.
congrats to the OP and to applicantnot…
thank you for posting your thoughts and gratitude and for wanting to help other college hopefuls
I’m a newbie to CC. My kids are 17,15,13,11. I have to tell you that I get inspired by reading this and I hope that I can pass that inspiration on to my kids.
Thanks for writing this
An0maly, congratulations on your acceptance to Yale. I remember your posts on the MIT board. MIT’s loss!
You might consider working for Yale admissions as a blogger.
Just a thought.
Awe this is awesome, makes me wish I’d joined sooner than just recently.
But I do like it and have a very short story as well!
So I just joined when I became a Gate finalist and wanted some answers real quick. So after googling, this is the first thing that comes up. So at first I’m just posting there and really liking it because it just kills my stress. Then I lurk around, anyway, this thing relieved tons of stress for me, just made me happy. That’s kinda it.
And I like what the engineering forum has to say a lot!
Thanks everybody!
This is definitely not a sob story - it’s the opposite haha!
My reflection would have a slightly less inspirational twist to it, but I too second (third? fourth?) this suggestion – such a forum could be VERY useful.
Our great CC staff already made the section. We’re posting in it
Hi,
This is the first time I’ve read your post. I don’t know you but truly I feel you are an amazing individual.
You got what you deserve !
Congratulations !
Go on in life with your gracious and optimistic attitude.
Thank you for sharing
What a great post. Very inspiring. Thanks, and best of luck!
Thank you so much for posting this. Posts like this are exactly why I spend time on CC and it is so wonderful to see such a success story from someone like yourself. Congratulations! Best of luck in the future, and thanks for taking the time to share with all of us.
A sublime thread indeed. Though I have only recently joined CC for info regarding acceptances/rejections to the colleges that I applied to, I can confidently say that CC is a wonderful resource that I wish I had stumbled upon prior to the college app. process. As a senior, I have matured greatly in a philosophical sense. With the anxieties of the SAT/ACT gone, I have been able to ponder the nature of education. I have come to realize that, much to my dismay, learning is largely seen merely as a prerequisite to “making the grade,” and nothing more. The endless tests, exams, quizzes, and assessements have blurred and marred the beauty of education and learning. It has lead to cutthroat competition, cheating, and the destruction of many individuals who had promising futures before relinquishing their minds and lives to the almighty grade. People have burned out in high school and college, simply from mental exhaustion. The passion and stimulus behind learning should come from within, from the desire to succeed in life, the desire to increase one’s intellect, not from a blind devotion to the test, an entity that has in some cases created a hostile learning environment. Nevertheless, those are my senior reflections, an evaluation of the garbled motives that drive so many students these days.
You all have inpired me to tell my story as well, I feel sorta weird about writing this down , but now that the admissions procees is over, eh why not? So here we go…
I come from a middle class family. I was always an exceptionally bright student as a little girl, you know the usual “gifted” math class, art…whatever. I was a very adorable little blonde perfectionist and had decided that I was going to go to Johns Hopkins Medical School to become a neurosurgeon. I was quite bizarre.
In middle school I earned perfect grades (probably what would be considered like 4.4 in high school terms), and wanted to go to this prestigious girl’s private high school called Westover (I know yo’ve probably never heard of it, but it was a big deal for me). I don’t think I have ever had a happier moment in my life that when I got my acceptance letter, I was one of the 50 out of 500 applicants to be admitted. I was sooo excited everything was going right, until my father lost his job, all hopes for paying for westover…out the window. I was crushed.
So, I went to the public high school, loaded up on honors classes, but my plan was about to go on a major downwad spiral…<br>
Weight throughout high school in correlation with GPA-
Freshamn Year- 117lbs…3.8 GPA
Sophmore Year- 104lbs…3.5 GPA
Junior Year- 93lbs… 2.7GPA *I eventually took a leave of absence at the end of the year, to try to get my life back together, high school was surisingly okay with it)
Yup, eating disorders screw up your life…I know from first hand experience. High school was by far the most difficult times in my life, but art, theater club, and really great teacher got me through it! When senior year came, I decided that I was just going to shoot for the gold. Even though many people advised me not to apply to hard schools. In my essay, I wrote a piece in which my 13yr old self met graduating senior self, and saw how she had changed and how the ups and downs in her life had made a stronger, unique, independant person.
My dream school- Smith College, it beared a striking resemblance to Westover, and I just knew it was the perfect place for me! I sent in my early decision application and hoped.
A few days beofre the decision letters were posted, one of the admissions couselors emailed me asking me to give more details on why I had been sick during my junior year. I was so excited that they were considering me, but immediatly became ashamed over what the real answer to this question was. I made a very big mistake…I lied about it saying that I had some mysterious virus and that I had to miss school.
The day I was rejected from Smith college was one of the sadest days ever in my life. I cried… and wondered whether or not oversoming anorexia was really worth it.
But, I still had 8 schools to hear back from, I started to do the usual…‘what if i don’t get in anywhere!’ routine. Then I got waitlisted for the University of Vermont…I really began to have a freak session! I was becoming okay with idea of going to join the circus after high school.
End of the story…
Accepted-
Sarah lawrence College
Fordham University
Bennington College
Wheaton College
Simmons College
PACE University (full ride…wahooo!!)
The moral of the story, believe in yourself!! Because even if you have bumps along the road, you can still do great things! And even if you don’t get into your dream school there are still many great things in store for you…I promise!!
Thanks for reading!
I’ll be more impressed when this comes out of the mouth of an applicant rejected from all his top picks.
Wow. Amazing thread.
I entirely agree that there needs to be more reflection on these boards: that’s the stage when personal growth actually occurs.
Hi - new to this forum. First, AnOmaly, great post and good luck at Yale. But may I ask you and others on here a question? Just how did using this website “help with SAT scores” which several people have posted? I mean, I guess books or courses may help, and perhaps someone suggesting the best course or book would definitely be helpful, but beyond that, what am I clearly missing? Are there specific links I should be looking at that I am not seeing? My son has no problems with the math side, but needs help with improving the CR side. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Great posts! Threads like this are the particular ones that make CC valuable 
Good luck, everyone! For the college-bounds, congratulations and may you experience the best of college life! And for future applicants (like several CCers and me), good luck. 
This thread is amazing. What inspirational stories.
It reminds me of my sister, who is the nicest girl in the world but not an extremely hard worker. I always felt so bad for her because the got screwed over beyond belief at the theatre department at our high school (favoritistm, politics, etc). She took hard courses but didn’t do great, but she did get a 33 ACT. She got rejected from Kenyon and waitlisted at Denison, where she miraculously was accepted. She had a hard time getting adjusted- especially when her sorority folded -but as a '13er now I think she’s grown amazingly as a person, singer, and an actress and she’s really happy. Not HYPSM, but there are a lot of places a person can succeed. =)
Very good posts all around. I can completely relate to so many of the thoughts expressed here.
More than anything else, I think what CC did for me was to put myself into perspective. I’m not a vain person, but I thought I had a good chance of getting into so many of the top schools–ask and ye shall receive. That was in ninth grade. Shortly after that, I discovered CC and realized that, while I had a lot to bring to the table, I was only one of thousands of equally talented, if not more talented, applicants, and I would have to work hard to get what I wanted.
At times, there were CC nearly brought me to tears because I felt I could never compete with applicants for the top schools. Though my school is one of the very best in our state, and I am confident that many of my classmates will go on to accomplish remarkable things, very few graduates ever think to dream of going to a place that isn’t the local state university or the state flagship. All are excellent, but CC taught me that my college prospects were not limited to what everyone else does. Most of all, it taught me the importance of finding the right fit rather than the biggest name.
Unlike the OP, I can’t say that I’m headed off to an Ivy League school in the fall, since I didn’t apply. But CC introduced me to my two top choices, both of which (Smith and Wellesley) accepted me. I feel incredibly privileged to have found the schools of my dreams, and I owe that discovery–and the tips that helped me get in–to this website.
For that, I am, and will always be, extremely grateful.
Thank you, everyone.
And forgive me for adding my post to this thread.
An0maly - Yale is really lucky to have you, and I think you’re going to be a great contributor to the Class of 2014!! It makes me doubly excited and I feel privileged to be going to a school with peers like you, and a lot of other amazing, humble people I’ve met on CC. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you wrote, and would also like to add my thanks to this community, forum, and family