I thought this story might be able to assist any applicants for the class of 2019. It was a doozy…
I come from a rural school in the middle of North Carolina. There is a cow pasture across from the school, even. We have never had a single kid get into an ivy league university, the best we get is a Duke acceptance once in a while for the valedictorian.
Here are some of my stats just to put this whole thing in context:
GPA: 4.0 UW, 5.0 Weighted (4 for CP, 5 for Honors, 6 for AP).
I took 8 AP courses: US, World, Euro, Calc AB and BC, Gov, Environmental, and Stats.
I am in the top 5 in my school, which means i am in the top 2%.
I got a 29 on my ACT, but I retook it in October of my senior year and got a 34 after studying, eating breakfast and getting sleep. I was freaking out after I got my score because it just opened up so many more possibilities than a 29 could bring.
My SAT IIs were an 800 in Math II and a 740 in US History.
Alright so now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I applied to 8 schools:
Safety:
North Carolina State
Match:
Georgia Tech
UNC Chapel Hill
Carnegie Mellon
Johns Hopkins (non-BME)
Reach:
Duke
Columbia
Princeton
So I pretty much have had my heart set on Princeton for as long as I could remember. Both my parents went to Westminster Choir College (5 minutes from Princeton) and they have always considered themselves part of the community. This led me to apply early through SCEA, along with my safety, NC State.
I heard from NC State, and I got in, which was pretty exciting because I now knew I was at least going to college. It’s nice to have a college in your back pocket to fall back on. I chose state because I loved the school, it was affordable, and I could easily see myself going there. To any future applicants, find a school like this that you can rely on and that you love. And apply there early to secure that acceptance, just so you have no surprises come April! And no, Cornell is not a safety.
So with NC State down, I had Princeton’s SCEA decision now in. I checked at school, and found out I was deferred. This spread through the school and everyone thought it was at least cool that I was deferred. To be honest, I was crushed especially after finding out that only 30 or so applicants SCEA were flat-out denied. I pretty much lost all hope on Princeton because I thought that they wouldn’t accept many deferred applicants.
So now it was on to the other applications. This made Christmas break suck, doing so many essays up until the eve of their due dates. I had many moments when I would almost give up on a college because I didn’t want to do their essay. Do not do that. Finish your applications and tough it out, you’ll be glad you did.
Next came Georgia Tech’s response, which was before everybody else’s. I was really using this response to gauge how well the other colleges would respond, especially because I applied for engineering undecided, which is pretty hard to get into. I saw that I was accepted and it was huge relief for me. Georgia Tech was my new top choice.
What came next really surprised me: I got a letter from Columbia! I did not think responses were supposed to come from Ivies yet, but it was a small envelope so I expected the worst. Rejection? Apparently not, because it said I was likely to be admitted! I didn’t even know likely letters existed before I looked it up on CC after I got one. I’m not a recruited athlete, so I probably got extraordinarily lucky. This really boosted my confidence, although I was kind of worried I wouldn’t end up being accepted.
The big day! Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Duke, UNC, Columbia, and Princeton all in the same day. Oh god this was horribly nerve-racking. First thing in the morning I went downstairs and I saw a letter in the mail from Carnegie Mellon. Waitlisted… I was really disappointed by this, particularly because I considered it a match school. Next was UNC, which I was accepted to, and that was wonderful. A lot of people at my school who are in the top 20% end up going there, so we were all talking about it. Later that day at school, I got into Duke which was a huge boost in confidence. Then, I heard back from Johns Hopkins that I was rejected. Oh man, that one hurt the most. My first actual rejection. That did seem remarkable though, considering the caliber of schools I applied to. I expected almost all rejections, so I guess in hindsight it wasn’t all bad. It mainly just made me dread looking at Princeton’s response.
After school at 5 o clock I was at rehearsal for the school musical. I opened up Columbia’s response which was expected to be an acceptance, which it was. Then, finally, the big one. The Sultan of Swat, the King of Crash, the Great Bambino… Princeton. This was pretty much the culmination of my High School career, and I was dying seeing the page take more than 10 minutes to load due to all 30,000 applicants checking their decision. Some of my friends gathered around as soon as they found out what I was doing. It was completely silent, and the little log-in page came up. I typed in my information, and hit enter. Immediately, I saw the orange tiger on the page indicating an acceptance, and I tossed my laptop aside and ran like a crazy-man across the room and I was jumping around like an idiot. I kind of wish I recorded it, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. I got in!
This whole process was ridiculously crazy, but I ended up with what I wanted. I’ll be going to Princeton University next year! I really hope you can learn that you shouldn’t give up on your dream school even after a deferral, and a rejection or a waitlist from a less selective university does not indicate ANYTHING about whether or not you will get in to another school. These admissions officers look for good fits for their particular school, so the decisions are mostly independent of each other. Good luck next year with everything you guys!
Final Decisions:
NC State: Accepted, Early
UNC: Accepted
Georgia Tech: Accepted
Duke: Accepted
Carnegie Mellon: Waitlisted, declined waitlist
Johns Hopkins: Rejected
Columbia: Likely Letter, Accepted
Princeton: Deferred SCEA, Regular Accepted, and Attending Next Year