<p>You say don’t wantto jinx anything so I don’t talk about it.</p>
<p>Oh good lord - if you are asked where you are going next year and you’re going to Stanford, you say you’re going to Stanford.</p>
<p>If anyone asks you just say you were kidding and he/she fell for it (which is true). Since when are we policed by other people’s thoughts? This wasn’t a job interview or anything, it was just a joke. No harm intended or done.</p>
<p>Glad to see our phantom OP checked in again. So JoeLiu, how are you going to handle this after all of the pearls of wisdom we’ve dropped?</p>
<p>Few thoughts…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I liked xiggi’s approach to keep things confidential. As I mentioned before, I find it hard to do that. Direct questions of whether I got into a particular school etc. is just the norm. All my attempts to dodge questions like those have come off as awkward and sometimes even unintentionally rude. Whats a polite way to avoid the question?</p></li>
<li><p>My school doesn’t send many kids to HYPSM, and it is a really big deal here. This news spread very, very quickly. The few alums of my school who were lucky enough to get in past years are somewhat remembered.</p></li>
<li><p>People at my school think Harvard is much more prestigious, and are surprised I “turned down” Harvard for Stanford.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t like the broadcast/facebook idea. I think it will makes things worse than they are. My concern with the case by case approach is, as I mentioned before, news like this spreads rapidly. I feel it’d just degenerate into a “broadcast” and place me into the same bucket as a facebook announcement.</p></li>
<li><p>How do I deal with the questions “did you get into Harvard/Stanford?” (yes, I do get that question). S is easy but what about H?</p></li>
<li><p>Lastly, I think its too late to dismiss this as a rumor/joke. I let it sit too long and I clearly said I declined H, and hence why I came here for practical advice. I think its at the point that its no longer a miscommunication but a lie. (I definitely learned my lesson…)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I would say forget about it. Those were high schoolers. Chances are…your life will move on to your college friends and this will quickly be behind you. You correct people, and you will cause a rift with this friend and others might peg you the liar. I understand completely how this got out of hand. But, this is one of those times where you should let it go. Not every single last bit of truth about yourself needs to be told to everyone. </p>
<p>And congrats on Stanford! I would have picked Stanford over Harvard in a heartbeat. I cannot even stand Harvard.</p>
<p>Congratulations on Stanford! If I were in your position, I would not say anything. I get that you feel uncomfortable, but the whole thing will get even bigger if you tell everyone the truth-- and even if it was a misunderstanding that went too far, some people might believe you lied in the beginning. If you really need to tell someone the truth, you can try telling your closest friends, which may help ease inner discomfort.</p>
<p>Okay, JoeLiu123, call it a lie. You lied. You have probably lied before. Just because this lie involves Harvard doesn’t make it a bigger deal than any other lie you have ever told. People ask where you got in? You answer the question. What about Harvard? “No,” you say, “I didn’t get in there.” THAT’S IT. I can understand that you’re embarrassed, but I think you’ll look back in a few months (heck, in a few weeks or days if you just let it go) and find that this was a tempest in a teapot. I find it hard to believe this is the biggest challenge you’ve ever faced in your life, but I know with virtually absolute certainty that it isn’t the biggest challenge you will face. I also bet that if you look around at the people you care about you’ll find that there are people in your life and in your community facing much worse challenges than you are. You might find that if you take a moment to help someone who really needs support it will do wonders to refocus your mind.</p>
<p>
I find it hard to believe that every time I check this thread it is still on the first page. 
Obviously this is the down period in admissions.
But I’ll do my part to keep it up front for the sake of world affairs.</p>
<p>Here are some options for confessing your prevarication:</p>
<ol>
<li>Write to the President or Mitt Romney and see if they will schedule a debate on ths issue.</li>
<li>Hire the Goodyear blimp, or one of those planes that drags a banner to announce “Crimson Nixed Joe.”</li>
<li>See if you can get them to sing a song about this on “American Idol.”</li>
<li> Try to get this information printed on a basketball that they use for the NBA finals.</li>
</ol>
<p>Those are just a few reasonable suggestions for correcting this horrific travesty.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Right. And honestly, don’t kid yourself that other people care all that much that you need to make some grand announcement. Answer the question honestly if and when asked, and move on. The vast majority of these are people you’re never going to see again. If a handful of people-you’re-never-going-to-see-again mistakenly think you got into Harvard, so freakin’ what? It’ll be filed away in their memories as “oh yeah, I think there was a kid in my hs who got into Harvard” and it will sit there along with such other trivia as what they had for breakfast on February 12, 2010.</p>
<p>Well, the problem is not that in the future people might remember him as the kid who got into H, when in fact he didn’t. The problem is that right NOW he may become known as the kid who lied about having gotten into Harvard, and this could be remembered in the future too.</p>
<p>Maybe not everyone will care, but his classmates who applied and didn’t get in will care.</p>
<p>If only he was a little better liar he could have gotten into Harvard like Adam Wheeler. Of course, there’s still time to hone that skill and shoot for a CEO job at Yahoo.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is high school, TheGFG. The kid is going off to Stanford to do his thing and his classmates are going to go off to wherever they go to do their thing. Everyone’s going to go on and lead their lives beyond high school, so I am perplexed why “it being remembered in the future” would make one bit of difference in his life. The kid’s not coming back to his high school; he’s off to greener pastures.</p>
<p>I can’t even remember who exactly sat at the lunch table with us my senior year in high school or where anyone but three people went to college, and I only remember those three because there was this big fight because one friend got in to some school the other one wanted to go to and it broke up our group of friends and we were never the same again.</p>
<p>I went to a high school reunion a while ago and the people I liked best hadn’t even been my friends in high school (big high school, but still.)</p>
<p>Honestly, in a few minutes the biggest news will be graduation and grad parties and then saying goodbye.</p>
<p>“When you are young, you worry about what everyone is thinking about you. When you get older you couldn’t care less what anyone is thinking about you. When you wise up, you realize nobody was really thinking about you at all, anyway.”</p>
<p>Good luck to you. You seem to have some anxiety issues.</p>
<p>re post #60:</p>
<p>You can respond by saying “I am going to Stanford next year. I’d prefer not to discuss the other schools as that is a private matter”.</p>
<p>You guys obviously live in kinder and more forgiving worlds than I do. I think it’s interesting that after all these years (assuming she’s a mom of a college student) poetgrl does remember that college-related incident from high school days. I think people remember the notable “crimes” of their classmates, like the popular cheerleader who got pregnant, the cop’s son who got arrested for the senior prank, and the smart kid who got caught cheating on the SAT. This is similarly iconic: the Asian kid (assuming by the screen name) who told people he got into Harvard when he didn’t.</p>
<p>Regardless, one’s reputation as an honest person is priceless, IMO. I would seek to preserve that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t know about “kinder” and “more forgiving,” TheGFG. Maybe some of us hang with people who are less challenged when it comes to finding interesting things to talk about. As much as I like being known as an honest person—which, in the main, I am*—I also prefer not to be considered a gossip or, perhaps even worse, a bore. </p>
<p>I assume that, quite quickly, the OP and his or her classmates will find that there are more compelling topics of conversation than where they did or didn’t get into college. </p>
<ul>
<li>There was that time, a couple of years ago, when I claimed car trouble to get out of going to a dumb movie with friends. My lie was transparent, and at least one of my friends likes to remind me of how lame it was that I made up a story rather than simply saying I didn’t want to go out that afternoon.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>I like Dr. Phil’s version: “You wouldn’t worry so much what people think of you if you knew how seldom they do.”</p>
<p>GFG- I promise, I recall the ruined graduation party much more than the name of the college. I was actually wracking my brain trying to recall the name of the person who HAD the grad party that was ruined that night, and he was somebody I hung out with every single weekend in high school.</p>
<p>OP: if this is driving you crazy, then say something FOR YOU. Make a big announcement, or just say something. But do it FOR YOU, not becuase it makes the slightest difference what anyone else thinks.</p>
<p>Otherwise, I’d really stop perseverating on this.</p>
<p>honestly, i think the OP was subconsciously joking with his peers. I mean it’s your senior year of HS, what a great joke, plus it’s not like you didn’t get into a top school. Some people would pick Stanford over Harvard.</p>