Goals: Go to a top school. After months of changing my mind & researching, I decided to apply to (in order of preference): Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, U of Arizona, and Arizona State University (the whole double-Arizona thing is a coincidence, I don’t actually live in Arizona). I did NOT want to stay in-state (Washington). I wanted to go to school for CHEAP.
Biggest challenge: Waiting. I should have applied Early Action to Stanford, but I wanted them to consider my SAT II scores, and they wouldn’t have arrived in time. So I didn’t find out from S/P/C until the end of March. It was killer.
Did things turn out okay? I guess. I was rejected from Stanford & Princeton and waitlisted at Columbia. I was totally shocked. I have near-perfect stats. But I got a great scholarship to U of A, which is a ‘public Ivy’ and a good engineering school. Plus it has good weather.
Are you happy? More or less. I was depressed for a solid week after getting rejected two days in a row.
I was admitted to both Arizonas. I should have applied to more “easy” schools, but money is tight, so I narrowed it down to 5, 3 being “harder” schools. I ended up only having two options, which kind of sucked, but I’m more or less happy with my final decision. I’ve committed to UA, put down my deposits, got my housing all lined up, etc, etc. I’ve got a full ride, so that fulfills one of my goals. Just don’t bring up the Ivies.
The good thing about going to UA is that there will be waaayyy less pressure than at my other top schools. Sure, I’m disappointed, and I wonder what the **** the admissions people were on when they decided, but at least my four years of stressing and working my butt off in high school won’t continue on into college.
I was pretty happy but not really surprised when I was accepted to both Arizonas. I was excited about the scholarships. I cried for a while and was kind of in shock when I got my rejections from Stanford & Princeton and was just kind of ****ed at Columbia for waitlisting me (by that time, I had ruled out Columbia; I should have applied to Yale instead). Stanford sent out their emails a few days early, so I was caught off guard, and when I saw the “I regret to inform you” I kind of lost it.
Stats: white female, engineering major, 4.0 GPA (UW), 2340 SAT (770 CR, 770 M, 800 W), 790 SAT II Math II, 670 SAT II Chem, violin, piano, knowledge bowl and math team state-competing team captain, Honor Society president, 100+ hours of community service, heavily involved at church, 3 AP classes last year, 5 AP classes this year, honors & advanced classes, 5 on AP Lang test, glowing teacher recommendations, good essays, good interviews. What went wrong?
