Things I Wish I Knew 4 Years Ago (from a BC senior)

Hi everyone! I am a current senior at BC and was feeling nostalgic about this being the end of my college career, so I decided to hop back on College Confidential to lend some advice to all of you currently going through the admissions process.

The first thing is that “Chance Me” threads are incredibly misleading. There is no magic formula for getting into BC, and no one here has any inside information that will tell you if you’re “good enough” for BC, BU, ND, Harvard, or any other school. Don’t use those threads as a way to reassure yourself, or more importantly, to compare yourself to kids that you’ll never meet.

Second, I know it’s the most pressing thing on your mind at the moment, but focus on where you fit, not where you will get in. Ask current students (like me!) or others about the culture of the school, what programs it offers, what their experience has been like, because that will lead you to the place where you belong. Thousands of kids (myself included) came to these forums trying to get answers for where they would be accepted senior year, only to return a year later looking for information on transferring. The US News rankings are solely academic; no holistic rankings exist because that’s up to you to decide. Do you want DI athletics? Do you want to be in a city? Do you want a small school, large school? Do you want a particular major or program? Think about these things, because the majority of your college life is spent outside of the classroom.

Third, as someone going through the job process right now, what particular school you end up at has almost no bearing on your career/graduate school successes. I recently had an interview for a top firm in NY, and when I walked in the room, I was the only non-Ivy kid interviewing. But I got the job. I’ve seen kids from BC make it to Harvard, MIT, UChicago, Duke, etc. for graduate school, and Google, Goldman Sachs, and Apple for their professional career. It’s about what you do in college, not where you go. At the end of the day, no one is going to dismiss your application just because your university is ranked 10 spots lower than someone else’s.

If you have any questions about BC, I would be more than happy to answer them. But please, enjoy your senior year and be happy with all you have achieved in the last 4 years. You WILL end up at the right college, and you will have an extraordinary 4 years.

That being said, best of luck to you all!

I agree that the chancing threads must be taken with a big grain of salt but at times they do serve a purpose. A student with an 1100 SAT and a 3.2 UW GPA who is applying to Harvard, Stanford, Duke etc. and stating that BC is their safety school needs a reality check.

I have a question that I haven’t seen an answer to; maybe no one really knows. Admission to CSOM has long been rumored to be more difficult than A&S and yet Admissions has said that the acceptance rate is about the same. Aside from math (high scores, having calc), does the pool of applicants to CSOM have significantly higher test scores in verbal areas as well, such that one would need a higher composite than the reported scores for the schools collectively?

Hi hockey871987–would really like to know more about life at BC since we have a student thinking about transferring there from the Midwest! Thank you!!