<p>[Note: This is just a personal story about my experience with applying to and getting accepted to colleges and how I feel about it today. It's entirely too detailed and is just something I felt like writing and sharing with the community. Don't read if you don't care.]</p>
<p>Junior year of high school, I wanted to be a creative writing major in college, I decided--so my top choice, based on overall school quality, location, program quality, etc., was Columbia. I was intent on doing Early Decision, but then I got a letter from Princeton in the spring, about how it was affordable and diverse and they'd love to have me. Of course I now realize that they send out those letters by the thousands to people about whom they only know test scores, but I thought it meant something, and I looked into their financial aid and saw that Princeton (and most of the other Ivies) would actually be affordable for my family. And around that time I decided I wanted to study economics and political science instead of trying to become a writer, and Princeton seemed amazing for that. But Princeton didn't have early decision or action (of course NOW it does...), so it was a toss-up--do I try for Columbia, where I felt I had a bit better shot at getting in (especially with Early Decision, and I'd also know right there in December if I'm going there), or hold out for Princeton and have to deal with all those applications?</p>
<p>So my sister drove me from Illinois to New Jersey and New York to check out both schools. At Princeton, on a sweltering record-setting day, I wore a black long-sleeve shirt and walked through the beautiful arches and shaded lawns on a two-family tour, and ate at Pj's Pancake House, and got the last SmartWaters in stock at CVS to avoid passing out. And even in all that sweat, I felt like it was home. My sister told me, "Picture the best version of yourself walking around a campus, sitting in classes, being goofy and stressed in dorm rooms, and find where it feels right. That's the college you want." It was Princeton. I was CONVINCED it was Princeton. I bought a hat and shirt there, and when I visited Columbia, I bought neither--even though I did find it amazing and surprisingly beautiful for being in the middle of the city--because it wasn't as open, as green, as tight-knit as I saw Princeton. So I drove home, deciding that I HAD to try for Princeton, that I would love to go to Columbia but I had to know if I could make Princeton, had to take the chance, or else I'd wonder about it forever.</p>
<p>So you should know some basic things about me. As far as stats go in high school:</p>
<p>-White male, only parent who went to college was my dad to community for 2 years
-#2 in my class (graduated co-valedictorian but put #2 on applications)
-34 on ACT
-SAT II: 680 Literature, 690 Physics, 780 US History (sent those in--also got a 670 on Math 2 and worse scores on Lit and Physics I didn't submit)
-Took AP Euro (A/A), AP Phys B (A/A), AP Calc (B+/A), AP Eng Lang (A/A), APUSH (A/A) through junior year, and senior year, AP Phys C (B/B), AP Lit (A/A), AP Gov/Comp Gov (A/A), AP Psych (A/A), and AP Econ (A/B)
-GPA: 3.97 through junior year, something above 3.9 senior year (~4.6 weighted)
-AP Scholar with Distinction, National Merit Scholarship Commended
-ECs: NHS President, Academic Team, literary magazine, Science Olympiad (JV), FBLA, Student Council, President's Council (meets with principal monthly), Key Club, singer/songwriter in band
-Rec letters: From AP English teacher and APUSH teacher/student council sponsor, both liked me a lot</p>
<p>So first semester of senior year, I had that all in front of me and I compared myself with other people on here and on countless other websites. I saw that I had a good (but not nearly the best) ACT, good class rank, way subpar SAT II (except USH), decent amount of AP classes (and great scores on them), standard (certainly not extraordinary) honors/awards, a good (but not perfect) GPA, and ECs that seemed cookie-cutter and not special to me but at least showed involvement. So I was nervous, and felt like a little fish in a big pond with genius sharks.</p>
<p>And then it came time for essays. And this was where I finally felt like a genius. My common app essay began as inspired by the "Essay 3A" that everyone's probably read, but it turned into a list of things that I "wanted", like "…to skip rope with diplomats, and barbecue with world-renowned cutlery experts" and "…to avoid being a conscript in the culture war" and "…to develop the string theory of theoretical gastronomy." And I arranged it in a way that it was shaped like a charging bull, and ended it with a little pair of couplets about returning home at night because I had to sleep, like a kid's book. I would just stare at this essay late at night, perfecting every tiny nook and cranny of language, changing the order randomly to make it shaped like different things, combining lines. I spent 20-30 hours on my essays over several months. But you don't understand how positive it made me feel. I was so caught up in the college application process that I NEEDED something to be proud of, to make the wait till March 30th bearable. And I was proud as hell of it.</p>
<p>Then I needed a supplement essay. The ONLY one I put any effort into was Princeton's (a poor decision, actually). It was BRILLIANT. I wrote an honest, two-page essay about what I said at the beginning of this post--wanting to be a writer and then how Kurt Vonnegut and other influences made me want to work in the government instead of art. And to top it all off, I made an ASCII copy of a profile picture of mine where I was wearing a fedora and steampunk goggles, and put it right at the beginning. And it had a little tongue-in-cheek caption. And Princeton didn't have a word limit, and it was so perfect! Together with my other essay, I could pull these up once a week in their crisp PDF files, before and after submitting my application, and be proud. And once, I came to the conclusion that, yes, my stats didn't make me a standout applicant, but they had to read these essays at Princeton Headquarters and go, "This kid is awesome" and at least waitlist me, if not accept me. I didn't feel like they could turn me down just by looking at me, but I wasn't at all confident about actually getting in for the longest time. So I waited three and a half months in limbo without knowing where I was possibly going to school, and I kept poring over my applications, my stats, my essays, other people's information. I started to alternate every day between telling myself "You're going to get into Princeton, don't worry about it!" and "You'll never make it in, you idiot. You'll be lucky to get into Northwestern."</p>
<p>I submitted Princeton's on December 15, the "recommended' deadline, because I was SO SURE that would make a difference. I submitted it a few minutes late, even, and panicked, even though it was only late for being early. And then I submitted the rest of my applications at the last possible minute every day they were due, to a few local schools and then Northwestern, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale. Columbia's, after Northwestern's (which I literally wrote in the bathroom), was the one I BSed the most, as the supplement question was really vague and boring. My girlfriend wrote me the rec letter for Dartmouth, and my Brown essay was a script (written like it's for a TV show, which I googled frantically) about a conversation between me and my favorite teacher, with other people thrown in for dramatic license. I don't even remember my Cornell one, and my Yale was just my Princeton's but gutted of the picture and the details. I felt that the Brown one was the strongest--it was kind of corny but it was unique and from the heart and funny enough. But once they were done, I snoozed through winter break and began my frantic worrying period.</p>
<p>Then came interview hell. First came Brown, where I had a kind of weird, old man with a white beard come to my house and sit at my kitchen table (he asked me if I knew about "Ivy League bands" after I talked about being in a rock band, and I talked about Vampire Weekend, leading to an embarrassing awkward moment before he explained what "Ivy League bands" do at halftime shows). Then I didn't hear from Cornell, Northwestern, Columbia, Dartmouth, Princeton, or Yale--NO alumni in Chicago's suburbs, suspiciously. And one day I woke up at noon on a Sunday to check my gmail and find an email addressing two other students about interview times, with a note at the bottom that said "We never heard back from [my email]. Are you still interested in interviewing? If so, please let us know a time that works for you." The email was FROM MY PRINCETON INTERVIEWER. And I checked my spam box and LO AND BEHOLD, there was an email from a week or two ago asking me when I wanted the interview. I had never even known it was there. I apologized and replied hurriedly, and even though I knew that interviewers weren't gatekeepers to college or anything, I was really upset, especially because they had wanted me to make the interview that afternoon and I knew I was going to inconvenience them. But, to my surprise, they wanted me to come later that night. So in the pouring rain and the cloudy night, I sped by myself to someplace miles away, with only my GPS in the cupholder to guide me. At one point I accidentally pulled into a cemetery because I turned too early. I showed up to their giant, beautiful house (they were both alumni, husband and wife) 5 minutes late and talked with the guy the whole time, giving what I thought was a decent interview--not "hitting it off" in any crazy way, but certainly having a great conversation and getting me excited about Princeton.</p>
<p>(And my last interview was Yale, where I met at the library the week before admissions decisions came out and it went very average and I felt like I talked too much.)</p>
<p>I found out on the bus ride to an FBLA trip on my cell phone that Northwestern had waitlisted me (and rejected my friend on the bus). I started feeling really nervous about the other schools, though I was aware that I had not put much effort into my Northwestern app, so I wasn't TOO much more worried.</p>
<p>And then the big Ivy day came. I had trouble sleeping the night before, woke up late so I had less time to be nervous, and was actually in the shower when they were first posted. In my towel sitting at my desk, I checked all of the sites frantically, even though few loaded and some required passwords I didn't remember making. Princeton's locked me out for half an hour because I typed in my password with caps lock on multiple times. So as I waited for them, I went through the rest of the gauntlet and saw:</p>
<p>Brown: Waitlisted
Dartmouth: Waitlisted
Cornell: Accepted
Columbia: Accepted!
Yale: Waitlisted</p>
<p>And then finally, after the lockout period ended, I checked Princeton, and though I expected to be waitlisted by this point, I had to see it with my eyes, to confirm the reality:</p>
<p>They wanted to offer me a spot on the waitlist.</p>
<p>For months, I'd told people "I wanted to go to Princeton but I doubted I'd get in" when they asked me about college. Most of the time I felt this way, maybe even more doubtful than I let on. But truth be told, sometimes I felt like I was absolutely going to get in. My stats weren't legendary, they were just hopefully good enough, but obsessing over those essays gave me a stupid amount of hubris--the overconfidence I needed to get through a terrible, stressful phase of school. But when it came right down to it, though they were good, they were just one part of who I was, and it was a crapshoot against tens of thousands of people equally qualified. </p>
<p>I still believe that it's a crapshoot, as far as we can tell. They can tell the people who are actual geniuses, and they have their ways for athletes and legacies, but for bright, hardworking people, it comes right down to how you sell yourself and whether your application clicks with them. Nobody can ever know for sure if they'll get in (and the few geniuses probably don't worry about it), so yes, it's a stressful adventure. But if someone like me can get accepted into Columbia and not get rejected by any of those schools, then however good or bad you might feel, you have to know that things could go either way, and you shouldn't get completely caught up on something that you have a sub-10% chance of getting.</p>
<p>And for those who have yet to go through this, here's my advice: DON'T keep second-guessing yourself. Don't read "chance me" threads or make one. Get a feel for whether you meet the general standards for your schools, and maybe make some friends on sites like this, or ask technical questions. But don't keep worrying, and don't keep pondering. Work hard on your applications and then just forget about them and enjoy the last months of high school, content that you've done everything you can and if you don't get accepted then you can go somewhere else. I'm an atheist but I believe you'll find the college and the life that is destined for you if you work hard and keep an open mind. If you go into another school with the attitude of "Sure I didn't get into Princeton, but I'm going to have an amazing and worthwhile time here!" then you will get more out of it than people who go to Princeton and think "well I'll just frat-bro it up and coast because all my studying and participating days are behind me."</p>
<p>I didn't believe this when everyone told me so for months. I thought that I HAD to get into Princeton because it would make me the man I was supposed to be, and that because it felt right to me, it was a part of me, more than Yale or Columbia or any other school. But as begrudgingly I accepted the waitlist from Yale (which already took me off the list) and Princeton (which will certainly do the same shortly) and eagerly accepted the offer from Columbia, I realized that they were always right. It's about finding yourself, and if you get accepted by a school and everything works out, well that's a damn good sign that it's where you might find yourself. And it's not like I'm settling for Columbia--I'm still amazed and so honored that I get to go there. But when you look at it, Columbia is completely different from Princeton--it's in New York City, it has an expansive Core Curriculum, it has an EVIL bureaucracy (two months of phone calls and messages for my financial aid adviser and I had to go over her head to get any help), its campus is half the size, and it has no elaborate gardens or beautiful Gothic arches. I get a completely different vibe from the people in my class than I got from people at Princeton. I've changed the type of experience I expect, and it's maybe not the exact one I dreamed about for a year, but I'm still going to get the most out of it.</p>
<p>But I've really come to realize that even if I hadn't gotten into any of the Ivies and I were going to University of Illinois or Marquette or community college, it's never an issue of "settling." It's about going to the best place you can in life and making the most out of what's before you. I don't think they teach that in college. (In fact some say that college graduates who earn more were already intrinsically motivated and talented so college didn't matter.) They don't teach it, but it's what YOU can get out of it. And for some people, that comes from getting accepted to your dream school, but for others--it can come from being rejected.</p>