<p>yup! you described new york pretty nicely. not a culture shock for me, though, cuz i live in the metropolitan area. lol.</p>
<p>but i love the city. nyc is awesome :)</p>
<p>but about the stuff you said, truly helpful for those who come from southern/distant suburban pockets that have not ventured out into a city or have not been around a competitive educational institution.</p>
<p>Thank you for communicating so eloquently what I as a high school senior have been feeling about this whole application process. Right on.</p>
<p>This is a very nice post. Some kids have that “sense of self” which will guide their decisions and some people don’t develop it until much later. Perhaps this is why some people grab onto the rankings to validate their decisions rather than validating from their own beliefs, needs and thoughts. Hopefully this post will touch somone else who perhaps isn’t as in tune with themself and give them pause about other considerations.</p>
<p>So very true. They HYP myth is alive and well. There are smart and motivated kids there, there are also a lot of snarky, annyoing, dumb legacies. HYP is not the end all be all- no school is.</p>
<p>Very nice post.</p>
<p>But wouldn’t you agree that some of the undesirable aspects of your experience (homeless people asking you for cash, smell of garbage, socialist leaflets etc.) were specific to Columbia, and would be less of a problem at someplace like Princeton or Harvard? </p>
<p>And as much as I hate to say it (since I’ll be going to Columbia myself), there’s the perception that the schools just below the level of HYPMS are stuck with the second pick of students. I’m not sure how far this is true, but I can’t help wondering whether your intellectual experience would have been sweeter at HYP. (I’m referring to your comment about “people who care as much about how expensive your shoes are as who your favorite philosopher is.”)</p>
<p>I have to agree with you on one point you made on another thread: some of the stuff admissions officers put out is baloney. Like hmom5 said, after listening to the Yale rep’s talk, she would have thought an unhooked 2000-SAT kid could get into those schools, had she not had three children who had gone through the process. And the thing Princeton says about being able to create two or three identical classes out of the kids they reject - yeah right. It may sound cynical, but college admissions is a business, after all.</p>
<p>Wonderful post. Extremely helpful.</p>
<p>Good post man. You’ll get a lot of bickering from this post I bet, since most of CC is all about prestige.
Kudos and thanks for the info.</p>
<p>Your post should be mandatory reading for all high school seniors and CC parents.</p>
<p>Im a senior in high school and the ivies couldn’t pay me to come to them. I am very against the elitist principals, sense of entitlement and general snobbery that is associated with them.</p>
<p>I was just thinking about this, thanks!</p>
<p>that was awesome. yeah, i think we all lose sight of that sometimes. reality check…</p>
<p>Thanks for the insightful and heartfelt post. Something every high school junior & senior should seriously ponder before college. Surrounding yourself with good people is definitely the key. Do you want to waste your time hanging out with druggies or use your 4 yrs at college productively and maximize your potential…btw “terrapin station” - grateful dead fan, deadhead I presume?</p>
<p>I agree with you to an extent, but when your options are the ivies or the state unversity (b/c of your financial situation), I think all of us would much rather want to go to the Ivies because they do tend to have a more intellectual atmosphere as well as more motivated students. I think that’s something that we want to surround ourselves with, and that’s a good reason why we all respect each other on CC.</p>
<p>After reading all these complimentary responses I went back and read the OP again. I’m sorry I don’t get it. Yes, going to college is a major life event, when you learn to live on your own, in a new place, among new people, and all those changes are going to dominate your experience. And there are some not very smart and some lazy people at the most famous schools. Is this a revelation?</p>
<p>If only you can walk up to every college bound high school senior and tell them this. Seriously. This is a wake up call for many.</p>
<p>Thanks so much. We appreciate it.</p>
<p>It may be a revelation to people who are still in high school that famous schools admit some people who are more notable for their laziness than their intelligence.</p>
<p>For those agonizing about where to apply to college: When you’re making plans for the future, you’re shooting in the dark. Your future will be influenced as much by serendipity as it will by the plans you’re making now. I started college at my third-choice school, located about as far from home as I now commute to work. The summer before, I started dating a woman who was also planning to attend that college, and we fell in love. A year later, her father was transferred to a city 3,000 miles away, on the West Coast. That led the two of us to transfer to a school in California.</p>
<p>I became a California resident as a result, which led me to Berkeley for law school, after an amicable breakup with my college girlfriend. I met a woman in Berkeley whom I began dating 9 years after we graduated. (We became re-acquainted, again, through serendipity.) She’s now my wife of 14 years, and the mother of my children.</p>
<p>These few facts have a far greater daily influence on my life than any of the considerations I had in mind when I was applying to college. My children owe their very lives to a decision by a nameless corporate bureaucrat to transfer an employee 31 years ago.</p>
<p>wow your amazing</p>
<p>thanks for the insight man</p>
<p>erm… the way i see it,. you can’t really know till you know…can you?.. </p>
<p>i’m in the 12th grade and applying this year… infact i should be studying for the SAT subject tests right now… all the “prestigious” uni’s seem to want em…</p>
<p>but i understand what you’re saying… and i know that you’re right…</p>
<p>and yet the voice at the bakc of my head that seems to be making a lot of decisions lately keeps going “screw this!.. HARVARD… FULL THROTTLE AHEAD!” - more or less =/</p>
<p>i dunno, i’m definitely gonna apply to these big colleges, no doubt about that… cuz it’s kinda like this… if you go to columbia, and realize that it isn’t all that it’s cut out to be, you’ll be sad… but atleast somewhat content with the whole “i’m in columbia” thing… but if you went to some random faceless instituition and THAT ended up sucking just the same… you’d be all “WHY!!!”</p>
<p>oh… that reminds me, anyone got any tips for what “faceless” unis to apply to?..
i’m a prospective pre-med student… recently immigrated (1 month ago)… got what is considered by many a good SAT score… had a high college GPA… was in the top few students of my class and would definitely prefer an accelerated program =/</p>
<p>yes… and i’m obsessed with being smart too =)</p>
<p>amazing post… totally agree. even just two years later i realized i had no idea what i wanted in a college. turns out i love my school but there were some things i was definetly not prepared for. in some ways college has made me even more confused in who i am because it made me leave my comfort zone. realize that college WILL change your life and your college will shape who you become.</p>
<p>seniors PLEASE listen. keep your options open… i know i disqualified schools for completely dumb reasons and who knows what could happened?</p>