Okay, I’m going to hold off on talking about how helpful it is to get third party college advice (maybe I’ll get to that in another post). Instead, I just wanted to share a bit of insight: the college process isn’t over after you press submit on all of your applications. I thought I was done in January, but I was so wrong. The anxiety continues — at least it has for me — with everything peaking April 1st. What’s up with April Fool’s Day? Well, it happens to be the day when most colleges release their decisions.
As of today, here’s where my decision status lies:
Early Acceptances (😄): MIT, UChicago, UMichigan, Agnes Scott, University of Alabama
Regular Acceptances (🙂): Northwestern, Brandeis, University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana
Waitlists (😕): WashU
Rejected (😔): Johns Hopkins
Still waiting on (😬): Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Emory, Tufts, Rice
It’s those schools that I’m still waiting on that are causing so much stress. First of all, I’m already having trouble deciding between the schools I’ve been accepted to. Technical school or liberal arts? Big classes or small? All of the things I should have had figured out before I applied to college are now coming into play, and I’m on a time crunch to make a decision. Then, if I get in anywhere else (chances are extremely slim, but that’s another factor adding to my stress levels — I had a nightmare the other night of not getting into Harvard…), I’ll have an even tougher decision to make.
Money ties into everything too. For example, UIUC is way out of reach because they want me to borrow $10,000 a year in loans, which might not sound too bad, but just doesn’t work with what my family can support. As I’ve seen so far, the “prestigious”, Ivy-type schools are much more generous when it comes to financial aid. If MIT pays for everything, I’m much more likely to go there than UMichigan (though UMich was surprisingly generous with aid too!). Being able to pay for college was another huge reason I even applied for the Ivies. UIUC can’t be a safety if I can’t pay to go there. I need someone to cover *everything,* and luckily, the ‘elite’ schools can do that.
I realize though, that going to an Ivy isn’t everything. I could probably get a similar education at other institutions, and I know so many people who have thrived after attending big public universities. So that dynamic complicates things even further.
To wrap up, I guess I just want to stress how stressful the months of March and April can be while you wait for decisions and prepare to make your own. There’s a lot more to the college application process than writing the essays and doing the interviews, because once those are done, you have to look forward and keep reflecting on yourself — where can you feel at home for the next four years? The answer might not always be the highest ranked school.
The Ivies And Me 