by RomanEmpire » Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:31 am
Haven't been posting as much because I've been pretty busy with school/work lately, but also because of the college admissions process.
As some of you from IRC may remember, I applied to a several really good schools such as Yale, MIT, Caltech, and Princeton just to name a few. I didn't expect to get into any of them, but I had the opportunity to apply for free so I did. I spent several long nights getting everything ready, writing essays and faxing (faxing is the worst thing ever why does it exist) tax forms. Whenever I told people I was applying to all these good schools they would reply with "OMG you're going to Yale???" to which I had to explain that I am simply applying. Then I got interviews with some of them and despite trying to explain that they interview everyone that applies, they were convinced that it meant I was going there for sure. Basically everyone started expecting all these great things, and I didn't realize how much pressure it was putting on me until decision dates were approaching.
Decisions finally came out after 3 months of waiting and I was rejected by 14 schools, wait listed by 2, including one state school that I considered one of my relatively "safe" schools. Well that fucked with me pretty hard. I felt like I was letting everyone around me down. I wasn't going to any of these prestigious schools, I wasn't going to be "Mr. Yale" like everyone said, I wasn't even going to one of the really good state schools. The rest of my safe schools accepted me, so at least I knew I would have some schools I could go to, but I still felt like I let everyone down.
I'm not as smart as everyone likes to make me out to be, and it took me a good while to come to terms with that. I was basically left with two choices, UT Dallas and Southwestern. Southwestern cost too much despite very generous scholarships, and UT Dallas offered me a really great scholarship that I was super happy with but even then I was still kind of reluctant to choose it. I very specifically remember a friend of mine who graduated two years ago saying "I got accepted to UT Dallas but I didn't take school seriously my first two years. You can do so much better."
But I couldn't do better, and that made me really upset. It made me feel like I hadn't tried hard enough, like my class rank wasn't good enough, my GPA wasn't good enough, and I knew for sure my extracurricular activities weren't good enough. So I still couldn't decide between the two.
After visiting, I ultimately decided on UT Dallas. It's 3 hours away from home as opposed to the 12 minute drive from my house to Southwestern. I eventually came to terms that although UT Dallas wasn't my number 1 choice, it was still a really good choice especially due to the scholarship they're offering me. After financial aid and stuff, I should be able to graduate either debt free or very close to debt free, and I'm really happy about that.
So now that I have made my decision I feel a lot more relieved and I'm really happy with my choice.