Hi all.
Just a short couple months ago, I posted here anxiously, like many right now are, looking for a “Chance Me”. I spent valuable time putting four years of my life in short paragraphs and bullet points, pleading to the online void to predict my future. Now, as of a day ago, I was accepted REA to Caltech.
I guess I’d like to put a message out there for people who were in a similar spot to me, gauging their chances and frequently feeling disheartened or “not good enough”. Online echo chambers are designed by themselves to recommend content that you react strongly to—more often negative than not. I’ve always heard of these uber-accomplished applicants getting rejected from Caltech, but that’s really only because those are the stories that people hyperfixate on and gravitate to—the stories the algorithms pick up. Many times, too, the people you see online are just straight-up lying. I encountered a person on a chanceme forum once who was cosplaying as a UPenn graduate brutally chancing UPenn ED applicants, but in reality was a high schooler trying to discourage people from applying to UPenn to boost his own chances. Your trust is valuable, give it wisely.
I’m in absolutely ZERO position to give advice. I expect no one to take my advice seriously, and anyone that dares to consider it should do so with a block of salt. Nevertheless, I want to share two lessons I learned with my journey through this process.
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Human connection matters significantly more than people give it credit for. Represent yourself fairly and justly, true to yourself, your voice, and your beliefs, and I believe that is all you truly need to get accepted into the coveted “T20”, or at the very least the university where you will thrive best, as long as your quantitative statistics are “up to par”. Admissions officers are real people and value connection.
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Context is key. Why compare yourself to a person with maybe double the accomplishments you have if they grew up with ten times the opportunities available to them? It is not fair to yourself.
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Negative content proliferates in online media and amplifies insecurity. People in this process benefit from your insecurity—private college counselors especially. In a stressful phase like college admissions, negative thoughts inevitably proliferate and fester in a stressed teenager’s psyche. Nevertheless, yourself from negativity as best as you can. Not even the admissions officers know your actual chances. Try.
In hindsight, college was definitely a shadow over my high school experience, this all-encompassing frontier to a world of opportunity and success. Just how did this enigma of the T20 affect my high school experience?
To the parents that make up a large portion of CC, I do want to share some thoughts on my experience with parents and college applications. My parents didn’t know anything about the American system of applying to college and didn’t care to learn. I gathered documents, kept track of deadlines, learned the ropes, etc by myself. They’ve always been relatively “hands-off” with parenting, which made me more independent and a stronger advocate for myself. I guess I just see so many posts in the “Class of X” threads where parents are hounding their children to pump out essays and who are so so involved in their child’s application process, and it’s very strange and foreign to me.
Anyways, just my thoughts. Overall, I’m very grateful and relieved. Caltech '29