<p>Please, before this day of reckoning, share your final thoughts with each other </p>
<p>The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. (Plato, The Republic)</p>
<p>This Yale forum contains well over 100 students who have lived, eaten, and breathed this mantra for much of the past month and a half, as well as their entire lives. Understanding the great importance that education takes in the journey of life, we have striven to utilize the great opportunity that our world has presented to us. To many, Yale stands as that pinnacle of achievement that the world has created. And so we await our decisions with anxiety, hope, and of course a little fear, looking off into a future that can be brightened by a collection of building in New Haven, Connecticut, and all that they stand for.</p>
<p>Why, though, do we value Yale so greatly when others posses attributes that can rival its glory. Its professors can be matched in quality and commitment at countless institutions, its focus can be seen in every college that hopes for a brighter future, its building can be dwarfed by those that bring the same sense of grandeur and possibility that create on of Americas oldest campuses, its books can be seen in other libraries across the world, and the realm of possibilities that it opens would still exist in a world devoid of its magic; and yet, we still hope.</p>
<p>What Yale offers above all else is what it has given me over the past months here on College Confidential; the highest caliber of students ever seen in the history of mankind. While statistics and people can create fears of rejection, those same measures can create even greater hopes for acceptance. But more than numbers and words, I have felt a fundamental bond grow between those with a greater goal in mind </p>
<p>that of hope. Not even for Yale or college as a whole, but for a future we can build with the help of education. Dozens of students on this board will travel to New Haven next fall, but many dozens more will spread across the nation and the world. I find the greatest consolation not in the fact that other great institutions exist, but that they will be filled with the brightest, most caring minds of our generation.</p>
<p>Soon, our paths will diverge. For a select few, months of waiting will end leaving a savory taste in the mouth, while for a few others, the following days will be some of the most difficult in their lives. And yet, for all decisions that will be released over the next few days, I can rest easily knowing that the students that make Yale great are committed to an even larger cause, and that regardless of education of location, we will make that journey together.</p>
<p>I thank each and everyone of you, from the most prolific posters to lurkers who have yet to see the light of day, for making one of the most difficult and important processes of my life also, before I have to gain a decision, one of the most rewarding. I hope that regardless of decisions, this group can stay as supportive as we make the largest transition so far in our lives.</p>
<p>There will be no way to control the emotions that will be created in the next 48 hours, but I DO KNOW that each and every one of us can have a future more wonderful that even that that we imagine at Yale by staying part of a larger community, and even when we slowly leave the Yale board and College Confidential all together, we will remain devoted to the memory of months past.</p>
<p>While Plato said the direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life, that direction takes many different paths for many different people. When our roads diverge in the woods, we will each take a different path of education, but by walking the path of hope and possibility together, our futures will always exist as a common path together, where every winter we can cry and mourn, and every spring we will see that rebirth of hope as the flowers begin to bloom once more.</p>