How does one stand out from the crowd?

mikemac
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:42:22 +0000

However, I do think that I have potential at these universities and I want to give it another shot. I love my current university, but living so far away from home has been much more expensive than I’d hoped.

You probably DO have potential at those schools; that doesn’t mean you’re going to get in. With the crush to get into the brand-name schools, adcoms often state that they could have built a class as good as the one they accepted from those they turned away. So you face a choice here, although I’m guessing you already made up your mind. [ul][]stay at this school you love and figure out how to cut costs []apply again to the colleges that turned you away once already[/ul]I’m going to argue for choice 1. You asked in your 1st post how to stand out from the crowd, how to get the adcoms to see you as more than just a number. Well, at the schools you listed that’s what they try to do. And its not that you’re not a worthwhile interesting person; I’m sure you are. It’s just that the adcoms have to make tough choices, and part of the deal is turning away qualified applicants to take those who (for whatever reason) they preferred. So I wouldn’t be so confident that the only reason they turned you away was because they only looked at you superficially, that if you can just catch their eye and have them take a ‘real look’ they’ll admit you.

Some will say “go ahead and apply, you have nothing to lose”. I disagree. If you were miserable at your current school, if it didn’t have the right program for your interests, etc. then you should definitely be looking at leaving. But what I sense here is more a case of wanting something you believe is better. And that’s a slippery slope for several reasons. For one, your daily life at your current U is real; it has good and bad aspects. Your transfer colleges, on the other hand, I doubt you picture anything about them as being bad, let alone worse than where you are right now. Reality is always going to come up short measured against a dream, so odds are good you’re overestimating how much better they’d really be.

Which leads into my 2nd reason, what you have to lose. It’s substantial. While you plan for what may be a slim hope of transferring in order to go somewhere “better” you aren’t getting fully engaged in the life you live today. Its just human nature not to invest a great deal of effort into building strong friendships, getting involved in clubs, and so on when a part of you expects to be leaving in a year. The most unfortunate thing is that at the schools you want to xfer into the kids ARE doing those things. You show up junior year and start at ground zero, they’ve had 2 years of making friends, getting into leadership positions, learning the ropes of how things are done and what opportunities are available, making the school their own. Anyone who’s transferred will tell you that its never the same as having spent all 4 years at the school. And as may be likely the case given the results the 1st time around, if you don’t succeed in transferring you’ve lost opportunities right in front of you today.