<p>It’s preposterously unhealthy that you have a self-admitted “obsession with the Ivy League”. My advice as a senior waiting for my EA decision is this: GO OUT AND HAVE A LIFE. DO NOT OBSESS ABOUT COLLEGE YOUR FRESHMAN, SOPHOMORE, AND JUNIOR YEARS. YOU WILL HATE THEM AND ALIENATE PEOPLE.</p>
<p>I didn’t do this, but I know kids who did, and I am so glad that I have things like a life, a girlfriend, and other ways to decide for myself that I’m satisfied with who I am other than the arbitrary acceptance of 8 fancy shmancy New England institutions.</p>
<p>I can guarantee you, if you go through high school with such a narrow, ignorant, and unhealthy definition of success, you will hate everything. You will not be a fun person to be around, you won’t be mature. You will be insincere, sycophantic, self-centered, boring, melodramatic, intellectual, and just plain annoying. People will not want to hang out with you. That isn’t fun.</p>
<p>Go have a freaking life. Don’t worry about improving your math SAT score: are you serious? You’re a freshman in high school. You seriously think you’re going to major in archaeology? When I was a freshman, I thought I was going to have to quit high school to direct an American remake of one of the highest grossing Japanese movies of all time. AKA, I WAS AN IDIOT. You have no idea what you’re going to want to do next week, much less 8 FREAKING YEARS FROM NOW WHEN YOU GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE. Don’t be that kid who locked himself into pre-med in 7th grade and now has an irritating passive-agressive complex from being to pedantic and spiteful to think “hey, maybe I want to do something else with my life.”</p>
<p>Go be a person and not a machine. Maybe you’ll end up at Yale that way. Maybe you won’t. But then again, you can study for the SAT for the next two years, take all AP classes, learn an instrument, win international debate awards, write a book, and solve the Riemann zeta hypothesis and maybe you’ll get into Yale, and maybe you won’t.</p>
<p>You will never be a sure bet at Yale. It’s tragic. Get used to it and for God’s sake, MOVE ON.</p>
<p>Rethink life while you still have a chance to be a normal kid. You have just entered the gateway drug that is CC. Don’t turn into a “CCer”, for the love of God.</p>