<p>Well, as a Wellesley student, I would definitely agree that you have idolized Wellesley to an unhealthy degree. (I will say, I’m not sure why people think this, but really and truly, NOT everyone or even a majority of people at Wellesley are rich and/or snobby and/or legacies. I know this doesn’t help you any, but it grates on me slightly that all Wellesley students are pigeonholed as such. I have non-rich, non-snobby, non-legacy, minority friends who fit in perfectly fine at Wellesley. On the other hand, that’s an advantage of not going to Wellesley–not having to ward off misconceptions about snobby Wellesley students). </p>
<p>Anyway, think of it this way: you would probably be disappointed in Wellesley if you were to attend because of how high your expectations are. Maybe, because you don’t have such high expectations of Mount Holyoke, you’ll be really pleasantly surprised when you get there. Probably so, I’d say, especially when you have school work to keep you from obsessing about something in the past (Wellesley). Furthermore, #4 ranking or no, I would tell you that it is unlikely that someone who had heard of Wellesley would not have heard of Mount Holyoke (very few people at my high school in Illinois, for example, had even vaguely heard of Wellesley). Maybe there’s a little difference with Hillary Clinton being so famous, but then again, tons of people hate her, so that advantage, if you want to call it that, seems minimal. So the higher ranking really seems very trivial (which you know, or you would have automatically picked Columbia as that appears to be the highest-ranked school you were admitted to). Furthermore, that #4 ranking comes with a certain number of students who only applied to/attended Wellesley because of it’s high ranking, and then bitterly complain that it’s SO far from Boston, or it’s SO hard to meet guys, or whatever. This is honestly really annoying–it’s not a lot of people, but enough so that everyone knows one or two, and it kind of sucks. </p>
<p>I have a question for you: have you gotten rid of all your Wellesley stuff (view books, admission letters, etc.)? If not, I suggest you do. I was rejected at two colleges, and I immediately recycled all of their view books and pamphlets, and everything. I also didn’t even take my rejection letters into the house–I opened them and they went straight into the recycling bin. Very helpful for closure, I found. </p>
<p>Although I think you will feel better as Mount Holyoke begins to send you information about housing and stuff like that, I will caution you that if you don’t ever make the effort to give Mount Holyoke a chance, you will not be likely to be happy there. I know people (my former roommate, for one) who really never tried to like Wellesley because they really wanted to be somewhere else, and of course, they never really did like Wellesley. Even though some of these people transfer away and probably would have transfered away anyway, why resign yourself to being unhappy for a whole year of your college career before you even show up on campus? You can’t definitively will yourself to be happy at Mount Holyoke, but you probably can will yourself not to be. Don’t do that.</p>