The Curse of the Chances Thread

BlueJayBJ
Mon, 18 Nov 2013 14:34:55 +0000

It’s about time again. The time where young HSers filled with anxiety post their stats on college confidential. We elders have all been there before (CC made me so anxious I was actually constantly checking my posts every other minute), but what I beg you all to do is STOP! Kids no one can tell you if you or in or not. There is no magic recipe.

If you look at the past posts you will find kids with nearly identical stats and one gets in and one doesn’t. Yes this is currently the most stressful period of your life. But all these chance posts will only make you feel worse and are not constructive at all. Let’s give a little anecdote. When I was on CC as a senior I had applied to Princeton, I remember on the thread this regular kid (good sat scores, good aps, good gpa, nothing special about him, not a celebrity/rich/or an alum) asked if he would get in and every other kid laughed at him and said no because he was like every other applicant.The funny thing is the boy got accepted into Princeton and when he announced it the super stars that didn’t all were demanding if he had lied about his stats or was the kid of a politician. He wasn’t anything. I don’t know what got him in but he was a regular Joe in the applicant pool. I got into Johns Hopkins over a classmate in high school that had a higher rank than me.

No one knows what goes on behind these doors. Seriously kids the only things these posts do is feed into your anxieties, mess with your self-esteem and self confidence, and make you miserable. The only way you can possibly know if you have a chance is if an administrator at a school tells you deliberately you are in. Let me tell you the one thing I know about these research schools. If you truly have an academic passion and they feel you can do the work, you have a chance at getting in. Of course this is hard for most kids because very few find a true academic interest in high school and have the opportunities to pursue it.