My goal for this article is to articulate to non-seniors what I have learned through this school year and my personal application process. Although this article is inevitably most applicable to students like myself (inclined in STEM), I think there are large portions of this which are applicable to any student.
The brief review of my application process: I was a Montgomery County student. Focused on STEM, I coach the Math Team, technically coach the Physics Team, and I guess you could say I run a competitive programming club at WJ. Initially, I thought my college application process went as well as it possibly could have. I applied to the colleges with the biggest names in STEM, the beefiest math and physics programs, and fortunately got accepted into two of them in the Early Action round. It wasn’t until I actually visited the college campuses for the first time that I realized the academics of the school just do not matter as much as whether or not you feel at place on the campus.
On paper, I thought these two colleges were essentially the same. They are both on the quarter system, both have a three term analysis track, both have famous physicists associated with them. One in California, the other in Chicago, I thought that this was really the only substantial difference. But visiting the colleges themselves gave me a very different perspective. When I visited the California school, the students seemed very serious and focused on the cutting edge of theoretical research, but also very down to earth. I was very attracted to this, and almost immediately knew that this was the place for me. When I visited the Chicago school, I saw a level of fun and personal enjoyment that I hadn’t seen in California. I realized that these students are still undergraduate kids, they’re developing their socially fulfilling lives, meeting new friends, starting relationships, and enjoying their undergraduate experience. And at that point I was completely torn.
In high school, there’s no question as to what kind of environment you want to participate in. You’re attending Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and there are only so many people you can associate yourself with. I didn’t realize that going to a different college would mean fundamentally living in a very different culture, and that when you have multiple college options, you have options for the culture you want to surround yourself in for the next four years.
This is why I think I did the college application process wrong. I realized the most important thing is not the name, or the prestige or really even the programs offered, since more and more colleges allow undergraduates to take graduate level courses if they are well enough prepared. The most important thing is that you find the school you fit into personally, and that you would feel happy calling home, every second of every day of every year for the next four years. This inherently takes more work than just finding the biggest names, which is probably why when all of the adults in my life suggested I branch out to find more target schools, I didn’t. But in hindsight, I wish I had. That is piece of advice number one:
#1) When adults give you advice, take it seriously. Unfortunately, they do actually know some things that we don’t know, and we can still learn from them.
So I’ve put a lot of emphasis on understanding the school’s culture or community. But how can you do this? Most people would believe that talking to current students is the best approach. I disagree. Current students, especially underclassmen, are highly inclined to feel as though their college is the best one for them (confirmation bias), and thus is the best college around. I spoke to a variety of underclassmen at both colleges, and every single thing they had to say about their college was incredible. In their eyes, there was absolutely nothing wrong with their college experience. This is not what you want to hear. The best approach to learning about the school is to reach out to alumni. I spoke to alumni from both schools, and they definitely did tell me about the great parts of their school, but they weren’t hesitant to tell me about the downfalls either. So that brings me to piece of advice number two:
#2) Talk to alumni to get a feel for the school’s culture, and to ask where they and their friends went after graduating.
Speaking to alumni also shows you what kind of person graduates will develop into, and where their lives take them after college. My overall advice is to consider the extreme luck that I had. Most people who apply to the colleges that I did (about 95% of people) do not get accepted. If I had been one of those people (for which it was only pure luck that I wasn’t), I would have proceeded to apply to a variety of other colleges, focusing solely on the academics, not how I would grow as an individual. I think that would have inevitably led me to the wrong college. So for those juniors like me, sure, shoot your shot at top colleges. But make sure you are not banking on any of those being acceptances, and make sure you research target schools that don’t just have the academics you want, but that are going to fulfill you individually. Because there is a 95%+ chance that you’ll attend a target school, and that is great! But you just want to make sure that wherever you go, it’s the right place for you.
And last but not least, the advice that no ambitious student in Montgomery County wants to hear – or will accept. Top colleges are hard. And everyone likes to believe that they would be at home in these colleges, but that’s simply not the case for everyone. I thought that I would fit right in and that I would be well suited to the academic rigor. Immediately after acceptance, I thought that even more. But after looking into the courses and the expectations of the colleges, I’m not sure anymore. There is a significant amount of students who go to these top schools that do not graduate, or excel to the extent that they did in high school. This is a serious consideration, and oftentimes students interested in pursuing graduate school should consider that where they go for undergrad does not matter as much as how well they did there and how they spent their time. That leads us to the last but not least:
#3) Really think about how a school’s academic expectations match with your abilities and academic history.
And with that, I really wish you all the best of luck with your application process.
