Hello everyone, so I’m currently making this post at 1 AM because I just committed to college a few hours ago after having a very long two-hour talk with my parents which honestly wasn’t very easy for either of us mainly because I was very stressed. But moving on from that, I am here to tell you my story/process to committing and the advice I have for those who are lost and stressed like me
To start this off, anyone who knows me knows that I have had colleges and just my future planned out for years. Growing up I’ve always envisioned myself staying at my state school which is the University of Minnesota and as I got into my junior year I realized that maybe UMN wasn’t my school so I started looking for other options. Let me tell you I don’t even know the reason why I decided that UMN wasn’t a good fit for me because ultimately I ended up committing to it. But at the end of my junior year, I remember being very stressed about my college process and corona didn’t really help the situation any better. I remember spending late nights stressed out because I was afraid that my stats weren’t going to be good enough and that my ACT wasn’t going to be good. (Our ACT was actually canceled and it was moved in the fall and so I had a lot more time to study). But the thing about me was that I was never really considered a “bad student” but I wasn’t a great one either and here's why: I always got A’s and B’s and 1 C+ in geometry... (That class brought me trauma) but compared to a lot of kids at my school I wasn’t a top student because the school that I go to is very rigorous in academics and there’s a lot of competition between the students because our school has a reputation to uphold. So I spent that entire rest of the school year till summer to perfect my college essays because I knew that those were gonna be the only things that saved my application since my stats were going to be on the lower side. I grinded and eventually, I had perfected my common app essay and it is one I am proud of forever.
But in the fall that was when things started to get really stressful because I had to still take my ACT and so I took one in September and then I took the one the school offered in October. While many schools went test-optional I wanted to try my best in the hopes of helping my application. I don’t want to reveal my scores to everyone on the Internet but let’s just say the first one wasn’t as good as I was expecting, but the second ACT was when I really did well in my opinion. I had decided to submit my test scores and I knew that a lot of people around me weren’t planning on doing it and then I thought to myself maybe I was at a disadvantage since just because I thought it was good didn’t mean colleges would. I just wanted to say that stats aren't everything and I am a person that can say that since I had gotten so lucky. But I was also stressed because I was afraid that I wasn’t going to get my scores in time for the early action deadlines but luckily for me I had gotten my scores a week before and then submitted all my applications on October 28 since I had already prepared them all ahead of time.
Then came the waiting game. I had applied to 22 schools total and if anyone is reading this that will be applying to college next year, PLEASE DO NOT APPLY TO SO MANY SCHOOLS. I learned this the hard way because I was so stressed that I wasn’t going to get in anywhere that I applied to so many places that I wasn’t even interested in and I probably took a spot from someone who genuinely wanted it. But luckily for me I only had to pay application fees for seven schools because the rest of them were free or I applied during free application weeks. I won’t lie though, applying to colleges was extremely addicting and it was fun to see results from schools I didn’t care so much about.
But during this time I had a very specific amount of top schools I was considering: University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Minnesota, University of Iowa, Michigan State University, and Miami University (Ohio).
I am a very private person and I didn’t wanna tell anyone what schools I was thinking about because I didn’t want anyone to be influenced by my decision because college is a very important choice that a person has to make on their own. Gradually I started getting acceptances all the time and I really had it easy in the first few weeks... then I started to really narrow down on what school I wanted to go to.
About three weeks after my application I got accepted to Michigan State University and that was one of my top schools but then I found out they didn’t give me any financial aid and I couldn’t afford the 50K tuition there so then I had to give up that dream.
And like I said growing up I had always envisioned myself going to the University of Minnesota and then eventually I started to fall in love with their rival school: UW Madison. Because of this I started to envision myself going to Wisconsin but I knew that the school was extremely competitive and that I was at a very big disadvantage, but I still applied and went for it and just hoped. Since I lived in Minnesota, we got our decisions a month earlier than everyone else and on December 16, 2020, I had gotten deferred from Two schools: Depaul University and UW Madison. I never really cared for Depaul but I was so upset about UW Madison because at the end of the day I thought to myself that being rejected would make my decision easier. After all, the last thing I wanted to do was wait. I watched everyone around me got accepted and even those who had no interest in going in the school had gotten accepted. I was so upset and I knew that being deferred was not the end of the world because I was given a second chance but I knew that a lot of people didn’t have any faith in me and I didn’t blame them, it’s what I deserved for doing the bare minimum in school. I wished I worked harder and there isn’t a day where I’m not thinking about that.
I got accepted to UMN a few days later but I was so upset about Madison that I didn’t even care about the U and had no intentions of staying in-state anymore. I didn’t even get into the business school but I didn’t expect to because again my stats were on the lower end compared to all the 4.0 kids.
Then I had officially thought about going to the University of Iowa because I met a bunch of friends and really wanted to go there after meeting so many people, and for those next few weeks, I had anticipated going to Iowa, and then things had changed even more in the remaining weeks after . All the friends I made on the Iowa group chat started committing to other schools and then part of me was wondering why did I even want to go to Iowa and if I did want to go, was it for the right reasons? The worst part was that they wouldn’t even give me any money so I was so blind about this whole thing.
Then I got accepted to Miami University and into their business school and I was so stoked, but again I couldn’t afford it. At this point in time, I felt so lost and I was nowhere close to figuring out my college decision and it's weird because my friend Pete and I were the only ones that were prepared for college but quite frankly we ended up being the ones that were the most lost at the end of the day. It sucked because we had our lives planned out but if I learned anything in the past year, it’s that nothing ever goes the way you planned.
Now all of this leads to this moment right here. Sometime in March, I had gotten an email from UW Madison and they said that they had a record-breaking amount of applicants this year and that decisions were going to be pushed back to April 2. I was so annoyed because I wanted to commit so badly but then I had to wait but then I knew that my choices were even slimmer than they already were.
Then I had gone to Arizona for spring break and during that trip, I had really thought about my college decision. I had gotten into Depaul after being deferred but like I said I had no interest in going so it didn’t matter but anyways, and After pushing the University of Minnesota away from my list, I slowly started loving it back again and it made me wonder why I pushed it away to begin with. I think there’s a lot of talk about leaving your state after high school but obviously, that’s easier said than done and because of this whole stigma about staying in your state school and how "Embarrassing" it is, I was blindsided by the fact that I still loved the University of Minnesota and that I’d be an idiot to consider passing it up because I’d be saving 10x more money at home than anywhere else. Then I officially decided that the UMN was going to be the school that I would go to. I knew that it would be a risk because I didn’t get into their business school and I know how competitive it is but I was still in a business degree, just in a different college which is already confusing enough to explain to others. But I knew that I also never took any risks in life and this was one that I needed to do because I needed to work hard to get what I wanted and in return, I’d be paying a lot less money for my education.
Then I had made a bunch of friends for UMN and last week I had gotten an email from the financial aid office and I looked at my cost of attendance and I ended up getting scholarship money/grants and it made my tuition significantly cheaper. I told myself I’d be an idiot to pass up on a great school with a really good price. I thought slowly I was starting to get my life together.
But then a few hours ago I was very distressed.... and the reason is because I was out at a restaurant with my friends and UW Madison had accepted me and into their business school as well and then officially all 22 schools I applied to had accepted me. I was so happy but I had told myself and everyone around me that even if I got accepted I wouldn’t change my mind about the UMN because I was going to commit on the day that I got my decision from UW Madison because it was the only school I was waiting on. The moment I had gotten my decision and I was shocked because I had not expected to get in and for about a minute (When I mean a minute I mean like a few hours) I thought about not committing to UMN anymore. I was so shocked and then I found out that a few others around me didn’t get in/those who had higher stats that got rejected and then it made me feel more pressured to say yes to UW Madison but I knew I couldn’t make this decision on my own and that I had to talk to my parents and figure out my options.
I hung out with my friends for a bit and then got home and I talked to my parents for about two hours and I was so emotional because I knew I wanted to stay close to home and this WHOLE time I wanted to stay close but I just didn’t want to admit it. I knew that staying home would be best for me but I still had a tinge of guilt in me if I ultimately chose not to go to UW Madison. After a good talk and a lot of tears later I’d come to terms with the fact that I wanted to stay home and that even though UW Madison was my dream/top school for a little bit, it didn’t mean that it was the right fit for me. Sometimes dreams and viewpoints change and for me, that’s how I felt about this school.
After my talk, I went and officially confirmed my enrollment to the University of Minnesota. I went on with no regrets and I am so happy to be spending the next four years here in Minnesota again.
Now that I finished with my story I am out here to tell you some advice for those who haven’t committed yet.
Sometimes it’s OK to not know what you want because if you couldn’t tell I was having a huge crisis in these past few months because I was constantly changing my mind and sometimes I didn’t even know what I wanted myself. But at the end of the day, your choice is a lot more obvious than you might think and you have to come into everything with an open mind or else you’ll end up like me and become more conflicted. I am a first-generation college student and so I never really knew what to do in a situation like this and so I really had to dig deep into every school that I liked and figure out pros and cons and sometimes it is the little details that make a huge difference. On top of that, I also had to know what I wanted in a college and I had a very specific preference and both University of Minnesota and UW Madison had them and so then I had to look into the little details and that’s when I realized that as much as I loved UW Madison, UMN was ultimately a better fit for me. The biggest thing for me was convenience and that can mean a lot of different things for many people, but to me going here was more convenient than any other place.
College is also expensive and so if money is a very big factor in where you go, then go to a place that you can afford because it’s truly not worth it to waste a ton of money at an out-of-state school. This is obviously very debatable if you’re going to like a top 20/ Ivy league school but every family has their boundaries and it’s something to discuss with your parents. To me my parents wanted me to go to a college that I would love but I knew that I didn’t want to go to a place that cost my parents their whole savings.
Another big thing I learned was that sometimes what you want isn’t what you need because I wanted to go to UW Madison for a bit, but then at the end of the day, I realize that it wasn’t what I needed because I was ultimately going to be a lot happier going to UMN. I had also learned that a lot of people sometimes can be in denial about where they want to go because for me the last thing I wanted to do was commit to my state school because I wanted a fresh start even though I’ve always dreamed of going here, But I would push my thoughts away and force myself to not like the school just because I thought I wanted something different and sometimes different isn’t for everyone.
Everyone is different in their own way and has their preferences so at the end of the day please do not let other's decisions influence what’s best for you and I know that could be kinda hard when you see everyone around you picking their colleges. That’s why I personally chose not to tell anyone too much information about where I was planning to go because I just wanted to make sure no one was influenced by my decision.
If you are reading this right now and you’re not committed just know that it’s totally OK and that I’m so proud of anyone who’s gotten this far. College is a stressful thing and I don’t anticipate it being really easy for anybody especially during the circumstances of Covid and everything that’s happened in the past year. As cheesy as it sounds, close your eyes and envision yourself to where you could be, and don’t lie to yourself because it would never benefit you in any way and it will move you farther away from what you truly want. My biggest regret was pushing away my actual thoughts and feelings this whole time.
I am so lucky to have been able to have gotten accepted to all 22 of my schools and I know that so many people are struggling to get acceptances this year and since I haven’t been rejected, I won’t understand what that feels like. But what I can say is that rejection is just redirection and that you’re going to end up right where you need to be regardless. But if you do go to a college and you truly don’t like it you can always transfer and I know many people don’t like to talk about transfers but it’s very doable and it works for a lot of people and it’s something to take in consideration or even do community college for a little bit if you want to save money.
Ever since I committed I’ve been so relieved and I feel as if I can finally sleep again. It’s totally OK to not know completely what you want to do so just give yourself a break and let time tell or if you’re lucky, it might just come to you as it did for me.
But just know that whatever happens and whatever place you choose, make sure you’ll truly be happy at a place for the next few years because it’s going to be your home temporarily for a while. Work towards your goals and dreams, don’t settle for any less and remember to live on. - Sincerely, TT
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