College Hopes, Dreams, Fears, Money, and Everything else

Hey, so I am stuck at the public library right now, because my dad insists on running extraneous errands like returning library books that aren’t due for another 2 weeks (If I come as being self-centered right now, well bite me, I’m not in a good mood). Anyways, in my lovely procrastinating ways, I decided that I might as well try my hand at that college super-post I have been putting off for a while (actually I have been hit with such January/school year malaise this year that I have not been blogging period, as you probably noticed).

As I mentioned in my last post about Alec Baldwin and Hulu’s Superbowl ad, I was accepted early action into the University of Chicago, deferred Early Decision from Wharton at University of Pennsylvania and deferred early action from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (otherwise know as MIT). Now with this result, I applied regular decision to Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, and Brown University (though truthfully I’m not really expecting to get in anywhere else). Now I realize that it might appear as a douchebag kind of thing to do to just apply to a bunch of schools, especially Ivies, when I already have an acceptance letter, but I feel like I legitimately have visited each of these places, they are all awesome schools, and I would have an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Now, I am not going to deny that “prestige” doesn’t play a factor, because guess what, when you are dealing with the schools I am applying to, of course it does. However, due to the awesomeness I have learned in my microeconomics class at Wellesley College, guess what?, college is mainly about market signaling. That’s right, it’s not about the education you get, because practically you really aren’t going to need to know that obscure material you researched for as your Senior Thesis at Princeton, but with Princeton being displayed on your bachelor degree, you are signaling to future employers be they private, governmental, or non-profit that you have exceptional abilities that got you accepted into Princeton. Practically, future employers cannot easily discriminate between the myriad of applications from job seekers they receive. Sure they could rely on the interview, but that is a temporary test and not truly indicative of important qualities like willingness to work hard. (How many more people say they are hardworkers during an interview than actually at a job?) Now with a brand-name college, you are signaling to those employers or loan officers and venture capitalists if you are a start-up that someone else has already judged you as having a worthy character and exceptional abilities to be admitted into such elite institutions such as University of Chicago or Harvard. Off-the-bat, you have a higher chance of getting admitted to grad/professional school or getting an evaluative interview because of the brand you are now associated with.

Harvard, But for Life?

So I was accepted by as an undergraduate student Class of 2013. Yeah, I guess. I mean in all perspectives, I should be happy, satisfied, elated, I mean after all I was accepted by the most glorious college on the face of this Earth, according to some, but yet I am unhappy, maybe even depressed, though I probably don’t have clinical depression, at least not the DSM-IV definitions of it (yes, psychology does seem to intrude every once in a while in my life).

I guess I should probably start the story from the beginning, which starts in last year during April vacation, though the true beginning might even be earlier. My parents and I went on a grand tour of colleges then. First we went to Cornell, then Princeton, Penn, NYU, and Columbia. The summer earlier (as in before junior year). I had already seen Brown, Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, because a girl, who was the daughter a friend of my parents, was staying at my house and she wanted to do a college tour. So, Cornell didn’t appeal to me due to the being-in-the middle of nowhere nature of it (though the parody of Cornell life that is Ivy, an internet TV show filmed and produced by Ithaca College students, is very entertaining). My Princeton tour guide was terrible, who talked too fast, as if feeling the necessity to bombard us with the minute-detailed history of every building. I do understand where he was coming from, because sometimes I do feel the need to memorize a bunch of unnecessary, trivial details and recite them back to others to show off my superior memory abilities. I feel at Princeton, it was a combination of that, nerves, and lack of social abilities to empathize with the audience and comprehend that the tour guide is really about what life, current life, at the university is like versus rehashing the storied history of Princeton, however interesting the latter may be. Fortunately, my parents and I did go down to Princeton this February and I ended up with a far superior tour guide.