Personal Reflection

               

Over the course of my life, almost everything has come fairly easily to me. Of course, there are exceptions, like swimming and driving, but as a general rule I have been successful, academically, socially, musically, athletically, you-name-it-ally.

                Until this year. Of course, it is true that senior year is a difficult time for everyone, with a new and mostly independent era of your life on the horizon. But my college application experience thus far has led me to have a bit of an identity crisis. I’m no longer so sure of where I fit into the world, or whether my future will be a successful one.

                Ever since I was young, I have often wowed my teachers with my intelligence, receiving praise for activities I can accomplish fairly easily. My sports coaches have been impressed with my hard work. My music teachers have been impressed with my talent. I can sit in a class and passively listen and still understand more than many of my frantic note-taking and late-night studying peers.

                But college applications have really put me in my place. I applied to a series of world-class schools for early action—MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, along with a second-tier safety school WPI. My grades and test scores are very good, I do tons of extracurriculars, and I hold many leadership positions. Thus I assumed that, although the top schools are something of a crapshoot, even for the perfect candidate, I would be accepted into at least one of the three.

                How wrong was I. So far, I have been rejected from Caltech and Stanford. Thankfully, MIT (my top choice) only deferred me into the regular action pool, but the odds of being accepted after deferral are astronomical according to admissions statistics. Thankfully, I was at least accepted to WPI, my safety.

                Being rejected three times has really put my life into perspective. I feel like all my successes, my achievements, just aren’t good enough. Obviously there are people out there better than me, and this I have always known. But why am I not good enough?

                I often find myself, against my will, reviewing my applications and wondering what went wrong. Were my essays not good enough? My SAT scores? My grades? Not enough volunteering? But the inalienable fact is that I can no longer pretend that I am a top student. Top for New Paltz High School, sure. But that means almost nothing. I wanted to be among the top in the world. I wanted people to look at me and say, ‘Wow. That is a person who knew what he wanted, and went out and got it.’ Now they will say, ‘There’s the kid who wasn’t quite good enough for the big leagues.’

                My family and friends constantly try to cheer me up. They say that where you go to school doesn’t matter, that it’s what you make of your time. And I’m sure that’s true, to some degree. But whether or not it’s a streak of vanity or an overblown ego, I want to do amazing things and really contribute to the world in a tangible way. Not as one of the button-pushers or minions that come out of these middling-level schools, but a leader, a visionary. And whether it’s justified or not, a diploma from MIT will get you places that WPI just won’t.