College App Time!

So tonight I spent the night going over my brother L's college app essays and it made me think back to my own time doing college apps 5 years ago (gah! Has it really been that long?). One of the things I was noticing as I was going though my brother's essays is his vagueness and lack of specificity when he was going through what appealed to him about the colleges and their programs. I was quick to point that out and told him to go and fix that right away. What he came back with were essays that were wonderfully illustrative as to why he wanted to go to a specific college. Their only problems on the second round were wordiness. Happens to everyone I guess.
Looking back on my own essays, I now see that the ones that got me into places were the ones that were specific and detailed how the university or the college would be a good fit for me and where I wanted to go and be and do. I was intrigued by Oberlin's nascent film program that I could help shape back in 2006 and its musical environment where I could learn to play the cello at a completely different and better level. Middlebury offered up a solid film program, some wonderful language programs, and the small college environment. Northwestern was one of the bigger schools I applied to (along with BU) and offered a much more technically-driven but focuses film environment near Chicago. Boston University also had a much more focused film program in a campus that was integrated into the city of Boston that offered the possibility of interacting with a large college student population from the 100+ colleges and universities in the Boston area. Swarthmore, where I got wait-listed, had a really nice small student population and student-faculty ratio and a very cool Engineering program that I planned to do in conjunction with the Film and Media Studies program I had set my eyes on.
Of course, I didn't end up at any of these places. I ended up at Vassar College. My top choice. It had everything I was looking for. An orchestra I could play in, a very good Film program, a varsity fencing team I could join, a good selection of study-abroad programs, a strong environment of female empowerment without being a girls' school, and even a dual-degree program with Dartmouth to do engineering (I planned to be a Film and Physics double major back then and then do the last year at Dartmouth to get an engineering degree). I remember one of my essays being about how I felt when facing an opponent in fencing and how that sort of applied to my outlook on life. I think Vassar was the best and right choice. My four years there were nothing less than extraordinary. And it was the things that I didn't plan on doing that were some of the most worthwhile - like figuring out two weeks into freshman year that I wasn't cut out to be a physics major and deciding to become a Chinese Language and Culture major instead (I swear I didn't see that coming! That was a product of the school's language requirement and the department head at the time, which I am convinced, could sell ice to a polar bear. But no, really, I really really enjoyed being a Chinese major even if those 3.5 years of language classes gave me a lot of grief. It isn't an easy language to learn!). At Vassar or through Vassar, I went to China, directed a short play, was in a short play, costume-designed for M's play, played the cello in a pit orchestra for a musical, participated in student government (became the dorm secretary), fenced on the varsity fencing team, played in the orchestra for 3 years, had private cello lessons from a fantastic renown cellist from New York City, took a religion course that blew my mind as it forced me to re-examine the relationship between religion and state and history, I screamed at the top of my lungs with the rest of the college at the end of each semester before exams, I saw a friend carve Obama's face into a pumpkin on Halloween, made maple syrup by tapping the trees behind my house with my housemates, went to more than one square dance, made about 4 or 5 short films, picked Hudson valley apples in September, had a snowball fight with our neighbors, made a webcomic, went for a walk at 2:30 am to find a student playing the didgeridoo, got distracted by the books in the library when I was supposed to be writing an essay, composed an electronic music piece, learned how to ride a bike with my cello on my back, and became a free-range vegetarian.
I made friends that were PoliSci majors that double-majored with biology and Art History majors that baked Challah for the Hungry every week and English majors that were interested in Native American lore and Environmental Science majors who played in the Jazz band. They taught me about the Utopian politics of Star Trek and Spanish churches/synagogues/mosques and Old English declension and invasive wild mustard on the farm and owl migration and DNA and the importance of knowing how to tie a good knot. I met people who never ceased to amaze me, and that's the best thing I took from Vassar. The wonderful people I met and what I learned (and keep learning) from them.
I hope that wherever L ends up, he will have a similar experience - one full of exciting surprises and people, new paths to tread, and new things to discover. Considering what he's written for his apps, I'm pretty certain that this will be the case.

Categories: applications, college, L, M