Seniors' VOICES on the College Process

As seniors apply to colleges this fall, three reflect on their journey navigating the college admissions process here at Stuyvesant, from researching and writing essays to contemplating the nature of Stuyvesant’s college culture.

Asa Muhammad

The college process is, in a word, hellish. The research, dominated by ranking sites like US News, is hard enough. Having been indoctrinated into Stuyvesant elitism through jokes about “fake Ivies” and lamentations regarding going to a school with an admissions rate above 12 percent, I initially felt it intellectual suicide to consider any school below the top 10. Getting past these biases was simple enough, but reviewing college websites and attending information sessions posed a new threat. Any talk of “campus culture” is blatantly false. Schools will tout quirky and fun campus cultures despite dead eyed students and netted bridges. Competitive (selective) schools downplay the difficulty of their applications and provide a description of the school that’s superficial yet self-aggrandizing.

Once research is over, one must plan. Do I meet the middle 50 percent of SAT scores at Stuyvesant? What about at my dream school? How do I write an engaging SSR without being admitted to a psychiatric institution? How do I console the teachers vying to write my recommendation? All these pertinent questions unanswered due to time constraints. As November 1 approached, it was time to write. Paralyzed by anxiety, I simply thought about writing, and then didn’t. November 1 came, and my application was bare. After expending a month’s worth of effort in one day, I ended with work I could reasonably not be disappointed in. I am exhausted, and that was only one school. If my early results come back negative, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Elliot Scheuer

There's a mix of nervousness and excitement, knowing that there are so many options out there and I’m going to be moving into the “next phase” of my life and all that. The nervousness stems from knowing that so much is out of my control at this point. I can’t go back and change my grades, the extracurriculars I decided to participate in, and more. Essays are definitely my favorite (and least favorite) part of the process. I love writing, and some of the prompts, such as UChicago’s, for example, allow for some creative expression. However, there’s an element of performative uniqueness I’ve been struggling with—trying to neatly package complicated parts of myself into pithy sentences and memorable essays. I start writing an essay with the idea of just being genuine, but a few edits in, I always wonder if my genuineness is a performance as well.

Clara Shapiro

Still kicking! But how is my kick? At times, my kick is but a feeble little twitch of the legs… barely a pulse here. At other times, it is the panicked flail of one who is drowning. But most often, my kick is that of a fierce Magyar warrior, a kick intended to bring down a door, the golden door of College.

Admissions does remind me of a door. “Admit” or “deny,” you must apply. And if the golden door swings open—huzzah!

But where, I wonder, does such a golden door lead? To an MIT fantasy realm/A corporation with you at the helm!

Maybe so. And what happens if you open, instead, the humble wooden door (such as, God forbid, not an elite school!) rather than the golden one? Where will this one lead?

To a bad college/After which you will go to your parents’ garage.

Well, guess we know where I’m going, seeing as I think “college” and “garage” rhyme. But as I was saying.

Sometimes, it seems certain to me that there are only two doors through which to pass when it comes to college: the golden gates or the dingy door to the dump. Yet at other more hopeful times, another third gate glows out of the darkness at me, and I know this third gate to be the gate of my own invention. Behind the Third Gate is a wobbling purple ether, my future’s cosmic swamp. Everybody has a Third Gate, a third world… here lie the imagined, embryonic futures that exist in people’s heads, but almost always go unspoken and unacted upon. What if, for instance, I move to a woodland shed far away to study northeastern bird calls (that is one of many ideas of mine that swirl around in my Third Gate’s purple ether.) What makes the Third Gate difficult is that unlike the two known gates of college, one golden and the other grubby, the land beyond the Third Gate is a void. Each person must invent it for herself. No one can truly say for sure what lies in store.

I think it’s possible for us all to catch glimpses of our own Third Gates from time to time, and the imagined world that lies beyond, a strange sunburst in the dark. When you remember that you possess a gate to a world of your own, one of which you are the sole creator, then the gates of college (and whether we pass through them or not) seem to matter a bit less.

Once we learn to see and hold the world of the Third Gate/Then we become masters of our fates.

Jenny Liu

Say the term “QuestBridge,” and be greeted with confusion for the most part. QuestBridge itself is an elusive name and concept, tinged with tough odds and strange reconciliations. It is also the way through which I applied to college and now find myself going to attend a wonderful university on a full ride. In writing this now, I’m still not sure this has all happened to me. It must be a cosmic joke.

By design, few know about QuestBridge because it targets a small subset of students applying to college: specifically, first generation low-income students of color. QuestBridge is an organization that has partnered with 45 prestigious colleges and universities so far—the big names such as MIT and Stanford, along with other amazing but smaller liberal arts colleges like Macalester and Grinnell College—and the catch is that students who “match” with one of the schools they rank are offered a full scholarship to the school. Coming from a family affected by unemployment, this opportunity meant a lot to me. The other catch is that the chances of getting matched are extremely low. Out of 16,500 applicants in 2021, 6,312 were Finalists, and only 1,674 were matched across the nation. No pressure, right? None.

It’s not necessary for me to hash out the details of applying through QuestBridge; one can go onto their website for that. I will say this: never has an application asked so earnestly to get to know me, and of course it’s by design, but the sentiment holds water nonetheless. In addition to a biographical essay (analogous to the personal statement on the Common App), they ask for short responses, a topical essay, and quick takes. And that’s all before the supplements of each individual school.

The cynical take is that it’s all mere marketing and one has to sell oneself. But that perspective leaves me inert and nihilistic and with a blank Google Doc. I work when I feel hope. Screw canvassing and knocking on colleges’ doors, begging them to let me in. I have things to offer. I have more self respect than that. I will take advantage of those word counts, and make the words count. That mindset carried me through the September 28 deadline and then the November 1 deadline. It carried me all the way to December 1, otherwise known as Match Day.

In retrospect, I put a lot of blind faith in myself. I knew the odds were against me; if I didn’t match, I would have to go through Regular Decision (QuestBridge doesn’t let you apply to any universities by the early deadline, save for those with rolling admissions and state schools). The process that I started early in the summer would be doled out until next May? Unacceptable in my head. Yet I knew the reality could certainly be a sure thing. That being said, there was something comforting about going on a different path than just the Common App. I was taken out of the regular pool and the toxicity that comes with it.

I also had a tremendous amount of support. I wasn’t without the help of such a large village of counselors, advisors, and friends. The intensity of their support and sage advice floored me at times. People believing in me when I didn’t cracked my chest open in some type of inexplicable way.

Having said all of this, it’s fair to do away with my words, having already gotten into college (by early December, no less). It’s a rather high horse I’m on. I have no sage advice or wise words. Maybe luck was the biggest factor in all this. Maybe faith is just fine.