Saturday, July 21, 2007

Final Message

Duke's west campus looked just like the gothic architecture of Yale and Princeton. Some girl stood up from the front row (the only one in that row) and asked a question during the info session which consisted of a 5 minute and 37 second description of her life, ranging from her move from China to America 2 years ago, how she knew little English, only 500 words, she has a 5.03 GPA, 8 AP classes, was on a tv show, volunteers to help tutor kids, etc. For over 5 minutes! The whole room was laughing in disbelief the whole time. The speaker was trying to get her to stop talking and figure out what her question was. Finally after almost 6 minutes of this girl's life story, she finally spits out "so what my question is, is since my SAT scores are low, can I still get in?" The speaker just stares at her, open-mouthed, and repeated what she had said multiple times-- the admissions office looks at each applicant with a holistic perspective. The girl then promptly sat down, and continued to stare wide-eyed and dumb-founded back up at the speaker from the front row. This was pretty much the core message we got from each college. When they receive each application, they are looking for a good student, a good friend, and a good person. There is not one, singular thing put on the application that makes or breaks an admission choice. Everything matters, everything counts, but it’s the whole picture, the person’s essence, their personality, their attitude, their aptitude, their accomplishments, their achievements, their hopes, and their dreams, that’s what makes the difference between whether a student receives a thin or fat envelope.