College Spam

When I registered for the SAT, I let Universities and Scholarships programs have access to my scores. This resulted in quite a few e-mails, and one physical package, from some of the colleges. Here's a list of them, in order of contact:

• Rutgers University
  
• Saint Louis University - Madrid Campus
• Westminster College
• Loyola University New Orleans (2)
• Suffolk University
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (5)
• The University of Chicago (2)
• Fairleigh Dickinson University
  
• Florida International University (2)
• Wheaton College
• Franklin College Switzerland
• Colgate University
• University of Pennsylvania (I think I contacted them, first)
• Johns Hopkins University
• Harvard

Allow me to be completely honest. The names I recognize are Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Rensselaer. No others. I read the list aloud to my father, and he seemed incredulous, and far to optimistic about my chances of acceptance. Any US university seems like a long shot from here.

It also seems like any admissions process is going to be an incredible pain. The Harvard offer came in the mail, along with the Common Application form. Along with yet another Teacher Evaluation form. This means I'm going to have to sit down with my English teacher, translate the form, give them to teachers that like me, and translate their answers. Then, if I ask for letters of recommendation (and I'd better, if I want to be considered) guess who'll have to help translate those as well? Yup, me.

*Note: if you're wondering how wise this is, letting the student translate these, the English teacher goes over them, makes corrections, strikes out the "Coolest student ever, saved the world from an alien invasion" comments I add, and authorizes them

As for Scholarships, all I've gotten is an e-mail from QuestBridge, which helps low income students pay for a college education. It has a pretty prestigious list of universities to which it's related.

Something else I discovered: the form for the Vice-Presidential nomination asks me to pick my region from a list. That list also neglects mention of South and Central America, along with Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, etc. Apparently, US citizens living abroad are out of luck. And no, there's no "Citizen Abroad" option, either. I think I've said this before, but that's a huge oversight.