Rensselaer, Final Answer (?)

Paid my enrollment deposit at Rensselaer. Looks like this is it.

Parents are still trying to get me to consider taking a year off, going either to a community college close to my uncle's house (moving in with them, in a cold area) and then applying to a different list of schools as a transfer student.

One person is pointing out that the winters are long and cold in Troy, NY.

Another that they don't offer Russian.

Another that the UCR is a perfectly good school, and maybe I should just transfer to Medicine (currently taking a few courses under Mechanical Engineering enrollment).

Actually, they're all being pretty encouraging, on the whole, just trying to make sure I don't end up someplace where I'll be miserable. To be honest, it doesn't matter much where I go, things will end up one way or the other no matter what. (Well, that wasn't a useful sentence at all).

What I mean to say, is that decisions like these, which supposedly determine the rest of your life, don't determine it much more than any other decisions you make regularly throughout a day. Too many variables, too many different choices down the road. Just because I don't make it from Point A to Point B by Direct Route C doesn't mean I won't get there eventually.

Then again, maybe I'm just a sore loser. Would I be writing this if I had gotten into my first choice?

USAFA - Rejected / Possible Wait List

I got a letter in the mail from the Air Force Academy today, my top choice.

It says they couldn't accept me, blah blah regret to inform you blah blah many qualified candidates and blah blah blah for a few paragraphs more. You know, the standards classy school rejection letter.

It also added that I was, in fact, a qualified candidate. That I met all the criteria for an appointment, but since they are by law limited to 1120 acceptances per year, I just couldn't be accepted. I wrote a previous post on the depressing application statistics here.

Alright. I understand, and it's kind of nice to know that I was qualified (if not too useful in a practical sense). Also, I never got the Vice-Presidential nomination, so that didn't help at all. Then they added: "Why don't you consider AFROTC?". That hurt. Just a bit.

The almost-positive part, the "Possible Wait-List" in the title, is that if someone turns down an appointment, then they go back to the list of Qualified Candidates (to which I belong) and pick out someone else.

So now I'm desperately hoping that some kid was accepted to Harvard or Yale or some other really prestigious school and chooses that over USAFA. C'mon, you accepted students! Do really great and go to an Ivy League/MIT/clown school so I can go to this one!! You can do it!

PS: I learned that another person applying to schools in the US reads my blog. She refers to me as her archenemy. She was accepted into a really great school. Hi, Arch-Enemy! Congrats on your acceptance!

School Admissions

Here are all the schools to which I've applied, and my admissions
status to date.

Harvard - Denied

Cornell - Denied

ROTC - Denied

USAFA - QVA (qualified, no vacancy) Denied, for all practical purposes. Except bragging rights. I'll reserve those, thanks (kidding, of course)


Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Accepted

• Major: Aeronautical Engineering
  
• AFROTC: on campus Detachment 550

Drexel - Accepted

• Major: Mechanical Engineering
• AFROTC: crosstown agreement with Saint Joseph Detachment 750.

Arizona State University - Accepted

• Major: Aerospace Engineering
• AFROTC: on campus Detachment 025
• 
  

Hofstra - Accepted

• Not actually considering it.
  

Drexel - Accepted

Drexel has accepted me.

This is possibly the school I have least mentioned. They're pretty good with engineering stuff and have a neat co-op program.

Harvard - Denied

Harvard did not accept me.

And what is with sending out admissions decisions on April 1st? Does no one else think that's a terrible idea? How many cruel friends/siblings/anyone are tempted to call some poor applicant and go "Congratulations! You've been accepted to Harvard!", let them go crazy for a bit and then go "Gotcha! April Fool's!"

Even I want to do that, and I'm usually a pretty decent person.Is it really so hard to send it out in March like everyone else, or even just wait until the 2nd?

Cornell - Denied

Cornell did not accept me.