Wednesday, July 30, 2008

which school is easier to get into?

I was just moseying around on the CC forums when I came across a post that debated the merits of applying to our e school versus the college, based on acceptance numbers. Now, I do have to say that reading about people trying to 'game the system' or find a backdoor in really irks me. Why not use all the effort or time to write a kickass essay? Seriously, it's kind of pointless and rather late to be finding shortcuts and easy gimmicks, why didn't you just save a night or two of partying before to study for that test?

Alright, I'm not into lecturing people, just had to rant a little bit. But in all seriousness, you probably wouldn't want to apply to our e school to get into UVA that way. You'd have to stay in the e school for at least a semester, I believe -- and that's no cakewalk. I feel that they tend to have the higher workload and definitely have to study a lot more. Good grades are also harder to come by, so if you go that route you might end up wrecking your college GPA in your first semester of college. What will you do when it comes time for grad school apps? Try to find an easier route in? Oh wait.. you actually apply to the department for graduate school admissions. Oops. Guess that way won't work this time.

And I understand, maybe freshman year of high school wrecked your GPA for college. Heck, I hadn't realized at that time that what my clueless, naive freshman self was doing would become very important in four years. Don't worry if you took the wrong classes or made a mistake along the way. Admissions people know that, they don't exactly expect 17 or 18 year olds to have 20 year life plans or something like that. What would probably earn their respect is if you showed how you've turned that mistake around, or how far you've progressed since that time in your life.

Some of this comes from me picking up phone calls with the person at the other end frantically asking me about what clubs they should be joining in their senior year, or what classes to take that would make them look better. Well, sorry to say, it's kind of too late for that. And aren't you tired of the panicky, gotta do this to boost my chances feeling? Go with what you have. So what if you're not one of those in five clubs, president of student body, student athlete, NMF AND someone who's cured cancer? You're you and that's who UVA wants to look at.