Looking At Schools

As you guys read in this post, both Jordan and I were accepted to our early decision schools. You also read how neither of us really expected this to happen. Today, I wanted to give a little background about that and share some of my experiences leading up to picking my top-choice school. Everyone approaches college differently and everyone will have different experiences and adventures, so this is by no means what you will go through or "what everyone does", its just a way to see a little bit into someone else's life and pre-college "fun".

When I was asked throughout high school where I wanted to go or what I wanted to study, my answer was always "I have no f****** idea". So when the college process really started for me (the summer before junior year), I was kind of at a loss of where to even begin looking. Big or small? City or rural? Private or public? I literally had no idea. Our school uses a program called Naviance (but if you don't use this talk to your guidance counsler), so I used that to get an idea of what schools I should be looking at. Then the summer before junior year, when I spent a few weeks in Boston, I started looking pretty much everywhere.

My dad went to a small liberal arts college, so thats what I started looking at. I checked out Williams and Amherst and while I liked them both, something wasn't quite right. During the program a few of us took a day to see Boston University, Boston College, Boston Conservatory, and Northeastern. These weren't official tours, but we went around with one of our RA's who attended a few of the schools (he transferred) and had a boyfriend who attended the others.

So I don't exactly remember the order of how everything else happened, but basically as junior year  started, I started studying for my ACT and kept visiting schools over long weekends and vacations. I slowly started to realize that I was not feeling a tiny liberal arts school (some of the ones we looked at were smaller than my entire high school). So, I kind of had to change the types of schools I was looking at. I saw Vassar, Tufts, George Washington, Georgetown, UPenn, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, and Brown.

I started my Common App essay and all my supplemental essays over the summer before senior year. I'm a complete control freak and worrier, so I really wanted to get as much done as early as I could. I ended up thinking I was going to apply to 15 schools, many of which I planned to look at during my senior year. I chose to apply to 2 schools early action and 1 school early decision.

I submitted my early applications early/mid October and then I just had to wait. Of course, being the paranoid and anxious person I am, I kept working on all my regular applications. There was a week at school when basically everyone was finding out about their admission decisions. At school, it was kind of hell. About half of my close friend group was deferred from their top choices, so we all wanted to be supportive of them but happy for everyone who got into their dream school. My decision came out Friday at 3 (after pretty much everyone else) and Thursday night I legitimately did not sleep at all.

Friday afternoon, right after school, I found out: Johns Hopkins University Class of 2022. A month later, I'm still in shock.

So why is this something I didn't expect at all? If you look at all the schools I initially started touring, JHU is pretty different. It's much more science oriented, a little bigger, and a little south-er.

To recap this very long post: there is no "normal", I changed my mind about schools thousands of times, I still have no idea what I want to study, I'm still slightly terrified but I could not be more excited.

Please, please, please let me know if you guys have any questions or any requests for future college themed posts. And if you received some bad news, I truly believe that everything happens for a reason, and everything will work out the way it was meant to.


XOXO,


Samantha