When one hears the phrase, “The Big A”, the first thing that usually comes to mind is New York City, aka “The Big Apple”. Heck, until last year I would’ve thought about New York and my trips there too. However, in 2018, my “Big A” was Applications. Tons and tons of applications. The end of 2017 was filled with some applications, but 2018 was most definitely filled with about 300 times more.
Before I get into the details, let me just let it be known that I applied to 21 schools in total; that’s 21 applications. Although I applied to some of my schools, such as Penn State, in November or December, it was no surprise that given my procrastinatory nature I waited until January 1st/2nd to submit my applications that were due on January 1st/2nd.
My New Year’s Day was literally spent surrounded by family, except while they were playing games, I was frantically typing essays that were due that night (somewhat like Kermit in the GIF below).
Thank God for the Common App because if I had to retype my basic information one more time I probably would’ve lost my mind. However, it was still quite unfortunate that the schools that I chose to wait until the literal last minute to apply to all required supplementary essays in addition to the Common App essay. To put the cherry on top, of all of the schools I applied to, the one’s I waited until the last minute to apply to were Ivy Leagues. This was most definitely not my idea, but considering that at this point I still had no idea where I wanted to spend the next four years, my mom made me choose 4 to apply to just for the heck of it.
Personally, I wouldn’t have been upset if I just had to submit my Common App as is, but noooooooooppeeeeeeee. Of course each of the freaking Ivy Leagues needed like 29 additional short answers in addition to the 2 long supplementary essays. Honestly, I respect the admissions officer who had to read all of those because I was almost falling asleep writing them. I ultimately chose to apply to University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Harvard, and Brown, mostly because their essay requirements were less than the other ones and Penn and Cornell were the same exact prompt #winwin.
I definitely should’ve put more time and effort into those essays than one day, but my mom didn’t really give me any notice that she planned on making me apply, yikes. Luckily for me, the time I spent on each of those essays ranged from 20 minutes to an hour. Considering it took me HOURS to write my Schreyer ones, I wasn’t too disappointed. However, because I really didn’t want to be writing for or even applying to those schools, my naps and severe procrastination led to me not submitting my applications until around 11pm, except for Harvard which, hysterically enough, I completely forgot to hit submit and ended up sending in a day late. YIKES. I even took a pretty funny picture that night and saved it in my Snapchat memories to laugh at in moments like these. Check it out…
Tune in next week to read about my memorable moments getting accepted (rejected?) from colleges!
Madison (:
This was hilarious! I died at your snapchat and the kermit gif lmao. You’re clearly a very motivated and driven person. There’s no way I would make time to apply to so many schools. I only applied to 3!! However, I did apply to Schreyer too and those essays were a pain, so i feel ya on that one.
Also, you said you were just recently applying to other schools. Does that mean you are looking to transfer out of penn state?