Being an Average Student to the Ivy League & How It Affected My Self-Confidence
tl;dr: What’s motivating you to push yourself? If it’s fear, pressure, and constantly comparing yourself to others, stop now. Take a moment to breathe, reevaluate your goals, and make sure they are aligned with your purpose.
I was working so hard, I forgot what I was working towards. And it ultimately led me down a path that I didn’t want.
Growing up I was an overwhelmingly average kid. I wasn’t a violin prodigy, a math genius, or a gifted athlete: I was okay at everything I did, but not exceptionally good at anything.
Even by the time I was in high school, nothing much had changed. I didn’t take school too seriously and got grades that made my parents just slightly worried. I tried out different extracurriculars like volleyball, flute, and fine art but wasn’t great at any of them.
At the time, I was attending a private high school where it seemed like everyone’s ultimate goal was to get into the top American schools. In freshman year (9th grade), we were each assigned to a university counselor, who frequently presented to us about “How to prepare for US college applications” and offered 1:1 sessions. In the beginning, I didn’t care much and went about my day.
By the middle of sophomore year (10th grade), however, I started to feel more pressure. My parents had never explicitly told me that I had to go to a good university, but I thought to myself, ‘Why else would they send me to a private school and pay all this money?’
One thought led to another, which led to another…
I started imagining how disappointed my parents might be, how I might be compared to my peers, and how people at my high school might think I’m a failure.
I thought and thought and soon I was engulfed by this irrational fear that if I didn’t attend one of these top schools that everyone was talking about, my life would be a failure.
I panicked. And I made it my goal to get into an Ivy League school.
Starting the summer before my junior year (11th grade), I began to study hard. And I mean, HARD. Because I hadn’t studied very much prior to this, I had a lot of work to do. I stopped going to the gym, stopped learning musical instruments, and even dropped art classes that I enjoyed so much… I just studied day-and-night, many days until 4 AM in the morning to try and catch up to my peers.
I started seeing everyone as my competition, even my friends. I paid attention to what courses they were taking, whether they’re using any tutoring or college-counseling services, etc. I continued to push myself harder and harder, motivated by fear of failure. I constantly compared myself to others, let missing a few questions on a test ruin my day, and sometimes cried myself to sleep when the pressure became too much.
As my parents like to put it, “It was like a miracle.” In the last two years of high school, I took 10 Advanced Placement (AP) classes and received perfect scores on all of them. I scored in the top 1% on my SAT, received three perfect scores on SAT subject tests, and maintained a 4.50 weighted GPA at school.
This put me near the top of my class, except there was one problem. Many of my classmates had similar academic records as me AND had extracurricular activities that set them apart like: conducting scientific research, founding non-profit organizations, and having a portfolio of artwork to showcase.
When it came time for me to fill out my college applications, I struggled. Especially the essays, I HATED them. The part where you explain why you’re different, why you’re not just another perfect SAT score, why you’re an interesting person.
This took a huge toll on my self-confidence. In my eyes, I was still just a mediocre student that had to work so hard to just get to the heel of my classmates. To me, I wasn’t different, I was one of the thousands of stellar test scores, I was not an interesting person.
After many hours of pulling my hair out at my university counselor’s office, I managed to put together an essay related to business operations from my experience of hostessing at a local restaurant for two years.
During these years that I took academics seriously, I took much interest in mathematics and was at the top of my class for the subject. But I never considered applying to STEM programs. I felt that I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, or experienced enough to go into these fields. I was discouraged by hearing stories of how hard engineering is, how many people fail out after the first year, and so on… Despite the lingering feeling of interest in pursuing STEM, I applied mostly to general business and economics programs just to maximize my chances of getting into the top schools.
After months of waiting anxiously, I was finally offered spots at a couple of Ivy League schools along with several other top American universities. I was absolutely ecstatic, to say the least. And without too much thought, I enrolled at Cornell University.
The months leading up to my arrival at Cornell felt surreal. I spent the rest of my senior year flexing my Cornell hoodies, dreaming about all the trips to New York City I’ll take, and of becoming a successful Wall Street banker. It felt as if I had already achieved all of my life goals at this point.
But this dream was shattered rather quickly when I was hit with reality and the consequences of blindly chasing a goal not of my own.
What happened next?
Long story short, I won’t be graduating from Cornell anymore.
Next week’s article: I talk about what happened when I arrived at Cornell University, and why I had to withdraw.
