Genuine Self-Improvement for College Applications

The College application process is tough and unforgiving. You have to stand tall among hundreds of thousands of hopefuls and convince committees of adults whose sole jobs it is to read dozens of applications a day to choose you. You have to do so with maybe ten flimsy sheets of information. When you get rejected, there’s no appeal or explanation-you’re left hanging dry, not knowing if you were inches away from approval or directly tossed into the shredder (not literally, you silly). So how do you make the best of this system?

What you can do depends on how far you are through your high school career, but you can definitely do something to improve your odds no matter where you are. I’ve been through the thick and thin of this process and I’m going to show you what you need to know to have a better shot at your dream school.

Part 1. Enriching your High School Experience

Many contenders with very diverse and competitive portfolios have been outright rejected from the best schools they had fully expected to get into with their outstanding resumes. While this could happen to any candidate, it most likely happened because the committee discovered a hole in their folders, a hole that they couldn’t explain considering the strength of the applicant.

That hole is your heart. Admissions officers know how much load the best students can carry, and they can sense your phoniness. You have to invest your time wisely into activities you actually enjoy and develop those activities. You can develop a passion by practicing until you get good. You’ll know when you’ve achieved proficiency when people start complimenting you and you draw attention. Once that happens, you get self-esteem boosts and surprise you start to enjoy yourself! From there on it’s a positive feedback loop and you can get very far if you haven’t started too late.

I used to be absolutely terrible at basketball in middle school and would avoid it. After three years of practice, I can say that I’m a decent player for 5’7, I get complimented regularly about my defense and my grit and that I enjoy it, despite never being on the team. That’s a far from ideal situation.

In the ideal situation, you invest your time in a hobby for all of high school, even during the summer if you can, get leadership positions and win prizes and competitions. What if there are no competitions and no leadership positions to be had? No problem. If your hobby is woodworking, painting or horse riding, you can still demonstrate your involvement through your application and your essays, but more on that later.

Why is all this important?

Admission officers want to see a mature individual with developed strengths and interests that will either serve their sports teams or enrich their campus. Having a passion that you’re invested time in is exactly what they’re looking for, and it also shows that you have your life in control, that you have ambition and that you are patient. These are all valuable qualities to have for a successful college student and a successful person.

If you’ve done something for a long time and nothing outstanding has come out of it, don’t worry. You still demonstrate the qualities admission officers are looking for, it’s just not your time to shine yet. Odds are that if you throw energy, time and passion into something, it will pay you back. See if you’re missing any of the above in your commitments, it might be time for some self-reflection.

I can’t understate how important is commitment. That’s what failed the strong applicants. They throw themselves everywhere trying to satisfy admissions, and that’s the wrong mentality to take. Ever notice that you become the center of attention when you’re passionate and enjoying yourself? The admissions committee can tell that from paper. Don’t overload yourself. Experiment with different things early on, but make some order in your file by junior year. Stick to a few and drop the others. Which ones you keep is totally up to you. You will get recognition from almost anything if you get good enough at it.

Part 2. Grades and Standardized Tests

You’re going to hear about several acronyms that you will be glad to leave behind by the time you’re out of high school: GPA, SAT, ACT, AP and IB are the big ones.

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An Initiation in Inebriation

As mentioned in my previous post, I returned to Montreal/Toronto to visit my aunt and eight Asian buddies. The legal drinking AND buying age in Montreal is 18.

Although I had gone to a fair share of booze parties, I had never gotten drunk or close to drunk, and this was the perfect occasion to see what it was all about in a relatively safe, controlled experiment while having fun with childhood friends. We were all staying over at a friend’s estate and her mother was totally OK with us drinking. She said “I know I can’t stop you guys from drinking, so just have fun at home and don’t drink outside.” She bought us a bottle of Bacardi 151 and a Smirnoff.

The last night I was in Montreal, we gathered five people at the estate around 23:30. We went in the basement with

and about a gallon of lemonade/peach juice, a bottle of tonic water and a jug of water. Obviously this was enough to get us all knocked out so all of us were sleeping over that night. No reservations needed to be had; we could have as much fun as we wanted as long as we didn’t wake up the cranky old neighbor. We mixed the juices with a few drinks of rum or vodka in an improvised shaker and took out the cards.

Whoever lost the round of cards had to take a drink. Sitting on a bed I didn’t realize how much I’ve had until I had to get up to go to the bathroom. At around 2:30 AM everyone was pretty buzzed/slightly drunk, and we were getting involuntarily louder. Haha. One of the girls left to sleep because she had to work at 7AM that same day, and we reluctantly let her go, after making her take two more drinks.

Getting up to go to the bathroom for the first time, I was solid on my feet but my head was buzzing noticeably and my world was vacillating. Independent motor control didn’t pose a problem, but higher order thinking was definitely impaired at that point. It felt fuzzy and sedated in my brain, such that I could only focus on one idea at a time. It’s kind of like waking up while you still feel like sleeping, or suddenly shutting down two cores in a quadcore processor; my thoughts were slowed and brainpower was thinned. I knew that I was losing control of myself, so when I came back, I threw together a shirt, dark jeans, a belt and crammed my cell and wallet into the pockets for the next day, when I had scheduled to meet an old friend downtown at 10:15 AM. Good thing I did, because I don’t think I would have the presence of mind to do any future preparation afterwards, and religiously punctual me would have felt terrible making a friend I hadn’t seen in four years, who took a day off from work just for me, wait or see me flake. Let’s just say that I would have run into all sorts of problems and felt even more remorseful had I not packed my stuff. Anyhow, speech wasn’t disrupted and I didn’t talk a lot more than usual, but when I did speak it was with increased impulsiveness; whenever I felt like saying something, it just came out of my mouth, when usually I processed it in the logical department of my cranium before spewing it out.

That’s how it feels to have important brain functions shutting down, until you only have the basics left. It’s like slowly depriving a high-end computer of power; nonessential things just shut down one by one and the essentials are dimmed to the minimum operational level. By 3:30 AM we were still going at it, the girls were noticeably red-faced and louder than usual. My friend had had plenty of practice in Europe the previous month, so we were less obviously drunk, but we both knew at that point that we were far past our tolerances. At that point I had to tell myself what to do in my head. It sounds like “take cards;” “shuffle cards;” “pour Bacardi;” “pour lemonade.” I was hanging on with minimum processing power. That power was so low that I remember distinctively dropping my wallet, which I needed the next day, on the ground and not having the power to care enough to bend down and pick it up again. I eventually did, but that was a painful proof of losing self-control and being unable to gain it back. We kept it going for another hour before we went to sleep. I think we finished the Smirnoff, most of the red rum, less than a third of the white rum and about three drinks of the Absolut Mandrin.    By the final stage of our party, I was ordering myself in my head, “YOU MUST WALK FORWARD. NOW.” to walk forward while my body complied begrudgingly, tripping a little along the way. My brain was throbbing hard and I felt sedated and surprisingly blissful, unaware and uncaring of everything. However, it wasn’t a peaceful feeling; along with a dullness came the foreboding that things would go down the drain that day. I wasn’t wrong and, unsurprisingly, I didn’t care. I stumbled into the sofa with the ounces of humanity left in me and tomorrow’s clothes, and tried to fall asleep. 4:37 AM

I felt incredibly nauseous. I wanted to throw up. I smelled the sour emanations of my stomach overturning. I wanted to throw up. I need to get to the bathroom. It’s only two steps away. I just need to get up from this sofa. I need to get up. Get up now. I want to barf. I can’t stop this. GET UP, PLEASE. Don’t let me down. GET UP. GET UP. I couldn’t muster the willpower or the motor skills to get up, so I threw up on the wooden floor. I remember whispering sorry a few times as my friends gathered to clean up my mess. Then I went to sleep.

9:18 AM. I opened my eyes and forced myself up. I almost sat down immediately; the central motion control system wasn’t quite ready to roll yet. But I had to go now, if I didn’t want to be late. A shower and ablutions later, I stumbled out of the building to see my friend at work across the street and say goodbye. On the bus and the subway station, I felt the most miserable I’d ever felt in my life. I wanted to throw up badly, I was nauseous, but I couldn’t. The nausea, the buzzing head and the impaired motor control wouldn’t go away. They would only go away with time, and time to recover I didn’t have. My friend was waiting.

Somehow I made my way to him. My walking wasn’t visibly noticeable, but I felt wobbly and my pace was slower than usual. I was also still unable to think about more than one thing at a time. I walked and chatted with my friend instinctively, and ate less than I would’ve liked from the hearty lunch he treated me. It wasn’t until late afternoon, when I was on the car ride back to Toronto, that the veil of stupidity dissipated. The biggest regret I have about that day is not the awful, constant feeling of nausea along with motor impairment, but the fact that I wasn’t fully recovered and belonging to myself the entire time that I was with my friend. Alcohol made me waste the precious little time with him, and I had disrespected him by showing up still incapacitated.

The lessons I want to teach myself and you guys through this:

-Only drink to excess at home or at the home of someone you trust. You need to be able to crash and you need other people to help you when you can’t help yourself.

-Drink plenty of water and eat a meal beforehand if possible. Water dilutes alcohol and makes it less punishing on the system. We all drank too little water and ate nothing that night.

-Don’t do this if you have something important the next day. You WILL feel like crap doing nothing, walking around, or holding a conversation.

-Spend some time to tell each other stories instead of playing cards all the time. When everyone’s drunk, the truth comes out and no one will judge you, because that part of their system is shut down.

-Don’t do this with people you don’t know well, and don’t get your phone or computer when you’re very drunk. This is self-explanatory.

-Drinking too much doesn’t automatically make every situation hilarious and unforgettable. You need to be with people you can have fun with sober to really have fun when you’re all drunk.

Do try this at least once just to see what you’re like when you’re drunk beyond belief. Everyone’s different in this category, and you’ll know what to expect of yourself in college. Don’t sue me for condoning minor alcohol usage and have fun!

In Search of the Perfect Life

The American Dream. The Slumdog Millionaire. Forbes Magazine. Entertainment Weekly. Sports Illustrated. Most Hollywood movies. These all illustrate success from society’s point of view: money, fame, heroics, sex. In the midst of viagra advertisements, scantily clad supermodels and $50 million lottery jackpots, what do you really want from life? Is life fulfillment and personal success so standardized and visible?

We look up to people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Barack Obama because they’ve made their own lives and their own fortunes through sheer genius and ability. But what about Mahatma Gandhi, Walt Whitman or J.R.R. Tolkien? They weren’t rich at any point during their lives, nor were they known for their promiscuity, but they left a profound mark on history and modern thought.

Life fulfillment comes from success, lasting happiness and spiritual peace. These factors are interconnected and much more ephemeral than popular opinion makes them to be.

Many people have attempted to define success, but it’s near impossible, because success carries a different meaning for each person. Of course, the popular definition of success is a large amount of money, popularity, sex and a nice car. This popular definition is also very wrong for a religious leader or a single mother of four in war-ravaged Colombia. Success for the religious leader may mean bringing up disciples as well as finding his own spiritual place in his own church. For the mother, it might simply be to bring in enough to feed her children and watch them grow up safely and happily. Do they both want the popular standards? Possibly, but they don’t need them to achieve success. Success is different for everyone and requires some soul-searching to find. “What do I want to do well at/complete?” Once you’ve truly found something valuable to strive for, treasure it and don’t give up until you reach it.

What is happiness then? Is it the jolt you feel when you hit blackjack, or is it the warm, fuzzy feeling of cuddling with someone you love? Once again, it is near impossible to define happiness with any specificity because it’s different for everyone. What makes you happy also changes based on age. The point is that status symbols and popular goals don’t necessarily make all people or even most people truly happy. I’d rather be at peace with myself and with my own life than be a billionaire.

It follows that spiritual peace is even more difficult to achieve or even find than any of the above two. It’s a kind of inner rest that neither money nor fame can buy, and that money and fame often come disturb. You can perfectly be nonreligious and still reach this state of nirvana, but how it feels and how to get there no one can tell you but yourself.

With that in mind, it’s up to you to define for yourself the terms of your own life. A person is a lot more attractive if they have determined values and goals in mind. One can be happy doing anything, just don’t mind what others and society are trying to make you desire.

 

 

 

On Professional Football

Saturday I went to the MetLife Stadium to watch a friendly between Brazil and Argentina, a sold out event at 81,996 attendees.

I watched as a spectator of skill rather than a loud-mouthed fan of either side, and I must say that the offensive prowess of both teams is unequaled. Even taking into account that the defensive is looser in a friendly exhibition match and the best players are often left out to rest, beautiful plays happened on both sides that the goalies could do nothing to stop. The match went back and forth, with constant goal-scoring action, until #10 Lionel Messi of Argentina, the winner of the Ballon D’Or for two consecutive seasons, scored on a powerful shot outside the box for the hat-trick. To hear about him and to see this legend hammer in three goals is a different feeling.

I would make a derogatory comment about the $25 parking, $8.75 burger, $5.00 water and $12.25 chicken fingers, but that’s to be expected in a packed arena, in fact the largest crowd ever at the MetLife Center. However, attending a huge sporting event like this lets you encounter people from all walks of life. Well, those who can afford tickets, anyway. The ticket scalpers, the casual viewers (including me), the avid photographers, the oblivious girlfriends, the rowdy die-hard fans, the proud Tomlinson-toting douchebags, the eager children and the obese, disgusting family with too much food, the old wolf wearing Maradona, the ethnic jersey-wearing crowds, everyone was at the party. It’s scary when that mass of humanity attempts to drive into the stadium, find parking and squeeze into the entrances at the same time. Happily, nothing happened to me and my large obnoxious sombrero even prompted a few friendly exchanges.

Once inside the stadium, you feel relieved to have made it through  before you realize that your seat is barely more roomy than an airplane economy class seat. You can see the players and the ball clearly on the carefully manicured grass, and you can even partake in the human waves and the chants that happen whenever a group feels like it. This environment is the perfect occasion to get drunk and yell obscenities at other strangers feeling justified and accomplished for defending the pride of your country or your team. Organized bigotry, ha!

Even on the lawn, players are tripping, fouling and, by the end of the match, punching each other, even though it is a friendly match. Four yellows and two red cards were pulled. This argument has already been made somewhere else, but the installation of video review would eliminate all attempts to fake injuries and fouls and general sneaky play that would occasionally get past the imperfect eyes of the referees. The sport is only delaying the inevitable by refusing to adopt a technology that has been welcomed in almost every other sport. The establishment of video review would make the sport less dirty, more enjoyable to watch and do this at very little cost. However, this being the most popular sport on Earth, FIFA has license to do whatever they please, I guess.

I don’t really have a team to support, since China, USA and Canada range from barely acceptable to downright woeful in the soccer scene. I watch soccer for the amazing talent that evolves in it. Lionel Messi has already established himself as a dominating forward in the game; I will be watching the Euro 2012 and looking at France very carefully. OLE!

What is an Education?

This is a random essay I wrote for English class about education. We’re in the middle of AP week and miscellaneous business is also starting to pile up. I’ll be back with a legitimate post as soon as I get some time and space.

In this country, we often take the privilege of education for granted. Some praise education as the savior and the way to financial security. The other side of the spectrum despises education for its futility and greed, especially in the case of higher education. We assume the resources made available to us in school exist for everyone else, and so we judge others for being illiterate, uneducated, unprofessional because we believe that they’ve had the same opportunities as we did, and we despise schoolteachers, homework, tests; we’d rather stay home. We are lucky to grow up in a developed country that provides us with free education and support to achieve a relatively high level of life quality. Go to Africa, the Middle East, Southern Asia or even the deep southern United States, not too long ago, and school is a completely different, harsher, unforgiving world. Jonathan Kozol recounts the profound problems of the Fremont High School he visited in Los Angeles. The predominately black public school lacked everything, from teachers to classrooms to bathrooms. Students respond by dropping out, committing crime or calling each other “ghetto.” Think this is the south during Jim Crow? Kozol published in 2005. Maya Angelou’s autobiography “Graduation” provides us with a more definite exploration of the segregated south in the 1970s. The then-eighth grader was not complaining about the conditions at her high school, like Mireya in “Fremont High School;” she’s making the best of her conditions and enjoying her passage through education. Graduation was a solemn ceremony, and they made it merry with improvised auditoriums, re-cut dress pants, used shoes, secondhand everything. Angelou in 1970, Mireya in 2005, and us in 2012, we were all educated. However, it is undeniable that the educational environment and quality of these experiences were very distinct. What defines an education? Some limit it to the formal education we receive in school and training. Others argue that we are educated all our lives. Education is the ability to experience, try and fail at the diverse activities and vocations of life before screwing up actually matters. In that sense, we are constantly learning and being educated. That does not nullify the fact that there is a huge educational and achievement gap between people of different countries and cultures. Here’s why.

Each year, many international student performance evaluations take place. South Korea, China, the United States and European countries place forward every year. The highest ranked higher education institutions also happen to belong to those countries. This is no coincidence. Traditionally, Asians and Westerners have always placed an emphasis on education as the road out of poverty and apathy. Today, students to these countries are trained in Engineering, Mathematics, Economics, International Relations, Linguistics and a plethora of other fields considered useful in today’s society. The performance tests, the rankings and the endowment money are all based on this system. However, is this enough evidence to show that this type of education is superior to that of the rest of the world? It depends on how these resources are used. The countries and institutions mentioned above allocate more resources to educating, training and producing high-performing graduates than any school in Rwanda or Siberia could ever dream of matching. Similarly, Pip in Great Expectations obtained a sudden endowment that augmented his resources way higher than that of any other ordinary orphan boy. He immediately jumps to aristocracy and gets educated to become a gentleman, a higher hope than anyone else in his shoes without the money could hope for. What does Pip do with the experiences he gained in London? Nothing notable: he squanders his resources in education to return to the marshes and obtain closure from Estella, Joe and all the “uneducated” people he knew beforehand. Education is a tool, an assistant to pursuing dreams and life goals, just like money is a tool towards education. It cannot give us the motivation, the heart or the dream. Those things come from the soul. I believe that every human being born on this planet has the potential to thrive given the right resources, the right education. There is not one school suitable for everyone, nor a student fit for all schools. Education is to draw with an eraser, and life takes away that eraser. You must first know what you wish to draw and how to draw it, and those things are unavailable to you without education. However, if you know how to draw an architectural blueprint and you work in classical literature, no amount of investment, of skill in architecture will be useful to you.

The AP Myth

I remember a chat I had with a friend’s father. Being two Asians, we were talking about college, of course, and he told me earnestly that he thought AP courses shouldn’t exist because high school teachers are unqualified to teach college-level material. An instinctive denial arose in my mind, because at that time I had already spent hundreds of dollars registering and dozens of hours studying on eight AP exams. However, I sat down and thought about it a while afterwards, and realized that I completely agreed with him. Hear me out.

AP, IB (International Baccalaureate), and other similar programs in other countries aim to give high school students college-level classes and material to “ease” them into the college system, give them college experience and credits. In order to do so, said student takes a preparatory class at his/her high school, takes the annual standardized exam at the end of the year and gets a score that shows his/her proficiency in the subject compared to the average in the mail in July. Then, these scores are sent to colleges so that they can count credits and/or place the student out of an introductory level course. This system is broken, and here’s why.

By the end of my senior year, I will have accumulated 13 AP classes and 12 AP exam scores. How many of these will give me credit? Exactly 0. How many will place me out of a college course? I’m unsure. What sort of college experience did I get from taking a class taught by a high school teacher with other high school students? Zero.

Let’s begin with the credit lie. An AP exam costs $80-$95. A college course in the United States costs thousands of dollars. I would probably have fulfilled at least half of the graduation credit requirements at any of the colleges I applied to, meaning that I could technically graduate in two years and pay half the tuition, half the housing, half the meal. Even someone with, say, 4 AP exams can get a big chunk of their credit requirements out of the way. You know where this is going. Especially in these hard times, colleges depend on their students to keep the money flowing. How can they afford to issue the same number of degrees while getting less tuition money? Many, if not all, top colleges in the United States have refused to give credit for any AP classes or scores.

Instead, what these colleges can do is place you in a higher class based on your performance on the AP exam. Since not all colleges can or will do this, however, the process becomes befuddling. How are you supposed to know that the AP Art History you took in sophomore year wasn’t going to place you out of anything at the engineering school you’ve chosen two years down the line? The deadline for AP registration this year was March 29, three days before most college decisions. I signed up for four APs before realizing that they were largely going to be useless at the institution I will most likely choose. What if you get placed in a higher class in which you struggle because you forgot the material or were just never taught properly?

Colleges are expensive because they have the best teachers in the world to teach you. There’s a wide skill (and pay) difference between a high school teacher and a college professor. How can a high school teacher match the performance, resources and flexibility offered by a college class? As hard as they try, they cannot replicate the college depth or experience. They are not paid or educated to teach at that level. Instead, most AP classes are simply review courses for the May AP exam; they study for an exam rather than the material.

What the AP does accomplish is unclear. Arguably, AP material can provide additional challenge to competent students and expose them to legitimate college material. They also may give colleges an additional reference point to the student’s ability in a specific field. However, these perks vary from school to school and from subject to subject. I’ve also never been asked to send official AP scores to any college, although SAT scores have been demanded several times.

Ultimately, the APs are a set of seemingly arbitrary standardized questions that vary very little each year. They have become a new symbol of competition between high schoolers, one that costs more and more each year. It’s the undesired middleman between high school and college. Kids are penalized because their schools do not offer these “competitive” classes. When ETS splits Macroeconomics and Microeconomics, Physics, Calculus and GovPol, makes the students’ families pay for each separately and cancels the French Literature exam because too few people are taking it, I can’t help but think that they’re in it just for the money. APs are putting unnecessary pressure on school systems, teachers and colleges and providing little concrete return on the investment.

For posterity, please eliminate AP examinations from the high school system.

 

 

Adventure Time in Texas!

Over Spring Break, I went on a tourism trip to Texas for four days. Weather forecast was fantastic, 88F sunny, scattered showers and no hurricanes. The day before our departure, a dozen tornadoes flew over the Dallas area. This did little to stop us intrepid adventurers.

We made the first stop at George W. Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston. The next morning, I visited the Johnson Space Center and got myself a souvenir cup, printed “It’s not rocket science….oh wait, it is.” The center is arguably the biggest attraction of the city, and well worth visiting, especially because tickets can be bought online at a 50% discount. In the afternoon, we drove to Kemah, a seashore resort town with an exquisite tropical theme. Lunch was held at the Aquarium, an aquatic themed restaurant with turquoise gradients, a seafood menu and a large fish tank at the center. Although memorably colorful, Kemah ran out of attractions after a few hours, and we drove back to Houston. Houston is a huge, sprawling concrete complex, with 6-lane highways stretching miles and miles. A few blocks away from the animated central districts and touristic attractions, the heart of the city is a forlorn sight: bleak office buildings, rickety shops, construction cones and abandoned concrete lots. The restaurants that appeared on our GPS were mostly gone, and so we had to speed back to Holiday Inn and ordered at a noisy Mexican bistro. Houston appeared to me a decaying giant, suffocating under its own size.

With Texan rock radio stations blasting, we drove the next morning to San Antonio. Fist pit stop was the Mission San Jose, one of the largest preserved missions in Texas. Today it is a church and a tourist attraction.

Lunch at the Casa Rio was both cheap and rewarding. The legendary Mexican restaurant didn’t disappoint and we headed with stomachs full to the Alamo, a dilapidated, crowded fort. Next stop was Market Square, the prime tourist trap of San Antonio. I couldn’t resist buying a number of miscellaneous items, including a riding crop, a slingshot, a shot glass, black clay statuettes and a very flashy straw sombrero. We then took a narrated water tour around the city in the evening, before returning to the Casa Rio for refreshments. By that time, the riverwalks and restaurants were packed full of humanity. The image was much cozier and heartier than Houston’s night scene.

The following morning, we bid farewell to San Antonio and headed for the state capital, Austin. By mid-morning, we arrived to the state capitol, where there were disappointingly few attractions, fewer people and very lengthy red lights. We took a car trip through the University of Texas at Austin before bailing for Johnson City, the hometown of Lyndon B. Johnson. On the plane back, a Texan traveler told me that Austin was his favorite city; it seemed to me for the few hours I was there that it was quite the mundane, monotonous place. Back to Johnson City, honestly more of a settlement than a city, we drove to the blue bonnet circle for the wildflower season. All we could see and photograph were scattered patches of bonnets and hostile, fenced ranches. Disappointed, we drove on towards Dallas.

My mother met her high school classmate after more than 20 years. The only place I had the time to visit was the Arboretum, an expensive attraction that is in my humble opinion inferior to the Botanical Garden of Montreal. After lunch, we proceeded to drive the four hours back to the airport.

Overall, I enjoyed this trip and I saw much of Texas during this short passing. Lessons: Pack one set of clothes per day, one jacket and one extra shirt; bring a book and your music player of choice on the plane; don’t rely on your GPS to find gas or food and don’t make nuclear weapon jokes in front of a TSA official. Yes, I did that. It was late, I was tired and my self-restraint was out the window, but letting something that could have gotten us into serious trouble slip out was simply idiotic.

College Admissions: The Bottom Line

With the last group of college admission decisions coming out, I wanted to post about them. I was luckily admitted to the Dual BA Program between Sciences-Po and Columbia GS and I will study for two years in France and two years in the United States for two degrees. My linguistic capabilities were a deciding factor in the admission decision, and I am both relieved and extremely excited to receive such an opportunity. Four years of diligent work has led to a dream program that will allow me to experience Europe.

In my euphoria I thought of all my classmates who weren’t admitted. In my heart I knew they had put in as much effort as I did in high school and would thrive in the best academies in the country. Those who waited and hit F5 repeatedly until 11:50 on March 29th, only to receive the last disheartening denial from an impersonal Ivy institution. Without a doubt, I was lucky to be offered admission in lieu of the thousands of other qualified applicants. Having received my admission package the morning of March 29th, I never lived through the hell of receiving rejection after rejection and gradually losing the last wisps of hope. My fellow students and friends will attend excellent, although not as prestigious, colleges, and when they step onto that campus, they will forget about all the others.

Why the tragedy of admissions?

America’s top institutions do not have nearly enough space to accommodate all of the qualified domestic and international applicants. The solution? A convoluted, arbitrary set of academic, social and intelligence standards is put in place to judge college hopefuls. This mess is further compounded by special needs such as collegiate sports teams, legacy, big-dollar donors and financial aid. However, competition abates after the top 50 schools, such that bottom feeders have to aggressively market their university to raise interest in the pool of high school graduates. Why does everyone want to go to the same schools?

The prestige of the Ivy League, the Stanfords, MITs, CalTechs and their huge endowments make them lead research universities and give their students more opportunities to spend money. More importantly, it allows them to collect huge tuition and donations to stay on top of the rankings year after year. The people who want to go to those schools for convenience and cost get squeezed out by the fierce competition. Are their educational qualities truly superior to lesser-ranked colleges? Perhaps. Are they overrated as the gateways to a secure financial and social future ? Most definitely.

I’ve met successful graduates and students of top 10 universities, and I’ve also met Ivy Leaguers in a dead end and resentful of their alma mater. The bottom line is that you, the student, define the college experience, and not the other way around. School is a tool; if you don’t have the heart or the drive to pursue your life goals, to improve yourself and society, you will fail even if your legacy puts you in Harvard. Pat yourself on the back, forget the schools who denied you and look forward to the accomplishment of your own milestones instead of those that the college admissions process sets for you.

Check out my College Admissions Guide here
https://dongkunguo.wordpress.com/collegeapps

To Teach is to Learn

Mentoring, tutoring, teaching, peer studying, whatever you may call it, the act of giving someone else information in an understandable fashion will make you learn, even if you know the material already.

Recently, a friend of mine came to me and asked for help on an Economics quiz. I spent an hour explaining price elasticity in Mandarin. Sometimes, he didn’t get it and I had to make up wacky examples on the spot to illustrate concepts. I tried to relate the cold and abstract theory in the textbook to current life, explaining price sensibilities with specific real-world items and situations. If you usually buy grapes at your local supermarket for $1.99 a pound, and they suddenly increase their price to $2.99, you are likely to shrug it off. However, if you come back the next week and the grapes are still $2.99, you will strongly consider buying your grapes elsewhere. This is how I explained the concept that elasticity increases with time. Most importantly, time passed quickly, meaning that we were actually enjoying ourselves studying. Neither him nor I would have studied that diligently without each other. He obtained a score much higher than his average in the class and I scored a 100.

What I’m trying to convey through this example is that you can achieve much more by teaching someone or merely studying with someone else than your textbook. You can clarify and consolidate your knowledge, improve your explaining skills, your verbal organization and presentation skills, expand your social network and reputation and most importantly help someone else achieve their goals. Yes, you can accomplish this much by studying for a test.

In study sessions, I find groups of two to be most efficient, simply because any more members and you risk being distracted by banter and procrastination. I don’t suggest studying with your best friend for this reason. You will engage in gossip and conversation rather than studying seriously.

Don’t hesitate to emerge from your cocoon of social awkwardness: share and accept knowledge from your peers. Sign up to tutor. It will help both of you get ahead in life.

Dragos Roua on Learning from Teaching

Marketing Holidays

Valentine’s Day (singles awareness day too) passed a few days ago, and every year at this time I get irate at the ridiculous stuff that’s being sold “for that special someone.” This year, the average American spent $126 on this day (source: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2012/02/13/Valentines-Day-Spending-By-the-Numbers.aspx), with guys spending almost twice as much as their girlfriends. Roses, chocolate, teddy bears, cosmetics and fancy diners have become standard fare. Those who wish to impress her must splurge on jewelry, vacations and even proposals. Marketing win? Definitely. Relationship progress? Probably not.

I’m not against spending for your significant other, but when they fully expect it, it ruins the spontaneity, the excitement of the surprise and all the emotion your gift represents. Your expensive box of chocolates becomes a snack. Your bouquet of roses is nothing more than a perishable display item. This is the purely materialistic side of America. Sure, you buy gifts and a Christmas tree every Christmas, but that holiday carries religious and symbolic significance that are integral parts of Western culture. Valentine’s Day is merely trying to weave itself into the culture. If she throws a fit because you haven’t bought anything, you’ve either not taken care of her the rest of the year or she’s not worth your time.

You don’t have to spend a grand on February 14 to meet your woman’s expectations. Take her to do something bold that you’ve never done before, perhaps on February 13th to surprise her. Show your appreciation for her with memorable experiences rather than shower her with gifts like everybody else. That takes the effort and the excitement out of the equation. If you’re in a hurry, at least buy something original and personal to your relationship. Don’t let peer pressure and marketing holidays dictate your life.

How did you spend your valentine’s day?