Madeleine Cigan ’28 is a physics and math major from Springfield, Virginia. She spends half her time in the piano practice rooms, and the other half running with Team Blitz. Madeleine loves vintage music, binges Gilmore Girls once a year and enjoys meeting new people. Contact them at mrcigan@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
I didn’t even need to read the letter to know that I wasn’t admitted; there was no congratulatory confetti, no email urging me to make my enrollment deposit. I buried my face in my hands as my dream of attending the University of Virginia slipped away.
When I was a senior in high school, I was overconfident and a little pompous — I was fiercely competitive and wanted nothing more than to outperform my peers in any way. This mindset seeped into my college application process, where my perception of what made a university “good” became extremely warped. I didn’t care about campus size, Greek life, location or even the strength of the offered programs; all I cared about was the acceptance rate. Thus, I pooled several hundred dollars down the drain and submitted applications to the most competitive and prestigious schools possible: Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UVA. I didn’t really have a “dream school” throughout high school; rather, I manufactured one in my senior year, which ended up being UVA.
I am not alone in having this particular sentiment. All too often, a student’s intelligence and ambition are falsely tied to the list of universities they are admitted to, each of which is home to certain stereotypes. If you are admitted to Harvard, you may as well be Einstein’s apprentice; if you are admitted to James Madison University, you are supposedly an airhead who is only around for the parties.
The college applications process has become a social competition of sorts that only validates individuals who are admitted to more selective institutions. As a result, application rates of popularized institutions are at an all-time high, plunging acceptance rates to the single digits. Meanwhile, lesser-known institutions are frequently overlooked despite offering opportunities that are just as valuable.
In retrospect, my attachment to UVA made little sense; ironically enough, I didn’t even like it that much. When I formally visited for the first time in my senior year of high school, I didn’t experience that profound connection some do when they find the school meant for them. I didn’t like the overwhelmingly large campus and had trouble fitting into the elitist culture. But somehow, my entire self-worth became tethered to whether I got into the school.
I was devastated when I received the letter that I had been placed on the waitlist, which came after a streak of rejections from other schools. Several questions ran through my head in that moment: Why am I not as strong a candidate as everyone else? Am I not smart enough? Where do I go from here? I thought my entire future was shattered because I didn’t get into my “dream” school, and that I may as well submit an application to McDonald’s.
The school that did accept me, though, was Virginia Tech. Contrary to what I experienced visiting UVA, I absolutely fell in love with Virginia Tech: I loved the Hogwarts feel of the campus and was fascinated by its strong engineering program. However, I immediately wrote the school off simply because it wasn’t “competitive” enough in my eyes, discounting the innumerable positive qualities of the school.
When I expressed my woes to my family and friends, I got advice that enraged me. My mom said, “Everything happens for a reason. UVA just isn’t meant for you, and that’s okay” (she was right; it wasn’t meant for me). My cousin had a different perspective that I also wasn’t able to hear at the time: The prestige of your undergraduate institution doesn’t matter as long as you make the most of it.
My cousin attended Syracuse University, which wasn’t her dream school either. However, she applied herself throughout her entire four years at the school: She spent a year on the varsity swimming team, double-majored and minored and joined numerous research groups. Years later, she would graduate from medical school and take part in a residency at Johns Hopkins.
This didn’t resonate with me until I saw it firsthand during a competitive summer internship program. All of the participants came from schools of varying national rankings — from Jacksonville State University to the University of Florida — and yet every single person was so extremely bright. There was little difference between someone who came from a top 10 school and another who went to a lesser-known school: Everyone was able to keep pace with their research because they used all the resources available to them at their home institution. This experience alone challenged my preconceived correlation between university selectivity and ambition.
I ended up transferring to the College of William and Mary last spring after two years at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and though my previous reservations slightly informed my application process, I am happier than ever here. I would be lying if I said that the College’s status as a “public Ivy” didn’t draw my attention, but its low acceptance rate isn’t the reason I enjoy it so much. Instead, I love being in a place of such historical significance, and I am very fond of the collaborative environment the school prides itself on. Just as my cousin did, I am making the most out of the opportunities available to me to further my education in the best way possible and would do the same if I ended up at a different institution. In all respects, attending any four-year institution is truly a gift, and it is up to the student to make it worth something.
