Yolanda Wang
“1 month until the Single-Choice Early Action deadline!”
The post glares at me from my screen, the little stars at the corners of the graphic twinkling with glee. I still follow the Yale Admissions Instagram account, though I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it’s a latent trauma-based attachment bond or a strange form of Stockholm syndrome. Or maybe it was never something so serious.
The entire admissions process feels like a dream, rather a hazy nightmare that I’ve long moved past. It exists in a box locked away in my mind. After all, I’m here now. What does it matter how I got here, or what the process was like?
Yet, as the endless procession of eager, wide-eyed high school seniors pass me in my glorious two-day-old midterm outfit in Silliman’s courtyard, I am impelled to reflect upon how incomprehensible it is that I made it here.
After all, a year ago today, I was one of them. I was in the same ugly sweatpants, except losing sleep over my impending IB exams and college applications, rather than my ECON 115 midterm.
A year ago today, I felt the weight of the world bearing down on my shoulders as I attempted to navigate the next phase of my life, the questions of my future swirling in my head. Where would I end up? How do I make myself palatable to colleges? How could I make my parents proud?
It would have been unfathomable that I would eventually be able to proclaim that I was one of the 3.7 percent admitted for the Yale Class of 2028. In fact, it still is unfathomable to say aloud.
So, as application season rolls around again, maybe it is indeed time to think back: what was the process of applying for the Class of 2028 like?
The first word that comes to mind is hard. The 2028 admissions cycle was akin to getting dealt the worst possible hand in what felt like the most consequential poker game of your life. You were responsible for fighting for your future amidst an endlessly-shifting array of circumstances.
The overturning of affirmative action, for one, spurred a new series of supplementary essay questions that required extensive introspection. Though you couldn’t be asked about race, every application seemed to be prompting the same question: how has your community and identity shaped your experiences? As an international student forever perplexed by her cultural identities, navigating these questions proved to be a Sisyphian feat. How could I possibly deliver a valuable reflection on my life in less than 400 words, when I had hardly processed it myself?
Eccentric essay prompts designed to identify my manner of thinking and personality posed similar challenges. The words of an admissions officer who visited my school echoed in my mind constantly while I attempted to showcase the intricacies of my personhood in 35-word prompts: “If you don’t have a personality in your responses, I just think, why did you even bother applying?”
Nevertheless, it was not the essays alone that caused my heart to race as it did through the admissions process. Holistic applications, too, resulted in an acute dilemma of feeling I needed to be the best I could in every aspect of my life with limited margin for error. I needed to prove myself worthy of investment by a university. As I juggled 1,001 activities, racing from meeting to meeting and skipping meals in between, I hoped that my passion and ambition — outlaid in boxes of 150 characters — would be acknowledged and enough.
And perhaps most daunting of all: the academic elephant in the room. Though I applied test-optional, I was not exempt from the ever-so-familiar test anxiety that pervaded my high school experience. The onslaught of my IB exams left my chest tight and pupils constantly dilated in a state of fight-or-flight. Every exam felt like do-or-die. Both my mocks — which would yield the predicted score that I would apply to colleges with — and my finals — which would determine if said colleges still saw me fit to go here — could radically change my outcomes.
More so, as a Singaporean international student, my peers’ frequent excellence was not lost on me. How could I possibly measure up, when my counterpart at one of the most prestigious schools in the country was scoring the same as I was, whilst also committed to the same plethora of extracurriculars? And likewise — how would I compare to the thousands of other international and domestic students applying from various unique and brilliant contexts? How could I prove myself to be “special” enough to be considered a prospective student?
In the 2028 admissions cycle, there was no room for anything less than perfection.
But perhaps this is true of every cycle, and any admissions process where one is fighting for a place at some of the most selective universities in the world.
The only solace that I may offer any overzealous high schooler potentially reading this article: when you wind up — hopefully — where you are meant to be, the memory of this harrowing process will dissipate just as quickly as it came. You will no longer think of hours spent pouring over your essays or activities boxes, proofreading and tweaking until your eyes seem to cross over. You will only think of how fortunate you are, how grateful, to be where you are now, because ultimately, it was worth it.