Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

I’ve resisted writing about the never ceasing hell that is the college admissions process for an upper-middle class, ambitious teenager who comes from a family and culture that values education.  And while I think that there’s been plenty of interesting stuff I’ve learned along the way and would like to write about, my own general abstinence from such navel-gazing has been part of my own little personal effort to counteract the Sunday Timesification of writing about college admissions, whereby it’s seen as every teen’s great burden to torture themselves to get into an absurdly competitive school.  Especially as the pool of college-going teens has hit its demographic peak, making this year the most competitive ever, the competitive college process has come to approximate a crapshoot more than anything else.  What makes this so frustrating is that it’s hardly like that for everyone.  While plenty of teens are agonizing over how many teachers recs they need for their Northwestern application or whether they should consider Seppuku because they didn’t get into Brown, just as many just go to a public school within 100 miles of where they grew up and go to a public school.  Public school applications aren’t the all consuming ordeal that applying to some 14 private schools is.  Most public schools want one essay, your grades and your test scores.  No teacher recs, no absurd questions about what type of super hero you’d be (Claremont McKenna), no peer recommendations (Dartmouth).  And considering that it’s this upper-middle class milieu that is so often portrayed in the media, I didn’t want to add to it.

But alas, I come to you, dear readers, hat in hand.  After having done all those applications, I actually managed to get into some schools, it just so happens that the hardest part is making a decision.  And so if any of you have good reasons why I should especially prefer Claremont McKenna, Northwestern, USC or Middlebury, please do tell me.