Title: Magic Beans I have always been tall enough to read. My height, however, suddenly became an issue during Eighth Grade. After several years of measuring five-foot-nothing with no sign of change, whispers of "growth hormone deficiency" began to appear as a subtext to my flat-lining stature. My parents' concerns ultimately led me to an endocrinologist's examining table, where I patiently waited for the doctor. I entertained myself by listening to the sound of the crinkling white paper shifting beneath...

I had applied Early Decision to Swarthmore originally. I was deferred along with another friend, while an athelete from my school was accepted....

1. Get a reasonable number of recommenders. I remember multiple colleges talk about horror stories where a kid sends in somewhere between 17 and 30 recommendations. The story usually ends with rejection or deferral. I don't know if that's because they were so horrified at the number of recommendations, but I don't think anyone really needs that many. Here is my guide to the number of recommenders! 2+ Teachers: Get 2 teachers who teach core subjects. If you've had them multiple times or if they were an advisor for a club you were especially active in that would be best. My recommenders were an English...

This is from memory, so forgive me if I'm a little spotty on the details. Haverford: I went to their campus (I live fairly close) and interviewed with an admissions staff. We talked a while about my academic interests, and we got on the topic of Model UN. I had represented North Korea at my most recent conference, so we discussed that experience. Then it turned out we both watched this one documentary about North Korea, so we chatted about that. I think I flubbed on the "Why Haverford" question though. That might be why I got rejected. It was...

During my Junior year in High School, I decided to sign up for several summer experience programs. I've been told most of them are useless and are just money-making schemes, but you should take the time to look out for the free or reduced cost ones. I applied for 5 and got into 3, which I will briefly describe below. 1. Williams College Math Camp. I highly recommend trying to sign up for this program if you can find it. It's at the beautiful Williams College campus, if it isn't free, it is near free (you do have to arrange your own drop...

So I was pretty down after getting my deferral from Swarthmore. Regardless of whether Pomona was a better school, I think if I had applied regular decision to both and gotten in, I might have picked Swarthmore if not for that deferral. Not only that, but a good friend of mine also got deferred (eventually rejected), while an athelete from my school was recruited in the ED pool. Anyway, so despite this, I wrote a letter to Swarthmore (in e-mail) to my admissions counselor. I couldn't find the e-mail, since my school's e-mail service has apparently been deleting all of...

So I will quickly run down the list of the schools I applied to and what happened. Early Decision Swarthmore: Deferral Regular Decision Swarthmore: Acceptance Bowdoin: Acceptance Hamilton: Acceptance Haverford: Rejection Pomona: Acceptance Williams: Waitlisted Middlebury: Accepted Washington University in St. Louis: Accepted Emory: Accepted Kenyon: Accepted Vassar: Accepted Wesleyan: Accepted So after receiving my regular decisions I began with a quick comparison of Wash U and Emory, since they were both about equal-size schools. This is why I thought Wash U was better than Emory. Wash U has better student recourses I felt the culture there was more my...

Well, the best thing to do is to begin by just touring a couple schools and really paying attention. I accompished this by actually paying attention on my older brother's college tours. While we only had a 2 school overlap (Wash U in St. Louis and Emory) in schools we both applied to, and he never actually toured Wash U, I found out a lot about what I wanted. So the next step is to decide what exactly you want. I decided that I wanted a top-ranked liberal arts college. That made it fairly easy to find schools. I just had...