Ten years ago, my college buddy, Sean, convinced me to drive across the country with him in the same car he’d been driving since college—a Geo Prism that topped out at 55 miles an hour and was constantly on the verge of dying or spontaneously combusting. On hills, the Prism felt like it was about to stop and roll backwards. Neither of these two college graduates had bothered to look at a map ahead of time to see that this route would take us directly over the Rocky Mountains. After an overnight stop in Denver, we made our way to the freeway, got on the on-ramp, and saw the expansive range a few miles ahead.
We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
The circumstances were so ridiculous–why not laugh? The worst possible outcome was
that the car would die and we’d have to catch a flight the rest of the way. Whatever happened, it would make for a good story. In the interim, laughing about it was all we could do.
If you’re applying to Harvard, MIT, Swarthmore or any other of the roughly 40 colleges out there that reject pretty much everyone who applies, you have two options. You can lie awake at night wishing there were something you could do to change the reality of the competition you’re facing, letting that reality ruin what should be an exciting time in your life. Or you can have a laugh. Acknowledge how absurd it is for a college to admit fewer than 20 out of every 100 supremely accomplished applicants.
Neither of those options will change the admissions outcome, but the latter is a lot healthier.
Your college applications deserve to be taken seriously. But the odds of being admitted to a school that rejects more valedictorians than it admits? You might as well laugh. The worst possible outcome is that you’ll end up at a different college that will almost certainly make you just as happy.
Somehow, Sean’s car made it over the Rocky Mountains and we made it back to California. But even if it hadn’t, we enjoyed our laughs when they presented themselves.