Class of 2014: Freshman Blog

This week all of the bloggers at Hopkins Interactive are sharing some of their experiences from the time when they were applying to colleges. While senior fall is an incredibly stressful time, we want all the applicants reading these to know that the college admissions process isn’t as scary as it seems as well as impart the little bits of advice we dug up during the hours we spent filling out the Common App.

Growing up in a college town, secondary education always tended to be in the background (and more often then not, forefront) of everyone’s minds. It wasn’t until I went to camp for the first time that I discovered it’s not normal for thirteen year olds to have a college list already or discuss gpas, yet those were pretty universal behaviors for a lot of my Ithacan peers. While I don’t really have an opinion on whether that’s healthy or not for budding adolescents, I’m definitely glad that my middle and high school classmates were extremely serious about their studies and I’m immensely proud that although I went to a regular, small town USA public school, between a fourth and a third of my graduating class went to a top 20 college.

My brother, father, and I at graduation. Some people say Max and I look like twins... I disagree.

Going into junior year of high school, I decided that I was going to do as much research as necessary to find the university that was the best “fit” for me, academically, socially, emotionally, etc. So, I went on a number of college visits, scoured my Princeton Review Top 354 Colleges book, and spent way more time than I probably should have on different institutions’ websites in order to make my decision easier. For over a year, I had been set on a certain school in the country’s smallest state and was even at that specific institution for a summer program when I first heard about Hopkins.

To put things in perspective, at this point in high school I planned on majoring in creative writing and political science with the intent of becoming an international lawyer; a little different from the pre-med, Public Health and Anthropology double major you’re reading about today. In high school, I was really, really, really involved. (One of my favorite parts of Hopkins is that it’s still a lot like high school in that way. Everyone I know does some sort of volunteering, be it tutoring inner city kids to cooking for the homeless.) I ran a mentorship program that paired up almost 100 underprivileged girls with high schoolers called Sister2Sister. I helped start a women’s group at my high school that had over a dozen different functions including providing free self defense classes and raising thousands of dollars for women who had experienced sexual violence in the Congo. I ski raced for eleven years and rowed for eight seasons. I was the student representative to the Ithaca City School District board of education. I also did a lot of volunteering here and there, including spending a summer living with my family in Europe and working at an NGO that aided individuals who were HIV positive. I also took school very seriously, taking 6 APs and English at Cornell my senior year (Interjection: TAKE YOUR APS SERIOUSLY. I did and I started Hopkins with 30 credits and am halfway done with my pre-med requirements. Now I can double major AND go abroad, something a lot of my classmates are realizing they won’t be able to do because they goofed off on theirs.)

Graduation!

So, when my instructor from my summer writing program mentioned: “Well if you aren’t a fan of this five-letter school and want to go somewhere as challenging and prestigious, you should check out Johns Hopkins,” I was completely confused. Listening to my academic parents discuss talks they’d given or conferences they’d been to, I’d definitely heard of JHU. But I’d always associated it with science and technology, something that sounded pretty far from what my in-the-moment humanities brain wanted (It wasn’t until senior year when I took AP Bio that I remembered how much I’d loved science when I was younger). While I immediately wrote it off, one night when 2 AM had come and I still couldn’t sleep, I decided to google “Johns Hopkins” on a whim. I spent the next few hours combing the university and admissions websites, completely spellbound. Looking at the campus map, I thought THIS is the colonial architecture I’ve been looking for! Checking out the writing seminars department, I literally couldn’t believe that not one class had more than seventeen students. The next morning, I called my mother and in a phone call I remember so clearly, it’s embarrassing, I told her that I was almost positive I wanted to go to Johns Hopkins.

9th grade Marina. All I can say is LOLOLOLOLOLZ.

I learned a lot during the actual application process, but I don’t think a narrative about my admissions essays or taking the SATs would be all that compelling, so here’s a list of the things I found most important during my time as an applicant:

1. Do your research. It definitely takes time, but I can’t think of anything more worthwhile than feeling like you made the right decision about where to go to college.

2. Be yourself. Admissions officers aren’t looking for one type of student, they’re looking for individuals who stand out. Play up your strengths and interests in the application; your weaknesses won’t be as big a deal as you think they will.

3. You’re the one going to college, not your mom, your teachers, or your best friend. Don’t choose a school based on others’ preferences. Don’t lose yourself in others’ essay edits.

4. Admissions officers are not out to get you or keep you out of their school. In fact, they’re looking for reasons TO admit you, not reject you. Show them why you’re awesome; they’re not going to spend hours ruminating on why your SAT score was twenty points lower than you think it should be.

5. Relax. Going to college is definitely a big deal. Where you go is a lot less important than you think it is. As long as you have a list of several schools where you can see yourself being truly happy for the next four years, you’re in good shape. My attitude going in was “If they don’t want me, I don’t want them anyway.” (Luckily Hopkins did want me! But if I hadn’t gotten in, I would have been totally fine going to any of the other schools to which I was planning on applying.)

XOXO

Marina

12th grade Marina at a graduation party with my friend Megan; slightly grown, equally embarrassing,