Congratulations to my Admissions Prep Class of 2021! In a year when universities saw record numbers of applications, my students excelled in all categories.
Congratulations to my Admissions Prep Class of 2021! In a year when universities saw record numbers of applications, my students excelled in all categories:
Several admissions to the Ivy Leagues.
Admissions to top schools such at Duke, New York University and Washington Univ, St. Louis.
Record amount of merit scholarships including a full tuition scholarship to Vanderbilt, a significant scholarship to Case Western and receipt of UTK’s highest dollar scholarships.
Admissions into top State Schools such as UC Berkeley, Universities of Virginia, Michigan and North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Admission to top international universities such as the London School of Economics.
But this list alone would mask the underlying hard work and determination of my students. Last spring one of my Juniors texted me, “I got rejected again! :-(” This was about the 5th or 6th summer program (we tried not to count) that she had been rejected from. Granted, she was applying to some of the top summer academic, political and extracurricular programs in the country. Regardless, all these rejections were exhausting.
Just a week earlier I had seen a twitter feed about a Princeton University professor that posted his CV of Failures. I sent her a copy and reminded her that if she wasn’t receiving rejections she was probably not putting herself out there enough. Later she told me that this was a turning point for her. It allowed her to see that someone she deemed “successful” had also received several rejections along the way. She now saw her rejections as her badges of honor. She was indeed putting herself out there, applying for high reaching, but very possible positions and opportunities. Most of them did not work out for her, but in the end she got the ones she needed. She gained a research position that summer and a full tuition merit scholarship at one of our nation’s top universities.
My successful students experience some failures along the way to achieving their goals. So congratulations to my Admissions Prep Class of 2021 for their long list of failures and for working hard to move past these rejections towards realizing their goals. May they continue to work hard towards realizing their dreams—knowing and embracing the risk of failure along the way.