By Jacques Steinberg
Clockwise from top left, Michael Greshko, Brian C. Bose, Erik Bates, Omosefe Aiyevbomwan, Brett Ferdinand and Anne Paik
Much of the anxiety of waiting by the mailbox to retrieve decision letters from the nation’s most selective colleges has — like so much of the admissions process — gone digital in recent years. Whether an envelope is considered fat or thin is more likely measured in bytes. And yet, the day that decisions are formally released by many of the most competitive institutions, whether by e-mail or United States mail, remains as it always has: April 1.
In the run-up to that deadline, The Choice, is introducing a new season of “The Envelope, Please,” an occasional online series. Over the next two months, six high school seniors from across the country will share — in print and in video — as they receive word on whether they have been accepted, rejected or placed on the waiting list at their first-choice colleges.
The students will also provide details on the financial aid offers they are weighing, in a year of economic turbulence for families as well as for colleges. (For example, Dartmouth and Williams are among the institutions that have responded to diminished endowments by recently rescinding policies that had promised eligible students aid packages with no loans)
One of the two students being introduced today is Anne Paik, a senior atImmaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles who has applied to a dozen colleges, including the University of California, Los Angeles; Columbia;Amherst; and Pitzer. She writes: “Simply put, if I can’t afford the price tag of my dream school, I can’t go”.
The other student blogger featured today is Brett Ferdinand, who attendsCedar Park High School, a public school outside Austin, Tex. Brett writes of missing a critical application deadline — at the University of Texas at Austin, which he had considered his “safety school” — raising the stakes for the decision letters he will soon receive from Rice, the University of Virginia andDuke, among other universities.
In the coming days, readers will also meet three other seniors at public high schools: Erik Bates of Forest Hills Eastern High in Ada, Mich.; Omosefe Aiyevbomwan of Stuyvesant High School in New York City; and Brian C. Bose of Chatsworth High School in Los Angeles. A sixth, Michael Greshko, attends Providence Day, a private school in Charlotte, N.C.
In many instances, their decisions, and how they respond to them, will unfold for readers in real time. And later in the spring, the “Today” show on NBC expects to feature some of them in a segment. We’ll provide more details on The Choice as that date draws near.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to start a conversation on this year’s college admissions decision season, please use the comment box below.
The New York Times
