That’s right, we’re eight weeks into this beautiful blog and I’m finally following through with my promise to share why I chose Wellesley!
My road to Wellesley was actually quite a long one; as a natural planner, I started researching colleges all the way back in middle school, trying to figure out where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my life and what I wanted to major in and all that fun stuff I really did not have to worry about until much later. I became a lot more serious about my research when I started high school, and my dad and I went on our first college visits the summer after I finished my freshman year.
Wellesley was a school that I had added to my list sometime back in the seventh grade or so and just ended up keeping near the middle of the list every time I revised it; it never really popped out too much at me, but it was always there. During my sophomore year of high school I was actually sent a poster from Wellesley of Galen Stone Tower, and I ended up hanging it up on my wall right next to the poster of the school I really liked from my visits that summer, the one that I had thought would be my first choice at the end of the process. It stayed up on my wall and in the back of my mind until the summer after my junior year.
My dad and I broke our college visits into a series of five trips: an Iowa Day Trip, a Chicago Weekend, a Minnesota Weekend, an Ohio Road Trip, and a Nine Day East Coast Adventure Road Trip. If I ever lived through a Teenage Coming of Age Movie, it was during those summers, staying in haunted hotels with abandoned water parks, eating at chinese restaurants with shower curtains instead of doors, and sneaking through many unlocked doors to see the libraries and classrooms not exactly open to the public. The two of us travelled over five thousand miles to twenty three campuses over a total of thirteen states; most of my best memories come from those road trips.
Wellesley was the fourteenth of fifteen official college visits my dad and I went on; it was also my first college interview, which made me a little more nervous than usual. The night before, we decided to drive up to Wellesley from our hotel in Lowell, Massachusetts and walk the campus to get a first impression before we were given the Admissions View of the college. I really can’t describe what it felt like to set foot on this campus for the first time; I felt so dizzy, and I actually got so anxious and confused and nauseous that I literally had to sprint into the nearest building and puke my guts out because I was just so overwhelmed by everything that is Wellesley.
That probably sounds like a very negative reaction to the campus, but I promise it was the good kind of overwhelming. At the time, I really didn’t understand why I was feeling so weird, and I thought it was just the stress of having my first college interview in the morning. I think my dad could definitely tell what was happening, though; I had actually just decided to I wanted to apply ED to one of the colleges we visited our first summer the day before we visited Wellesley, and as we we explored the academic quad he kept asking, “are you sure that’s the right school?”
In the morning we went back to Wellesley to walk around some more before my interview, and I remember it was a little chilly and there was mist on the grass and a little bit of fog in the air and I had never seen anything as beautiful as Wellesley in the early morning. As we sat down in Weaver- the admissions house- to wait for my interview to begin, I was bargaining with myself. I would apply to my other school ED, and I knew there was a very good chance I wouldn’t get in there, so I’d apply to Wellesley through our Early Evaluation deadline and this was probably where I would end up. I had it all thought out and planned, and then I went into my interview and I started to think “oh no” and then we attended the information session and really, it was all over for me.
I’ll back up a little bit so I can give you a much better idea of how that day went. As I mentioned before, Wellesley was the fourteenth of fifteen colleges I formally visited; at all of those previous thirteen schools, there were students on campus for the summer that we would run into, but none of them would ever stop to talk to us. Until Wellesley, that is.
My dad and I were wandering around the top floor of Lulu when we ran into Kindred, an English and Creative Writing major who had just graduated from Wellesley that spring. I had never met this person before, and she had zero reason to be interested in a random seventeen-year-old and her dad wandering around the campus of her alma mater, but she genuinely wanted to know who I was and what brought me to visiting Wellesley. She was very invested in selling me on Wellesley, because she had loved her four years here so much and wanted me to have a chance to have the same experience.
This enthusiasm for Wellesley was shared by my interviewer, the students on the information panel, and my tour guides. A very fun fact: the moment that finally tipped me over the edge to choosing Wellesley was actually when Tatiana Ivy Moise, former admissions blogger and current Wellesley College Government President, was describing her first year seminar, a class about selfies and the way we perceive ourselves and others. The day before I visited Wellesley, my dad and I were at a school where their most popular course was a wine tasting class. Does that sound out there and a little fun? Sure. But it definitely wasn’t what I wanted from college. I didn’t want to learn about unconventional things just for the sake of knowing them, I wanted to be able to apply them to my world and learn about other things and the people around me from talking about them. When Wellesley does wacky, we get more out of it.
I wish that I could describe to you in complete and perfect detail the way that I felt the moment I really decided that I needed to be at Wellesley, but I honestly think I blacked out a little in that information session; I was so overwhelmed. My dad says he could see it on my face that this was the place, and I really came away from that day with zero doubts about what school I wanted to go to. On our way home from our college trip, we walked back through the school that had first caught my eye, and it really didn’t compare at all; once I had been to Wellesley, I had lost my heart.
To make a long story short, I spent several months painstakingly going over my application and revising my essay before submitting for the first round of Early Decision, and one morning in early December I sat on the couch to open up my admissions portal with my parents and find out I had been accepted!
In my Wellesley experience so far, nothing has been the way I imagined it would be when I sat at that table on the second floor of Weaver and dreamed of being a Wellesley student. I think the important thing, though, is that even though Wellesley is nothing like I dreamed it would be, I don’t think that’s the disaster I initially thought. While Wellesley may not be the same experience I so desperately wanted at seventeen, it’s definitely the one I need now. I was absolutely right about one thing during that visit: Wellesley is the place I should be. It’s very different from what I signed up for, but I think that might be a good thing. I’ve been learning and growing and experiencing new things, and you know what? I’ve been enjoying myself. I’ve been having fun and making friends and spending time with some of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life, and I can finally say that I really, really love it here. It took some adjusting, but I love Wellesley, and I’m more sure than ever that my decision to come here was the right one. Without a doubt, I know this is where I’m supposed to be.
To those of you submitting your applications this week: I would tell you not to stress, but I know how futile that is. Good luck! Break a leg! Of this I am certain: if you are meant to be somewhere, you will be there. For many of you, that place might be Wellesley, and if so I cannot wait to see you on campus! For others of you, your adventure might lead you elsewhere, and I sincerely hope that I have the chance to learn about it someday. Please try to keep yourselves afloat in the coming months- college admissions is hard enough without dealing with a worldwide pandemic on top of that. You can and you will make it through this. I’ll manifest it for you right now: you are going to end up at the best college in the world and you are going to live a beautiful, fulfilling life. I believe in you.
Sending you joy,
A
P.S. Please enjoy the incredibly awkward picture of seventeen-year-old me visiting Wellesley for the first time!!