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david g@n's avatar

re college as someone who also:

- got into yale early

- was then waitlisted frm uchi

- had a scholarship offer from a third school (UW, although it wasnt as good as yours)

- had two other less-prestigious but still good options around this point in time (BU with a small scholarship, and... extremely embarrassingly i do not remember the other one 💀)

- parents could pay for yale but not at all comfortably

...

1. dont take the uchi waitlist to heart. to some degree "it's all random" but also what they look for in early and RD pools is pretty different. (not cope, just rationalism.)

2. i agree with Jessie in that it is definitely very possible to go from a less prestigious school to a more prestigious MA and then PhD program in many fields. idk anything about pure math or philosophy specifically.

3. however, i agree with Gabriel in that **connections are king.**

i think i didn't realize before college how much connections matter. and they matter *specifically* *most* in this period of our lives (undergrad). connections are what get people the jobs they actually want to have. connections are what get people into the grad programs they want to be in. it REALLY matters in almost every field of academia who your thesis advisor and DUS are. it also REALLY matters who your peers are. and who your friends are. and who your friends of friends are.

i don't know anything about the pure math or phil programs at fordham or michigan. it's totally possible fordham is home to two of the world's leading pure mathematicians, and that would make a big difference. (i dont know anything about yale pure math, but i do know their philosophy program is very, very good.)

there's also a really, unexpectedly-perceptible difference in the ambitions each school cultivates (or doesn't). cities by paul graham is really applicable to college life. even if it is true that you will find the same small group of friends anywhere - and honestly, i don't know if i believe this - they will still have different ambitions depending on where they are, it will still be more or less difficult to find them, and it's not just your three closest friends who matter, but maybe even more importantly, it's your friends-of-friends and "friendly"s.

not to sound too "sparkly people and where to find them", but i think you will not find as many interesting and ambitious people at fordham or st. john's as you will at yale or uchicago (and i've already given you my thoughts on that divide).

in my own life: my best friends from high school went (one each) to MIT, NYU, Princeton, Cornell, and some Swiss medical school. from visiting them and hearing about their experiences, there was a clear and sharp divide: myself and my friends at Princeton and MIT found cool, interesting, ambitious, etc. friends quickly and easily. my friends at NYU, Cornell, and the Swiss medical school did not, were/are depressed at the lack of ambition/interestingness/whateverness in the people around them, and still don't really have the same kind of close-knit friends that myself and my friends at MIT and Princeton have. (altho i think the tides may be currently turning for my Cornell friend.)

(i think this will also significantly impact your - specifically you - quality of life.)

also, the sheer resources of a school matter a lot. is the school going to throw you money to use every summer for research or art or writing a book? does the school have partner programs on other continents? what is the actual campus of the school like? what physical resources do they have? who comes to speak at events, and gets asked questions afterwards, and might just present you with a really cool opportunity? who can your professors put you in touch with? does the school have a vast alumni network?

all of this goes to say: you can try to be a big fish in a small pond, but then you won't be able to meet other big fish. and what group of fish will you swim out with? (this applies to both older fish and younger fish.)

another anecdote: my best friend of 9 years waited to decide on yale vs MIT until *literally* the last hour. he kept flip-flopping between them during the last week (it was pretty emotionally exhausting for me having already committed to yale, lol). in his mind - he's a child math prodigy - it was a big-fish-small-pond (yale) vs small-fish-big-pond (MIT) decision. he went to MIT and is pretty confident that he made the right choice.

...imo connections are the most important part of college by a vast margin. if you're smart and resourceful enough you can basically learn anything anywhere. you're not paying for classes. you're paying for professor time, grad student time, future-superstar/collaborator/person-who-will-get-you-your-dream-job time, and school resources.

(these are all factors i considered when i had a very similar choice, so i have a lot to say, lol. ty once again for reading through a mountain of text. that being said, me and you are different people in slightly different situations, so you definitely don't have to make the same decision as me. and honestly a lot of these things i didn't even consider at the time. but i know them now!)

one last thing: i think AI radically changing the landscape will make either (a) make connections much, much more important, specifically peer-level connections, or (b) benefit/kill everyone anyway so who cares :)

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david g@n's avatar

re NACLO as a past participant and current runner of test sites: congrats and good luck!! what are your favorite question types?

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