After briefly congratulating myself for penetrating one of the nation's last bastions of secrecy, I descended into shock. It wasn't that I was bowled over by the committee room — really just a cluster of windowless rooms in a basement — but that I suddenly realized my own admission to college was a total fluke. In adhering to the conventional wisdom dished out by parents, teachers and so many guidebooks, I made almost every misstep in the book. I had bought into every one of the myths about applying to college.
My high school college counselor was a strict adherent to the more is better application philosophy. This meant I not only sent each school on my list a bonus letter of recommendation, additional essay and academic paper — those were givens — but my mother unearthed our family tree from the attic so I could find out the precise relation of a great-great cousin of some remove who'd graduated from the school at the top of my list. I promptly listed him in the alumni section of the application.
At the advice of a teacher at my school, I had slides taken of some of my photographs, which had won a prize or two locally, labeled them "award winning" and tucked them into my application. I'm lucky my intended schools did not do what Cornell and many others do now — send extras like artwork and music composition tapes out to department heads for a proper appraisal. I later learned I'd vastly overestimated my photographic talents. After I, amazingly enough, was admitted to the college of my choice, I signed up for an introductory photography class first semester. Several weeks in, the professor took me aside and confided: "You're in way over your head."
I wasn't content supplying my dear admissions readers with supplemental materials and visual aids. I also ran with all of the advice I'd heard about painting yourself as well-rounded and quirky as possible. Asked my intended major, I wrote a passionate paragraph about my desire to study classics. Incidentally, this was not a completely manufactured passion. I had taken several years of Latin and made it through the Aeneid. But the minute I got to campus, I realized this had been a passing interest and never even glanced at the course offerings in Green and Latin.
And on the section of the application reserved for extracurricular activities, I recorded everything I'd ever participated in and what it meant to me. I neglected to realize that this over- abundance would have the same effect as a transparently padded resume. I was no doubt seen not as a must-have Renaissance student but as someone who'd embraced every club and pursuit superficially, without really investing in any one of them.
Having now witnessed the savaging of similarly ill-conceived applications, I have little trouble imagining the reception when my larger-than-life packet arrived: a roomful of rolling eyes and snickers. I can only hope it provided some comic relief. And I can only think of one explanation for my acceptance: I got my readers laughing so hard that they became senseless.