I have a funny story that I want to share with you all during these hectic moments.
As it turned out, on that same day that I arrived in Cambridge (December 13th), Harvard was releasing their decisions for the Early Action applicants. Of course, I was completely unaware of this. I thought that they were going to release them on December 15th as they did last year. As clueless as I was, I took the Jaffa cakes I had bought and chose to read a few threads on collegeconfidential.com about the other universities that I was applying to. I can't describe the feeling I had when I read that Harvard was going to release their decisions in a matter of 8 minutes. Those were undoubtedly the longest 8 minutes of my life. I quickly messaged my parents, my girlfriend, and my dog telling them what was happening and went back to CC to see what they other applicants were saying. As it turns out, a few of them already had a special option on their Applicant Portal that said something along the lines of
Make a decision regarding your acceptance. As it turned out, those who were accepted had this option while the majority didn't. Despite my rather great qualifications and perfect SAT Subject Tests scores, I was deferred. I wasn't too surprised as I knew that my SAT score, which was in the 99th percentile but not that 99.9th percentile that they wish to see, was not strong enough. Nevertheless, I was extremely disappointed and I ignorantly assumed that the Cambridge application would end similarly so, after breaking the news to my family and dog, I chose to do the only rational thing at that point. I went to bed and watched some Top Gear (from the good era). This all happened at about 11 pm mind you and I figured that I wasn't going to get a second of sleep that night as I was so sad about Harvard. Interestingly enough, I fell asleep less than 5 minutes into the episode, fully clothed and with all of the lights turned on. I woke up the following morning in time for breakfast and the realization of what had happened to me made me even more afraid. I thought that one of the interviewers must have seen my room all lit up during the entire night and said to themselves something along the lines of "Ah, this careless applicant is wasting our resources and doesn't care about the environment
".
The Harvard deferral was a big thing for me because, even though I am always the person who doesn't lose hope until it is for certain that it is over, I couldn't stay optimistic this time about Cambridge. After breakfast, I went to the quiet study room where I met another applicant whom I befriended during that day (in the evening, when all was done, we went out for a beer haha). Somehow, someway, I got into a really good and confident mood during the hours prior to the interviews and ended up leaving the following day with Cambridge in the best of my memories.
While I will be the happiest student ever if I end up receiving an offer tomorrow, I can say that the entire Cambridge application has been a pricey (I'm applying from Sweden), but wonderful experience which I will forever remember with excitement. I have great ambitions in life to achieve great success (to be read with a Borat accent) in the field that I love, to one day make my passion a part of my everyday life (I want to own 30 supercars, +/- 2), and to learn how to write texts without using parentheses so much. And whether or not Cambridge deems me worthy of their time, I won't let anyone stand in the way of me making my dreams come true. As I said a while ago here, there is no university decision out there which can dictate the quality of your life in the future. It is fully down to who you are as a person, what you aspire to be, and what you stand for. Best of luck to all of you tomorrow. You are all amazing people who can become whatever you wish to be, as long as you believe in yourself and don't let other people live your life for you.