Introduction Letter To Colleges Universities - Little League: Fill & Download for Free

No, not at all. Canadian universities are generally public universities and therefore standards are maintained across the board. They also cost less to attend. The only American universities that could conceivably be judged as significantly better are the very expensive ivy-league universities in the States.That being said, American universities tend to much more market-driven and revolve a lot more around recreational pursuits and sports (including sports scholarships) so if that's your idea of "better" then that's where you'd want to attend. However, I've been reading some rather disturbing info. about the lax standards at some of them so make sure you are attending one with a great academic reputation because school can't all be about partying. Please take a look at some of the documentaries out there about the problem...P.S. I found an interesting article written by Ren Thomas. I agree with him, in Canada you pick your school according to the best program, not according to the best school. Ex. if you want to go into nursing, you research the best nursing programs in Canada.Ren ThomasM.A., Ph.D. (Planning)Does Canada have an Ivy League?There is a lot of debate out there about whether or not there are schools in Canada equivalent to the American Ivy League (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale). I’m not sure why this is so important for people to know, but I do know that as a potential applicant for teaching positions at US universities, an Ivy-League education is considered the best. Even in Canada, loyalty to the old prestigious universities is not in the least diminished by Maclean’s annual rankings.As a Canadian, I don’t know anyone who did an undergraduate degree at an Ivy League school, so my first introduction to the concept was when my classmates in landscape architecture began applying for masters programs over a decade ago. Inevitably, they chose to apply to American Ivy League schools like Harvard and Cornell. Interestingly, their main reason was that “all the famous landscape architects went there.” (not surprising: Harvard was the first landscape architecture program in North America and the only one for many years). Having visited the Graduate School of Design and seen their students’ work around this time, we were surprised to find that our work was quite comparable to theirs; in some cases, better. One friend, who applied to and finished a Harvard Masters in Planning, said that the main advantage of the school was the alumni network, which would ensure he could find jobs anywhere. The Harvard degree also exposed him to very prominent experts and guest lecturers. Even more interesting, he is now living and working with many of our former classmates who did not invest in Ivy League educations. The same applies to a couple of our classmates who attended Cornell for the Masters in Architecture, and now work at architecture firms with others with “less prestigious” degrees.The thing is, Canadians know about the American Ivy League, but we don’t really get it. I mean, we get that they’re prestigious and expensive and old. But we’re hampered by the fact that universities in Canada are virtually all public institutions, and there are few expensive, elite blue-blood institutions in the country aside from elementary and secondary schools like Branksome Hall and Ashbury College. According to theCanadian Information Centre for International Credentials, there are 94 universities in Canada (83 with degree-granting status) belonging to the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada. There are 27 private colleges, the vast majority being theological schools: when you take these out, there are only 6 left. Tuition costs at Canadian schools are much cheaper than American schools, although generally the older, larger schools cost a bit more and since tuition deregulation in the 1990s the professional programs can charge more than the standard tuition. They can also offer more funding, so it evens out: even Statistics Canada found that there has been little decrease in the proportion of lower-income students attending university now than before tuitions began their rapid ascent in the 1990s. So the Ivy League is a tradition we simply do not have here. Ditto those other prestigious American schools that are supposed to impress us. American students enrolled at Canadian schools often find their introductory conversations go a bit like this:Canadian: So you’re from Pennsylvania?American: Yes. I went to XXX School. (pause for reaction)Canadian: Oh yeah? (blank stare)American: (confused) It’s a really good school.Canadian: Ohhhh. (realizing the faux pas in not knowing the names and reputations of all 45670 American schools) Well that’s great. (unimpressed)That’s right, I said it: we don’t know your schools the way you don’t know our prime ministers. Or our provinces. Or our capital.That said, the four universities that many consider to be the “Canadian Ivys” are the University of Toronto, McGill University, Queens University, and the University of British Columbia. The only logic to this seems to be that they are old and therefore have ivy-covered buildings! These schools, because of their age, have extensive and well-known alumni who teach, do research, win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, and otherwise propagate the mythology of their being better schools than the rest. There is also something called the Group of Thirteen, which includes the above-mentioned schools plus the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, Dalhousie University, Université Laval, MacMaster University, Université Montréal, University of Ottawa, University of Waterloo, and University of Western Ontario. These schools meet informally twice a year to discuss joint research initiatives and between them hold 66% of Canada Research Chairs, which is proportional to the amount of research funding they bring in from SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR. And if I’m going to be honest, these schools probably get more famous guest lecturers.But the Maclean’s rankings show a very different story: each school has very different strengths. The magazine divides Canadian universities into three categories: primarily undergraduate, comprehensive undergraduate, and medical doctoral universities. The schools are evaluated on a range of characteristics, including spending on student services and scholarships and bursaries, funding for libraries, faculty success in obtaining national research grants, and their reputation for being innovative. The top-ranked primarily undergraduate schools are Mount Allison and University of Northern British Columbia. The top-ranked comprehensive undergraduate schools are Simon Fraser and University of Victoria. And the top-ranked medical doctoral schools are McGill, Queens and Toronto. Some schools have highly-ranked business or teaching programs, others are strong in medicine or law. Indeed, some of these professional programs are known in their individual fields as “the best.” Some have a small student-to-teacher ratio, others have better resources or funding. And then there are the student favourites, typically small schools with a friendly atmosphere in a beautiful location, like Mount Allison.I attended two of the supposed “Canadian Ivys”: University of Toronto and University of British Columbia. I know only a handful of people at either of these universities who attended a private school before entering these seemingly august institutions (ie., these aren’t the elites of society). I don’t believe that these schools have better students, better teaching, or better facilities than other schools in the country: in some cases, Maclean’s shows they fail in all three areas. Graduates of these schools don’t seem to conduct themselves any differently, have access to better alumni networks, or get better jobs than graduates of other schools. While working as a landscape architect in England, for example, I ran into graduates from the universities of Guelph and Waterloo who were working for British municipalities; in Ottawa I met many government employees who were graduates of Université Laval, Carleton University, and the University of New Brunswick. I have yet to meet a Canadian who was impressed by the schools I attended, nor have I encountered any innate sense of superiority among graduates of these schools. Yet when I attend conferences, I frequently find myself having this conversation:American: Oh, you’re at UBC?Me: Yes.American: Oh, that’s a really good school. (impressed)Me: Is it? (seemingly amused, but actually quite curious)American: (confused) Well, yes.Me: Why would you say that?American: (stumped) I…hmm. (because I’ve heard of it)The relatively level playing field among Canadian universities is probably one reason why Canada has the largest proportion of university graduates among G7 countries and the highest percentage of university graduates in the workforce. Immigrants in Canada have particularly high levels of university attendance: 37% compared to 22% of the Canadian-born population. Among recent immigrants (those who entered the country less than two years ago) 48% of females and 56% of males had a university degree according to the 2006 Census. Women have outpaced men in university attendance since the late 1970s, and more lower-income people are attending university in Canada than ever before. These types of changes have led to much more diversity in Canadian universities. And there is considerable evidence that nurture, as opposed to nature, is the key to success in education: Malcolm Gladwell vividly illustrates this in Outliers.With only a handful (15) universities in Maclean’s medical doctoral category, Canadians often seek jobs in other countries; this is particularly true in academia. But we know that we will be judged by the school we went to, because that seems to be a common trend in the American university hiring process. A glance at the faculty directories of an Ivy League school reveals that virtually all of their faculty did their doctorate or post-doctorate work at an Ivy League school. Lou Marinoff, in a recent article in Inside Higher Ed outlined how his philosophy department, in City College at the City University of New York, narrowed down their search for a new faculty member from 627 applicants to 27 long-listed and 6 short-listed ones. A major criteria in the first step was holding a degree from “a good university.” As Marinoff writes, “Members of our department earned their Ph.D.s at Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, and University of London. Additionally, City College is known as the “Harvard of the Proletariat,” with distinguished alumni that include nine Nobel Laureates, more than any other public institution in America. Our faculty members are expected to live up to this legacy.” Of course publications, research, teaching, administrative service were up there too.I would love to say that this kind of academic snobbery does not exist in Canada, but it is pretty standard here to imitate Americans. Most of my friends in design professions hold Ivy League degrees in higher regard, and since my era at U of T’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the school has been completely rebranded with graduates of Yale, Princeton and Harvard. Many Canadian faculty members are American, or educated in the US, and bring these ideas with them. I can definitely say that the “reputation” of the school seems to play a role in the admissions process at SCARP. The ridiculous thing about this is that our school (which is a graduate program only) accepts applications from undergraduates in any discipline. And according to Maclean’s, as well as my own experience, programs vary considerably from school to school. So using school “reputations” makes no sense: you would have to be a master of every undergraduate program in the country to know what a “good school” was for that particular program. It’s one thing for a medical school to compare B.Sc students from everywhere, or engineering programs to compare their B.Eng applicants; it’s quite another for a multidisciplinary program which draws its students from programs as diverse as Forestry, French, Geography, Architecture, and Canadian Studies. It’s part of the reason why our school uses such a complex application process, evaluating transcripts, a research statement, reference letters, and work experience equally.Interestingly, Marinoff’s philosophy department invited 6 candidates to their school for interviews. Here is his summary of their performance: “All the finalists were impeccably well versed in their subjects matter, but not all succeeded in establishing rapport with the students. One lectured remotely, as if from afar; another failed to engage them in dialogue; a third took insufficient account of whether the class was grasping the material. Some lectured clearly and evocatively, encouraged and fielded questions on the fly, bridged gaps in students’ understanding by providing additional context where necessary, and covered the material in the allotted time. The best finalists attracted a throng of students after the lecture, having whetted appetites for further learning. The top two bundled humor with their lectures or slides, which palpably enhanced the ambiance and helped establish rapport. “Edutainment” is an American neologism, after all.”When it comes right down to it, these candidates (CCNY hired the top two) succeeded not because of their Ivy League pedigrees, but because of their ability to engage students and cope with the classroom setting most effectively. Now, whether they gained these credentials as a result of their “superior” educations is a matter for debate: they were likely supported and mentored more than students at other schools, because their high tuition costs resulted in more resources (again, Outliers is relevant). I suspect these outstanding candidates worked hard at developing their skills and lecturing style, and had a real passion for teaching. Preferential selection of candidates based on their school’s reputations was really just a useful filter in this case, a way of decreasing the number of applicants to consider carefully, albeit one that probably eliminated many worthy candidates from lower income and minority backgrounds who couldn’t afford Ivy League educations.All this to say that I don’t believe there is a Canadian Ivy League, nor do I think we need one. It’s too bad that universities, professors, and students can’t get over these ideas of being “the best”, or producing the “best and the brightest” students. This relentless competition is even seen in what Richard Moll, in his 1985 book, called the “public Ivys”, eight American schools that were “successfully competing with the Ivy League schools in academic rigor… attracting superstar faculty and in competing for the best and brightest students of all races.” It’s even worse that the myth of the Canadian Ivy League is being relentlessly perpetuated by recruiters who travel all over the world with glossy brochures featuring the old ivy-clad buildings (international student tuitions are higher than those for Canadian citizens, so the schools encourage it). But the Canadian reality is a bit different, and there really is no reason a University of Alberta grad and a McGill grad should not be considered equally.

I was really moved by an urge for haste when Jonathan Brill (whom I like to thank) asked me to answer this question the past weekend, but then I realized that there is much more to it than PayPal, and I remembered a beautiful article by an Italian screen writer which I read a few months ago and which fits perfectly in my intended answer. The article was written by Francesco Mazza and it talks about the origins of the #metoo movement, but I consider it an absolutely necessary introduction (a long one, so bear with me) to my answer, because it explains very well what is currently going on in our society when it comes to sex and how the path that we seem to have taken originated.Here is my freely adapted translation of the most relevant (to my answer) bits of the original Italian article,[1] kindly authorized by Francesco Mazza himself.I really suggest you to read it all, but if you are in a hurry or lazy, you can jump straight to my angry bits right below. If you suffer of the micro-aggression syndrome, though, you better directly and immediately skip this answer, because it might be directed to you too, dear reader, and it’s not going to be a pleasant one.The real starting point of this madness goes back to June 23, 1972, when Nixon was in full swing and the US Congress approved the so-called Title IX, a historic victory of the feminist movement of the late 1960′s.[2]Title IX establishes that no person, because of their gender, can be excluded or discriminated against in any school program or educational activity that receives federal grants.This is an improvement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the milestone that put an end - in theory - to any kind of racial segregation, but which did not clearly include gender among the categories of discrimination.However, as it always happens in the United States, idealism immediately got exploited by economic interests and for decades the main application of Title IX was in the sporting field. This is because sports in university, in the US, is a very serious thing: it is the universities that start athletes to professionalism, send the best to the Olympics and, through the university championships, give life to a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.With Title IX, the university sport was forced to open up also to female athletes, who started gaining access to special treatments and grants, until then reserved only to male athletes-students.However, with the arrival of the new millennium, the whole American society got shaken by the plague of rapes on university campuses. One after another, dozens of episodes of sexual violence committed by unsuspecting students started to emerge, often enrolled in the most prestigious universities (the famous Ivy League).The turning point came on March 15, 2011, when Yale's student Alexandra Brodsky and another fifteen girls who were victims of sexual violence denounced the same University on the basis of Title IX.[3]It was a turning point: for the first time it was claimed that a University which fails to offer its students a safe environment would in fact discriminate against them, and the school is therefore to be considered as responsible for the offense as its material authors.Following the example of the girls of Yale, the denunciation on the basis of Title IX started spreading like wildfire, because widespread was (and is) the scourge of rape on campuses. And since the list of the involved campuses featured dozens of colleges belonging to the Ivy League, the problem rose to the attention of the highest levels of the American establishment: in universities where fees cost 100 thousand dollars a year the most likely students are the children of the most prestigious families in the United States - the same who are part or finance the two main political parties - and the Obama administration was forced to intervene in haste, succeeding in the difficult task of worsening a situation almost impossible to worsen.In April 2011 it was established, through a letter by the Department of Education, that all Universities that fail to ensure effective application of Title IX in cases of sexual harassment will immediately stop receiving any kind of federal grants, including "federal loans" used by about two thirds of American students to pay for college.[4]If until then universities, before a rape charge, could protect themselves by relying on the competent authorities, with the consequent times and outcomes of the ordinary justice, now they are called to a preventive control, in order to avoid being blacklisted. But at this point the panic breaks out: entering the black list means losing the students who require federal loans, which would mean seeing their business collapse.For this reason, colleges began to apply Title IX on the basis of a particular legal system, that of "preponderance of the evidence" , which in the Anglo-Saxon system is an alternative criterion to that of "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" used in criminal cases and to that of "clear and convincing evidence" used in most civil trials.It's a difference that has culturally revolutionized the current decade: from this moment, in fact, those accused of having committed a rape in a campus undergo two procedures: one by ordinary justice, based on the "beyond reasonable doubt" criterion, another managed internally and directly by the college, based on the "preponderance of the evidence" concept, whose interpretation is left to the discretion of the college itself.While the data of the US Department of Justice speak of 6.1 cases of sexual violence per thousand students,[5] from 2011 onward the complaints are counted in the hundreds; complaints that, however, are always sent to the college and only to a much lesser extent to the judicial authorities, where the outcome of the investigations is much more uncertain: there are several universities sued by male students expelled because they were convicted of sexual violence by the college internal justice system but exonerated completely by the judicial authorities.And there is not only the theme of the preponderance of proof. In this overexcited climate, in order to anticipate and avoid trouble, Universities invent regulations such as that of Northwestern University, which explicitly forbid sexual relations between two sentient adults "in conditions of different power".[6]It is argued, that is, that a sexual relationship between two individuals who occupy different positions within any scale of social differentiation (ie. a professor-student) is forbidden regardless, because the consent of the subaltern person would be determined not by a free choice but influenced by unbalanced power relations. Does that ring the Hollywood bell?It is on the basis of this doctrine that the captain of Yale's basketball team, Jack Montague, was expelled from the University in 2014 following an accusation of sexual assault by his ex-girlfriend. A year after the end of their relationship, the woman reported to the University authorities -- but not to the police -- that her consent was not "free" but influenced by the prestigious role that Montague played in the university environment. [7] Exactly what happened to James Franco two years later, when one of his ex girlfriends stated, a year after the facts, to have consented to oral sex in the actor's car only on the basis of his fame.[8]Not all academics, however, turn out to be willing to accept a breakthrough that smells of witch-hunts a mile away.In 2015, Harvard professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk wrote on the University of Berkeley's California Law Review like the application of Title IX based on the preponderance of the evidence has effectively ratified the birth of "a bureaucratic apparatus" that "supervise and control the sexuality of free citizens" as a kind of Big Brother; the same year, Laura Kipnis, professor at Northwestern University, published an essay, in which she affirms the right of women of the 21st century to freely choose who they have sex with, without bureaucracies or limitations of any kind.[9] [10] [11]According to Kipnis, the new pseudo-feminism from a university campus would reduce women to the role of "helpless girls", in need of other men to write regulations to protect them, instead of considering them human beings with free will.For Kipnis, if Obama had wanted to do something to solve the plague of campus rape, he could have tightened controls or even banish the "frats", the male student associations repeatedly involved in acts of sexual violence. But touching the "frats" would have meant touching one of the most powerful social structures at the base of the lobbying system with which power is organized in the United States.Obama literally sit on the fence, by allegedly taking a provision to solve the emergency while leaving it to the individual Universities' responsibility instead, through the threat of interrupting funding and with devastating effects on individual freedom.Poor Kipnis is even suffering a proceeding for violation of Title IX just for having called into question...Title IX...With the election of Donald Trump, the situation has worsened even further: every trickle of public debate is polluted with ideological hatred, poisoning the climate to exasperation.In May 2017, Reed College students denounced a professor for proselytism in favor of white suprematism . It happened that the teacher showed an old sketch of Steve Martin dressed as a pharaoh at Saturday Night Life in class to analyze the comic language, and the students saw an attempt to discriminate and ridicule the customs of the Egyptian people.[12]Meanwhile, at Evergreen State College, professor Bret Weinstein refuses to join the protest held by liberal college students who, for one day, forbid access to white students and professors "to reflect on their privileges". Weinstein disputes the crazy idea of ​​wanting to fight racism with other racism, and the students react by threatening him and denouncing him for discrimination. The University decides to terminate its relationship with the teacher, paying a half-million-dollar liquidation.[13]Two cases which show how America has fallen into a nightmare remake of the Lord of the Flies, with the colleges becoming the exclusive territory of the so-called "snowflakes", hypersensitive students who are unable to deal with any kind of critical thought, continually in need of "safe space".It is in this torn and ideological climate that last October the New York Times and The New Yorker dealt with film producer Harvey Weinstein, who all New York City knew and know to be a kind of psychopath. Just go over the weekend at the Balthazar brunch - the well-known restaurant of Soho - to see him smoke cigar despite the ban, ruining the meal throughout the room, and get such an idea.But the sacrosanct accusations against a man who has made blackmail and violence his trademark become a pretext for the principle of the preponderance of evidence to be smuggled well beyond the boundaries of the "safe zones" dear to the "snowflakes" of American colleges. Under the guise of the #metoo movement, the principle extends to the cinematic sphere, then to the entire civil society, and finally breaks down like a hurricane to force 5 on a completely unprepared rest of the world, that of the criterion of "preponderance of evidence" opposed to "clear and convincing evidence" knew absolutely nothing until now.To understand how things work, just think of Woody Allen, acquitted not once but twice but equally dragged into infamy.And what a mockery irony is to see Rose McGowan, muse of Ronan Farrow and first accuser of Harvey Weinstein, being #MeToo-ized by Andi Dier, a transsexual who in New York has accused her of insulting transgender women and of having no idea what it means to be really molested.Got it? We have allowed for the law of suspicion and for the demonization of sex, by endorsing the principle that because sex might not be consensual or just the consequence of a free decision, sex and everything related to it cannot be tolerated; and even when it can be tolerated, that is only until someone regrets it and starts blaming any part directly or indirectly involved in what caused the regret. Why not...even PayPal.Sex is the new evil and its moralization is the new religion of the 21st Century. And the fault is all yours! It’s a generic you of course, but not for this a little inclusive one.Most of you watch porn and have a sex toy somewhere in your household. There are people who work in banks, maybe even at PayPal, among you. You are men and women, trans-sexual, transgenders, blacks, whites and yellows; you masturbate, have casual sex with untested partners every weekend, you cultivate your fetish — be it being penetrated with a strap-on by your mistress or going with prostitutes or swapping your partner in private clubs; the reality is that most of you financially support the adult industry and benefit off of it in terms of your senses' well-being and that almost all of you have sex, some of the kinky type some of a more canonical type, but nonetheless you have sex.Meantime, you can have access to PayPal, to financial credit, you can open a bank account, you can have your business web site hosted wherever you want, you pay regular fees when you use your credit card, you can use any existing service available on the Net and outside of it, you can pay taxes, get insured...all things that most people working in the adult industry can only dream of.Then I have to tell you, and forgive my bluntness: you are hypocrites, when you don't take an open, clear position over the discrimination of adult workers. There is no bigger, most infamous, vile sex discrimination than dividing those who publicly orbit around the business of sex from those who exploit that business and activity in their private yard and taking away from the first those social rights which are instead granted to the latter.Did you know that if you are publicly associated with the adult industry in any shape or form you cannot adopt? Isn't that discriminating? It's like suggesting that the natural children of an adult performer are a an unfortunate event, a despicable incident. "Make children, niggers, so we will have more slaves, because the son of a slave is a slave himself." Sometimes I have the feeling that the only reason why nobody has yet proposed to neuter adult workers is to keep the sluts species alive, like it was for the nigger species: we hate adult performers, but we love the benefits of their work. Just make sure to keep them ghettoized.Imagine the riots if gays or blacks or women weren't allowed to use PayPal. Well, you are not imagining: black, gay and women adult workers are not allowed to use PayPal. We are not even a species anymore: we are a sub-species which crosses the entire spectrum of all other species. Remember it next time when you fight for black, gay and women's rights: you are just fighting for the rights of some blacks gays and women, not for the rights of all blacks gays and women. Unless you start taking this matter seriously by acknowledging the problem and stop this witch-hunt by raising it publicly like you do when Trump tells a locker-room joke. Or when a woman claims that a kiss given to a guy 20 years ago was a stolen one.Society is stealing adult industry workers' rights as I write and before your very eyes; why do I say rights...society steals many adult workers lives, right now as I write and before your very eyes. Would you agree with me that your life has been stolen if I told you that you cannot start a family, have access to credit, being employed in any mainstream business — no matter if you have high top qualifications —, sleep in certain hotels, dine in certain restaurants, invest your savings, getting life and health insurance, and sometimes even opening a bank account? What a fucking life is that?This is the reality: some of these people whose the most basic rights are being denied on a daily basis are gay, some are women, some are blacks, but all of them are people who work in the adult industry at different levels. Don't forget it, the next time you feel the urge of moralizing us; and enjoy sex in your yard until you can: first they isolate patient zero, then they take care of the "disease". Better safe than sorry.Just let me summarize my answer for you, by asking you a question: would you put your money on this answer being even considered for publication outside of Quora? There you have it.Footnotes[1] Ecco perché il #metoo ha fatto a pezzi il garantismo e lo stato di diritto[2] Title IX - Wikipedia[3] Was Yale Really Cleared on Sexual Harassment? [4] Dear Colleague Letter from Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali.-- Pg 1[5] http://www.aei.org/publication/new-justice-department-study-reveals-1-52-6-college-women-victims-rapesexual-assault/[6] Consensual Relations and Sexual Misconduct[7] Yale plays hardball with Jack Montague, expelled hoops star, as reverse discrimination lawsuit continues[8] James Franco Accuser Violet Paley: 'I Wish He Made a Promise to Change'[9] The Sex Bureaucracy[10] http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/My-Title-IX-Inquisition-The-Chronicle-Review-.pdf[11] http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes-Academe.pdf[12] The Surprising Revolt at the Most Liberal College in the Country[13] Evergreen professor at center of protests resigns; college will pay $500,000

It can be very rewarding. I took a gap year, and although I hadn't originally intended to, it turned out to be one of the strongest experiences of my life. You can find most of what follows on the MIT blogs: Why I Took A Gap Year | MIT Admissions. But this is pretty much the bulk of it, if you're patient enough to read it:(For context, I'm Nigerian. Prior to college, I'd lived in Nigeria all my life, attended a Nigerian high school etc. After graduation, I took a gap year. I'm currently a freshman.)***For most of high school, the US was just a vague blip on the radar of my imagination. My friends and I sometimes imagined what the experience of studying in the US would be like, but we spoke in the offhanded, dreamy tone people usually use to describe things like “winning the lottery” or “running for president”. I had read one of the MIT blogs once, stumbling onto Anna’s post, “Being Qualified for MIT”, but only with distant fascination, fascination because it was such good writing and MIT seemed like such an amazing place, distant because I didn’t seriously think that I could attend a university whose site I had stumbled onto from a friend’s Google search of “World’s Best Universities.”And then one morning, towards the end of the first trimester of high school senior year, I was sitting in the library, studying for a Geography exam when someone ran up to me and said I had a package awaiting me in the secretary’s office.I rarely received packages of any sort, so I was pretty curious. Not being a cat, I ran quickly to the office and seconds later, was tearing off DHL-branded tape from what appeared to be a thick file. The file was from the University of Pennsylvania, and inside I found several brochures, and a letter. The contents of the letter went along the lines of, “You seem like a pretty motivated student; you just might be the kind of student we’re looking for! We encourage you to seriously consider applying to Penn.”It was the first time I had heard of Penn, and my mind hadn’t yet been cultured to the term “Ivy League” or anything of that sort. I knew nothing about the US admissions process, and hadn’t been searching, but the idea that a college thousands of miles away would send me mail of this heartwarming sort was unbelievable. I called my parents and more or less ranted about it. I was given rare access to the internet to find out more about Penn. I checked out the university’s website and Wikipedia page. I found CollegeConfidential links to angst-filled posts covering the spectrum of Penn from its prestige to its exclusivity.I did try to think of why they had contacted me. I had taken the SAT nearly a year ago, but that had been routine process for my high school (which was partly owned by the Turkish Government), and only because a bunch of Turkish universities required the SAT. There had also been the AMC and AIME, which I think may have contained some random clause about sharing scores with universities and scholarship organizations. Anyway, the application deadline was already fast approaching, so I hastily worked on my Common Application, and sent it to Penn within days of their mail. I also sent in my SAT scores and registered for the SAT Subject Tests.I could barely wait the three months to find out the status of my application. In that time, I joined CollegeConfidential, and began to read more about Penn. I found old admit and reject threads and, for the first time since receiving the package, was daunted. My SAT score from 11th grade had been 2080. It was possibly the reason Penn had contacted me, and I was pretty fine with it. But then there were all these amazing scores…2350…2390…even perfect scores…getting rejected or waitlisted. And CollegeConfidential was full of pages upon pages of these drab stories, rejected applicants whose achievements transcended some exam to cover a host of truly amazing feats. It was my first real introduction to the holistic mechanism of the US admissions process, and it created a whirlpool of uncertainty.Did Penn make a mistake? Did Penn really send me that package?It was all I could do to balance my sanity between the fear precipitated by the high scores on the reject threads, and the glimmer of hope induced by the relatively lower scores on some parts of the admit threads. I went back to my application, and with some clarity of mind I must have gained in the past couple of weeks, cringed at some of my essays. To one of them asking why I wanted to be at Penn, I had started thus:“I am one of several applicants aspiring to become a member of the prestigious UniPenn (!). To begin, I feel like the resources the university has to offer are unparalleled relative to anything I’ve seen before…”Was this enough? Would this be enough?It was a little while before Penn’s decision date when the results for the AMC12 contest were released, and I saw that I had placed at the 99th percentile, and had qualified to the AIME. I was pretty excited, and after a while, in a realm of elation separate from mere joy at this achievement, I realized that the news could also “boost my chances”. Excitedly, I sent an e-mail to one of the admissions officers that had contacted me some weeks back, informing him of the news. He replied a few days later, saying that it would be considered with the rest of my application.Awesome!March 29th, 2012 was a Thursday. Penn’s decision was hours away. The anxiety, the pure, crazy anxiety permeating the pages of CollegeConfidential was this charged cloud you could feel poking your sides. I was tense; I was crazy. I played the “will they-won’t they” game in my mind. I posted like crazy on CC, asking one of the common “What are my chances” post. Some said I had a decent shot but it was hard to tell. Others said everyone had a low shot. A few were highly cynical of the post itself. All these really just combined to feed the worry.My friends were around me, and they had nothing but positive comments: “You’ll get in; it’s you!” and “They’ll be crazy to reject you!” I didn’t know what to think, but the closer the decisions came, the more encouraging my friends got, and from their words, a real glimmer of hope emerged.You do have a chance, I told myself. Penn encouraged you to apply!A while later, I was somehow standing beside my vice-principal while he logged onto Penn’s website. Drums banged in my chest and throat. Three close friends crowded behind me. I typed in my initials, my hands so shaky it took two tries to get the password right. And text suddenly appeared, text that read:“Dear Vincent,After careful review of your application, we are unfortunately unable to offer you admission into Penn’s class of 2016…”My heart calmed. My body went very still. A friend behind me groaned and flung his books. I rose and said in a falsely nonchalant voice, “Well, I tried.” My friends mumbled words I didn’t really hear. I walked out of the office.***The week following Penn’s rejection was long and slow. I was moody. Classes seemed to trudge. I realized that for the past four months, regardless of my fears regarding the Penn outcome, I had absentmindedly imagined myself as a student there, a Penn Quaker, soaking sun in the quad and screaming cheers in the Franklin Field. It didn’t seem fair. It didn’t seem right.In the weeks that progressed however, what was left of school took over my mind. Writing stories took over my mind. Olympiad classes took over my mind. Penn faded.***I finally convinced myself that I’d been indulging in wishful thinking by imagining that I could study in the US. I decided to face my local exams and gain admission into an awesome Nigerian university. Admission into a Nigerian university is different and purely quantitative, depending on a combination of three necessary components—an exam called WAEC, taken by most West African High school students, a localized examination called JAMB and the concerned university’s own examination (usually called post-JAMB).Due to great restriction on the number of Nigerian universities I could send my JAMB scores to, and a number of post-JAMB conflicts, I only really had one Nigerian university I could apply to, which of course depended on me passing its post-JAMB. So imagine my shock when, at a hotel in Amsterdam for the International Math Olympiad 2012, I decided to check the post-JAMB schedule and saw something quite interesting: the exam was set to take place in about five days. It was the beginning of IMO, and there was clearly no way I’d make it back to Nigeria in time. I spoke to my mom in distress about this, but in the sweet, soothing tone that parents often use, she assured me that I’d be fine.***Just shortly before graduation, my high school had held an annual Nigerian-Turkish cultural event. Activities bloomed throughout the day, with tasty food on standby for the hungry or tired. My mom came for the event, which was nice since I attended a pretty secluded boarding high school, and rarely got the chance to see her. Towards the end of the day, she made a friend called Mrs. Jimoke. As they chatted about the school, my mom told Mrs. Jimoke about most of the academic things I’d been up to, including taking the SAT. Mrs. Jimoke insisted that I reconsider applying to US universities, and gave my mom the contact information of one of her friends—Shade Adebayo—who worked in an educational sector of the United States Embassy.So after I missed my post-JAMB and after it became clear that I would have to wait at least a few months before I could apply anywhere else, Shade insisted that I apply to US universities. At first I was reluctant, but I realized that a world of possibilities did exist out there, and even if Penn hadn’t accepted me, I could probably find some other institution that would. Shade, energetically, vehemently, believed so.I consciously avoided considering extremely selective colleges, and did as much research as I could on the others. Since I was so far away, campus tours and admission information sessions were out of the question. I toured CC, read up several college-related books Shade let me borrow from the US Embassy. I went through websites and Wikipedia pages and more detailed places like Unigo. And I came upon UW-Madison. It had a strong engineering program and a campus that seemed to pulse with unique life. As I became more and more entrenched in UW-Madison, reading up its online newspapers, poring over CC threads, I realized an important difference in the way I was attached to UW-Madison and the way I had been attached to Penn. My obsession with Penn had stemmed from both the strange joy of being reached out to and the beauty of the idea that I could be an undergraduate there. I was overwhelmed by the sense of prestige it possessed and some awareness that it had amazing resources I felt I could only find in few other places. I merely had a general sense of what Penn could be for me, a generality that translated into my barely specific essays. But getting to consciously choose to apply to UW-Madison, I did so on the heels of a more developed sense of what the university and its culture were about. I applied for the Spring 2013 term and was accepted. I was speechless with joy when I saw the letter of acceptance. My parents were jubilant.But of course, there was a problem.***UW-Madison did not offer aid to international students, and my parents would have to pay just a little over forty thousand dollars per year. They assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem, but my mom did wonder if I wanted to apply anywhere else. I was somewhat vehement about my choice of UW-Madison, having grown deeply attached to it, and she assured me that as long as I was sure, it was fine.I spoke to Shade afterward. She told me something my mom had confided in her. My parents were willing to pay forty thousand dollars, but it was really money they didn’t have. They had begun contemplating possible assets they could sell to fork up some of the money, and the only reason they hadn’t divulged this to me had been a result of my endless excitement with the acceptance news. Shade told me that it would be worth it, absolutely worth it, if I could let UW-Madison go in favor of some university, any other university, that wouldn’t cost as much. Later that night, I sat alone in my room and thought of my parents’ willingness to sacrifice that much for my happiness. I thought of how my educational future, once bright and limitless, now seemed and felt infinitely more constrained. I was overwhelmed by weariness and a strange sense of loss. And so I sat on my bed and cried. I cried for a while, and my mom slipped into my room while I lay hunched over, just feeling deflated. She held me really close. She told me things would be alright. She told me that I would end up where I wanted and needed to be, and that she would walk to the ends of the Earth to secure my happiness. I believed her, every word. I held her closer.The next day, I declined UW-Madison’s offer of acceptance.***And that’s the bulk of it. That’s why I took a gap year. I applied for the fall term to US universities. I meticulously compiled a small list, considering two important personal factors—cost and culture. Culture in the sense of its people, culture in the sense of energy, culture in the sense of challenge. I had spent most of high school taking extracurricular olympiad classes that pushed me to work late hours at night. I had felt most ingrained in the learning process when I raced with those challenges constantly, and especially with my classmates. I wanted an environment like that. I wanted an atmosphere built on merit and challenge and collaboration, one that could let me push myself, because I understood I could thrive there. I also needed a place I could afford.I took the SAT for a second time, attaining a score of 2390. I wrote more, feverishly, stories and novellas and ultimately a novel. I spent that year primarily outside of classes, although I did do a few things (MIT.01: Intro to the Institute, part 1 | MIT Admissions) like teaching and attempting to (burn down the kitchen) cook. I grew closer to my family. I grew closer to myself. More clearly than ever, I began understanding what I wanted.MIT accepted me on Pi Day, and I will never forget ten words that kept sinking into my mind when I saw that letter of acceptance: We think that you and MIT are a great match. I will never forget the sheer look of joy on my parents’ face when they saw the letter of acceptance and the immensely generous financial aid offer that had come with it. I will never forget them enclosing me, the world vanishing, for that moment of intimacy to take over, a moment that told me in no uncertain terms that things were fine.Things were good.***A gap year can be a chance to discover yourself and the world in a deep and personal way you rarely ever get to. If there's a hint of promise that you can have a meaningful, productive gap year, it could be very well worth it.