School Related Deferment Waiver: Fill & Download for Free

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” —Albus Percival Wulfric Brian DumbledoreTrump has claimed that his military school was “just like being in the military”. He has claimed on the basis of his schooling and experience that he is “smarter than the generals”. When asked by Howard Stern about missing Vietnam, Trump said “avoiding STDs was his Vietnam”.While in High School, he played Football and baseball, well enough to attract the interests of professional baseball scouts. But in college (like many others) he requested and was given 4 academic deferments. After graduation, he was again eligible. It was at this point that he requests and receives a medical waiver from serving based on a diagnosis of bone spurs. Trump likes to say he had a high draft number and likely wouldn’t have been called. Nevertheless, the final deferment was granted and trump began working for his father. Later Trump was asked which foot it was, he couldn’t remember. And he is by some accounts a good golfer. There was a saying related to the draft that goes: If you’ve got the dough, you don’t have to go. Many well healed families took advantage of this to spare their sons from serving in Vietnam. There were some college men who left school to go to Vietnam, they made the choice to be counted as americans who served alongside their friends.Trump is not the only one with deferments, but in the 2016 campaign he made the record of others an issue (read Blumenthal, and McCain).

For a bit of context, my school has never sent a student to a T100 school, so the whole application process was a shot in the dark for me. I had no outside help, had no idea what I was doing, and didn’t even think about applying to college until September of my senior year. I ended up applying to 13 schools, mostly because I thought I had a legitimately unusual profile and figured it would be hit or miss with most schools. Most of these schools either had free applications or emailed me to offer fee waivers. I don’t recommend applying to so many.UW GPA- 3.97, no weighted. I didn’t receive a GPA for my junior year because my school ended up counting them all as pass/fail.ACT- 34 composite, 6 essay. Took sophomore year and didn’t bother studying. I didn’t even know this was a good score, I just figured that 34/36 was 94% and then forgot about it.SAT II- 790 French and 720 US history. I took these both in November of my senior year since I had never heard of them beforehand. I had also never taken a French or a US history class.Class rank: ~50/350. My school really shouldn’t rank since we don’t weigh GPA.AP- AP Euro, 4. My school offers a decent number of APs, but I haven’t been able to take many for various reasons. This year I’m taking AP calc and self-studying for US history and US gov. We also don’t have honors classes.No hooks to speak of, besides maybe coming from an rural, underrepresented area in the west.Extracurriculars:Languages. I spend a lot of time studying langages/linguistics. Proficient in French and Spanish, some background in Chinese, plan to start MSA this summer.Debate. I was the first person in my school’s history to compete in policy debate and placed or won in nearly every tournament this year. I was quite disappointed when the state championships were cancelled due to corona during the drive down.Foreign exchange. I spent my whole junior year on exchange in France, which is why my American school didn’t give me grades and why I didn’t take any APs.Outside reading. Most people probably wouldn’t count this as an EC, but in my view schools want to see ECs because they want to know how applicants spend their time. I’m a huge bookworm and like to study stuff I don’t have the chance to learn about in my low-rigor school.Chess club founder/president. I’m not a grandmaster or anything, but I taught myself how to play from YouTube videos and it’s been a few years since anyone in my school could beat me.French tutoring. I’ve been tutoring ever since I got back from France.Cooking. Again, this is something I spend my time doing, so I thought I’d mention it. I do most of the cooking in my family.Volunteering. I’ve done a few different things, from building a school in Guatemala to teaching a Jamaican immigrant piano.Paid work. I’ve taught swim lessons during the summers since middle schools.My essays weren’t literary masterpieces, but I worked hard on them and think they did a good job of portraying who I am. Nobody ever read them but me, so they probably had an authentic voice.Teacher recommendations were tricky for me, since I was gone junior year. I ended up with one from my AP Euro teacher from sophomore year and one from my debate coach from senior year.No major awards. I put down my B2 DELF certification, my semi finalist status for NSLI-Y (which even though it was only the possibility of an award, I thought it was more interesting than ‘honor roll’), and my candidacy for a prestigious language-related award in my state.Finally, here are the decisions.Safeties:University of Utah- accepted. Roughly 85% of my high school goes here, with the other 15% being split between BYU and trade school. I really didn’t want to stay in-state, but I needed a safety and it was free to apply. I got a full tuition scholarship.University of Portland- accepted. This was a school that emailed me to offer a free application. I ended up with a 26k/yr scholarship. I wasn’t too attached, but I thought it might be nice to have an OOS safety.Reaches: I considered all other schools reaches or high reaches, since I legitimately didn’t think I would get in anywhere.Kenyon- accepted. Free application. They had nice academics, but Ohio doesn’t appeal to me too much. 15k/yr in merit money.Swarthmore- accepted. I was shocked and excited when I opened this one. This was another school that had emailed to offer a fee waiver. I hated my ‘why this school’ essay (to be fair, I hated all my ‘why this school’ essays because I thought I did a terrible job of explaining why I wanted to go to each one), and they actually called my school to ask about my grades junior year. They had also been emailing me twice a week for about a month asking about my financial aid application. For a few days after I opened this, I was convinced I would go here since I didn’t think I would get in anywhere I would like more.Colby- rejected. I had forgotten I had applied here, as it required no essay and was free. No hard feelings.Wellesley- accepted. Free application. I had gotten a ‘possible’ for the early evaluation so I wasn’t expecting anything. My mom, unfortunately, hates the idea of a girls school so I probably won’t be attending.Boston University- accepted. This was the first application I paid for. I really liked Boston, so I was hopeful about maybe getting in. I applied for the trustee scholarship (and wrote my overall favorite college application essay for it) not because I thought I would get it, but because I wanted to overshoot to hopefully make them more likely to accept me. I also got into the Kilachand honors college. Unfortunately, the financial aid was nowhere near enough.Yale-NUS- rejected. I checked the box for this when I applied to Yale. I was shortlisted for an interview and loved the idea of going to Singapore, so I was pretty disappointed (but not surprised) when I opened this one. Oh well, c’est la vie.Rice- accepted. Another fee waiver application. I’m not the biggest fan of Texas, but was seriously considering going here if accepted. I thought I had a pretty good interview, too.Tufts- accepted. I was ecstatic when I opened this. Tufts was the only school I allowed myself to get really excited about because I both loved it and thought I had a chance at getting in. I demonstrated all the interest I possibly could, living across the country. I thought my interview here was great, if really short (less than a half hour). I was pretty sure I’d commit here if the aid was enough.Harvard- deferred then rejected. No surprise here. I mostly applied as another ‘aim high and maybe you’ll get in somewhere else that’s still good’ type of thing. I also applied here first, so by the time I had submitted to other places I had gone over and polished my application a lot.Yale- waitlisted. Honestly, I had never considered the possibility of being waitlisted since I figured ‘didn’t get grades junior year because she left the country to follow passion for languages’ would either be a sure yes or a sure no. Around February, the admissions office actually emailed me to get another letter of recommendation because they didn’t count debate as an academic subject, so I knew they were at least considering me. Being waitlisted is still wayyy better than I expected.Columbia- accepted. If I was over the moon when I opened Tufts, I was in shock when I opened Columbia. Out of all the ivies, I had always considered it the best fit for me, but I didn’t think I had a prayer at getting in. I thought my lists were pretty good, if some were really short (I think the list of required school reading was only four books long, since I hadn’t really had any required reading).I’m still waiting to figure out all the financial aid stuff before I make my decision, but it’ll probably be between Tufts and Columbia. My main takeaway is that when they say holistic, they mean HOLISTIC. On paper, there’s absolutely no way I should have gotten into most of these places, but I think my clear passion for languages made up for other deficiencies in my application. I’m super lucky to have the choice between all of these amazing schools.

Before I applied to colleges, I used to read similar posts that had absurd answers, such as being nationally ranked or donating a billion dollars. These types of answers convinced me that I would never be good enough to get into the Ivies or similarly ranked schools. This year, I have been accepted to Harvard, Columbia, Yale, UPenn, Cornell, JHU, Barnard, NYU, Brandeis, BU, etc., and I will be attending Harvard College in the fall to study Regenerative Biology.One of the most important things to do with your application is paint a cohesive picture of yourself to colleges. I am definitely a STEM kid, and participated in some STEM clubs. I also was VP of Model UN for 2 years and participated for 3. Model UN stuck out on my application as not matching the rest of my ECs, so I decided to incorporate it into my Harvard supplemental essay. I wrote about how I first learned about antibiotic resistance in my AP Bio class, how I tested some solutions to it in my research class, and found a specific antibiotic resistance lab at Harvard, where I would continue my research. I tied all of this to my first MUN conference, since my committee was mimicking the World Health Organization with a focus on antibiotic resistance. I think it is important to show why you do what you do, especially after school, and how it relates to your major. This allows more insight to who you are as an individual.If you do know your major, definitely try to find cool opportunities for you to pursue your passion further outside of school. In my town, the community outreach program coordinates a summer internship program for high school students, so I was able to intern at a big biopharma company after my junior year. That summer, I also attended a medical precollege program at Brandeis on a full-tuition scholarship. I applied to these programs for myself, because I wanted to explore different aspects of the medical field. The most important thing you can do to get into an Ivy or any dream school is to be yourself throughout high school, and explore what interests you.A close second is the interview. My interviewer used to work in the admissions office and now works for the alumni network. I made sure to bring a notebook with some key points I wanted to talk about during the interview (my internship, the precollege program, etc). On the other side, I wrote about 7 questions to ask her afterwards, and when it came time for them I asked the best questions first, since I ran out of time to ask them all. She told me that all of my questions were difficult, and that for one of them, she has never been asked that question before. My Harvard interview was unique amongst the others because I talked about family matters and gym class, and for the gym story she said that she got goosebumps. It was such a strange interview, but I told my story truthfully. For questions, ask questions that will have them talk about their time at the school or opinions about it, and always relate their answer back to something that you have experienced.For stats, I have always cared a lot about my grades, so I have a 5.19/5.33 GPA. At my school, the highest GPA is a 5.33, meaning all A+s in honors or AP classes. I could have gotten all A+s in honors classes to boost my GPA since they’re worth the same as AP, but I took AP classes in all MESH subjects both my junior and senior year because I love to learn and wanted to push myself. For junior year, I got a 4 in Biology and a 5 in APUSH, Lang, and Micro-Econ. For senior year, I took 4 APs and self-studied for 2 more. I am a first-gen low-income student, so I applied to 20 colleges with fee waivers.I originally applied Early Decision to Columbia with a 1460 SAT and got deferred. I then used Khan Academy to raise my score to a 1520 (720 R 800 M), which was solely from raising my math score from a 740 to 800. My essay score was a 21/24. I’m glad that I was able to get my SAT score over 1500, but it was nowhere near perfect. Also, I was reading on College Confidential and Reddit while waiting for the ED results to come out, and I saw so many posts about students who got rejected ED from Columbia with 1500s or even 1550s. This scared me because as I told you, I only had a 1460. For my letter of continued interest, I obsessively watched Greg Smith’s video on Youtube. Smith says that you should reach out to a professor at the school, so I did and he invited me to visit his lab at Columbia! I went with my parents and they waited outside. It was a great experience and I got to ask some students in the lab so many questions. That experience got me to fall in love even more with Columbia.Ultimately, I got rejected from 3 schools: Princeton, Brown, and Tufts. These are the applications that I spent the least amount of time on, and the schools that I did not really care about. The admissions offices were able to see that, so I did not get in. Please do not apply to schools if you don’t want to go there, it is just a waste of your time! I applied to these schools because it wasn’t until February/Early March that I realized I would not be happy at these schools.My decision came down to Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. Then, it was between Columbia and Harvard. I have always felt an attachment to Columbia and NYC, but I live near Harvard and used to dream of going there when I was younger. Harvard gave me a great financial aid offer, and for some other reasons I decided on Harvard. The lab I visited at Columbia focused on CRISPR, and Harvard has a major (concentration) that is very similar to genetic engineering, called “Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology”. Harvard has the best biology program in the country, and has more options in terms of 3 Biology majors that I would be interested in.Good luck, and remember to remain true to yourself. The college process works out for everyone, and you will love whichever school you choose to attend. Don’t forget to prepare for your interviews, and HAVE FUN! If you are doing an EC that does not make you feel fulfilled, try doing something that interests you and makes you happy.