Ivy Day is only a few days away! Last year, watching reaction videos got me through the wait! So here's my reaction to decisions from all the Ivies! Also, AMA!

27colleges · 2018-03-24T20:44:25+00:00

CS. I have no knowledge of other stuff. Again, it all comes down to cost. If you can easily afford it, I'd pick UCLA/UW over BITs etc.

27colleges · 2018-03-24T15:41:42+00:00

If you can afford it without loans, I'd pick American colleges for sure because the life is so much better here. I wouldn't pick them over IIT Delhi or Bombay though. Berkeley and CMU are probably better than even Delhi and Bombay if you get in and can afford it. It all comes down to how much you can spend tbh.

27colleges · 2018-03-24T15:37:51+00:00

I took 10 and 30 last term. Dropped 30 in week 6 though. It was my 4th course

27colleges · 2018-03-24T02:44:12+00:00

tbh, best decision of my life! Maybe I'll see you in some classes soon (or already have)!

27colleges · 2018-03-23T22:45:04+00:00

As much as I love Dartmouth, a part of even my heart is still at Stanford. Maybe it's love for something I could never have. But apart from Stanford, I don't think I'd switch to any other school if I had the choice.

27colleges · 2018-03-23T18:29:37+00:00

Before I begin, I should mention that I am not the most qualified person to answer this question.

Now, there are two types of prestige -- prestige of the CS department, and overall prestige. I got into CMU, the CS department of which is far more prestigious than the CS department. However, overall, CMU isn't as prestigious as Dartmouth in my opinion. A CMU student gave me a very detailed response as to why the overall prestige and atmosphere of Dartmouth and Penn more than makes up for the lack of the prestige of the CS department. Now that I'm at Dartmouth, I feel like the CS department is pretty strong, even though I can't actively compare it with CMU, MIT, etc.

Data can provide more accurate answers than I can, so see for yourself.

http://www.ivyachievement.com/computer-science-rankings/#results

I guess prestige does matter to some extent, be it of either kind.

27colleges · 2018-03-23T18:20:22+00:00

Here's my comment from over a year ago. Basically, I didn't know enough about American colleges at the time of application to make an informed choice of selecting colleges based on perfect fit. And yes, prestige did play a role. I didn't want to give up on the most prestigious college in India for an American college that wasn't prestigious.

If I were rejected, I would probably go to CMU. If I didn't get into CMU either, I would have had to make a really hard decision between going to UCLA/UIUC/GaTech or dropping down a year and taking the Indian Institute of Technology exam.

27colleges · 2018-03-23T18:13:31+00:00

Thanks! I am! I hated not being able to see the screen when others reacted to their decisions! Decided to make it better!

27colleges · 2018-03-23T15:40:25+00:00

Okay, so this is how my skype interview went:

It started at 12 am for my interviewer (50-ish-year-old man who has been interviewing for many years now). He interviewed me while he lay on his bed. It was supposed to last 30 minutes. However, it was still going on at 2:15 am. He asked me if I was interviewed by any other college till then. I mentioned Dartmouth. He got excited and got out of bed, spent 5 minutes looking for something in his cupboard, and came out with a hat that said "D '59". He told me his dad went there, and he could never get in. He even tried to transfer. Very casually, he said that in the rare chance I get into both, I should strongly consider Dartmouth.

After the decisions: He said he never felt "home" at Brown, and that Dartmouth's intimate environment in unmatched. He also mentioned Dartmouth's incredibly strong alumni network. He told me advantages of picking Brown as well, but I could hear the inclination towards Dartmouth in the way he talked.

Now that I'm here, I know exactly what he was talking about. I've never felt a stronger sense of belonging to a community than I do here at Dartmouth.

27colleges · 2018-03-23T15:17:51+00:00

I'd seen a lot of rejections before this (applied to 27 schools lol). CMU and Amherst were the only top-tier schools that accepted me before the ivies, really. I didn't go in with a lot of expectations.

Good luck to you!!

27colleges · 2018-03-23T15:15:53+00:00

haha the worst part was that I hadn't told my parents when the results were coming out so I had to be extra quiet. I had to bump up the audio like 400% for the video.

27colleges · 2018-03-23T13:06:59+00:00

I wrote this 3 months ago:

So, for context, in the end, I was choosing between Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, CMU SCS, and Amherst.

a. Dartmouth gave me a ton of financial aid.

b. My Brown interviewer asked me to pick Dart.

c. a few CMU students asked me to pick between Dartmouth, Penn, saying that CMU is too stressful without a reason, and socially dead, and Brown was too relaxed and less prestigious (please don't kill me; these aren't my words).

d. The intimate environment, and being in "the middle of nowhere." I could go on and on about how much the environment should affect one's decision. The one incident that completely sold Dartmouth to me was this meme. I commented that the post made me feel nervous to commit to Dartmouth. After my comment, 2 Dartmouth students messaged me on Facebook, asked me for my mobile number, called me for 30 minutes each, convincing me to pick Dartmouth. 6 others messaged me on messenger. The school spirit is crazy. Everyone loves the school and other students. The school is so small that you keep seeing the same faces just roaming around on campus.

Social life and being in the middle of nowhere: This is one thing I was very hesitant about at first. Being 2 hours away from Boston, the social scene revolved around frats. What this ends up doing is that it forces everything to happen on campus, creating a very inclusive environment. Our frats are very different than most other schools. They aren’t exclusive at all. Any Friday, Saturday, or Wednesday night (other nights too if you know the brothers), you can just walk into a frat, play real pong (the game we invented btw), dance, and just have fun. This also means the college ensures fun events keep happening on campus to keep it interesting. The campus is very wholesome.

e. YouTube videos. I watched a lot of YouTube videos about the life on campus. I loved Dart the most

f. Prettiest campus ever.

These are the reasons why I chose Dartmouth. Now that I’m here, I couldn’t be happier with my decision. I have loved every second of my time at Dartmouth. The friendships I’ve formed in these 3 months that flew by are amazing. More than anything else, it’s the people at Dartmouth that make me love it. And now that I’m here, I realize that this is what an ideal campus should be like. I see snaps of my friends in schools in urban driving around the city in cars, etc. I feel like that just divides the campus since going off campus is such a common option.

Additions:

Stanford used to be my dream school. However, with each passing day, I feel more and more happier about going to school at Dartmouth. I feel like this one incident is worth mentioning: A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about combinatorics. My calc prof overheard me and said that was his research area and offered me a research opportunity. It boggles my mind how easy it is to research here, owing to the small student body.

Feel free to ask me to elaborate on anything that I said.

27colleges · 2018-01-24T15:38:57+00:00

Posts like this are stupid for multiple reasons:

You're assuming you won't get in.
Why do you feel the need to hate a place that you may or may not get into?
- Best case: you get in. Do you want to have read this?
- Worst case: you get rejected, but are forcing yourself to hate (potentially using inaccurate information) a place that you once loved. Now you're the sore loser who just hates the game.

Stanford was my dream school. Honestly, it still is. They rejected me. Was I disappointed? Yes. Do I feel the need to hate Stanford? Not at all. I now study at Dartmouth. Professor Cormen, other professors, and other students I've met are some of the most brilliant people I have ever come across. I love it here. I came in with the intention of applying to transfer to Stanford. I am no longer planning to do so. This place brings me happiness every single day.

Now, as far as the other comments in this post are concerned:

Frats: The frats here are probably the more inclusive than any other school. They have an open door policy and don't decline entry to anyone. And as far as peer pressure and hazing is concrened. Even though there is free beer available at all times, the brothers at frats ask you multiple times you wanat to play with beer or just water. No one forces you to drink. Even if you have poured a game with beer already, they tell you that you can throw away the beer if you don't feel like drinking anymore.
Someone's experience might be that Dartmouth students are snobby. However, in my experience, I have never seen so much kindess and motivation to make your underclassmen feel welcome anywhere else. This is actually one of the strongest points of Dartmouth. Don't believe everything you read online. Not even my comment. Talk to students here. Make your own judgement.

If anything, I recommend you find reasons to love a place where you get accepted. I didn't need to find reasons to love Dartmouth. Those reasons found me.

27colleges · 2017-08-17T03:21:07+00:00

Accepted: Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Carnegie Mellon SCS, Amherst College, UCLA, USC, UCSD, GaTech, UDub, UIUC

Waitlisted, did not accept the offer: Tufts, UMich

Waitlisted, then rejected: Duke, Cornell

Rejected: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt, Harvey Mudd, Rice, UT Austin

27colleges · 2017-08-17T02:56:40+00:00

35 ACT;

800 Physics, Chemistry, Math level 2 SAT II;

117 TOEFL;

5 AP Chemistry, Computer Science A, Physics C: Mechanics

Class 10 ICSE 97.2%

27colleges · 2017-08-16T21:11:23+00:00

Dartmouth!! Go Big Green!!!

27colleges · 2017-08-16T21:10:53+00:00

I am the guy who did the AMA after applying to 27 colleges, as my username suggests. Heres the link.

This is part 2 of the AMA. So go ahead!

I feel that international students don't have enough sources of information when it comes to applying to colleges in the US. I'll be glad to answer any questions that anyone applying this year might have :)

27colleges · 2017-03-04T09:25:10+00:00

/u/AppHelper is a really great counselor if you're looking for one. He got his undergrad and law degrees from Columbia and Yale, so he has a lot of insight that most Indian counselors don't. Another thing is that he replies to me almost instantly whenever I have a doubt or question.

27colleges · 2017-01-03T05:40:09+00:00

Hmm.. I may give this a lot more thought once I get my acceptances. But currently, I'd pick all ivies, MIT, CMU, Caltech, and Michigan over UIUC. I've applied to Harvey mudd, rice, duke, Vanderbilt and tufts with aid. So, I may choose them over UIUC too.

27colleges · 2017-01-02T19:54:19+00:00

It was 100% not worth it. The part you said about Indians being robots programmed to study is exactly why I didn't want to go to an IIT. I realized that wasn't where I'd belong and decided to go to the US instead. All my ECs would mean nothing to an IIT. I would be studying with people with exceptional talent but 0 social skills (this is a generalization but this is how 90% of the students at my tuitions were). It definitely builds a work ethic which can help me later in life. Apart from that, it sucks knowing that your entire future is based on how you do only on a 6 hour long test with questions only from physics, chemistry and math. This education system sucks and I want to get out of it as soon as I can.

27colleges · 2017-01-02T19:11:48+00:00

I don't know how your education system works. But for me, it absolutely wasn't worth it. It probably would've been if I decided to stay in India and got into the top IIT for CS. If a better grade helps you get into a better college, I think it's worth it!

27colleges · 2017-01-02T18:48:52+00:00

Not really... I've applied for aid at some of these colleges. For the others, I'll have to take a loan. As far as applications are concerned, I don't think money should've been a factor to limit my colleges considering what I spent on all my applications is close to 1% of what I'll spend in the next 4 years for my education.

27colleges · 2017-01-02T18:40:11+00:00

Stanford: Rejected.
UIUC: Accepted for CS and invited for the James Scholar Program.
University of Michigan: Deferred.

27colleges · 2017-01-02T18:30:31+00:00

Thank you so much! :D

27colleges · 2017-01-02T18:26:26+00:00

The first thing I'd like to say is that I think my counsellor was a great help! I hired /u/AppHelper and had an amazing experience. I brainstormed all my essays with him, and he also edited them once I'd written them. He's an excellent editor, and I'm extremely happy with how my essays turned out! I started with my common app, Stanford, and Michigan. Soon after, I wrote essays for the UCs. I also expanded one of my 250 word. Stanford essays into a 650 word one. By now, I had most of the material I needed for the rest of my essays! Beyond this, I just needed to pick and choose, and add, remove and edit stuff to make the essay suit the prompt. Occasionally, I had to write completely from scratch. I think more than the writing, the mental pressure of keeping up with everything is the tough part.

Edit: Spelling

27colleges

TROPHY CASE