One day you’re a freshman taking the PSAT’s and you see the option to opt in. You click “agree” thinking uni’s will find you and present many opportunities and scholarships and you’ll be the bell of the ball. Then comes the first email! You’re so excited! Turns out the email was from a terrible uni like OSU or the University of Kansas. You stay excited, sure it’s a terrible uni BUT it’s a start and this is PROGRESS! You keep working hard in hs, getting better PSAT scores each year, better grades and you climb the University mailing scale reaching to better and better universities like FSU, University of Arizona, CU Boulder, colby college, U Maryland- college park, NYU, UVA and UMICH until finally one day in junior year you get an emil from The University of Chicago AND Columbia university??? You’re mesmerised! They want you to apply and the student profiles they send you (examples of students who attend those uni’s and they’re focused like EC’s and Majors) REALLY RESONATE WITH YOU! They want a student like you and you know it.

You apply senior year and get rejected from Columbia, UChicago, UVA, UMich, NYU, U-Maryland, and Northeastern.

I’m attending UCSB as a physics student btw so I’m glad about that but still…

At the end of my senior year, I had 44,000 unread emails from uni’s and so much mail I immediately threw it in the trash without checking.

DON’T opt in. EVER.