I couldn’t understand how my friends could be so carefree. Didn’t they know it was April? Didn’t they have college decisions to make? Mine took over my life - monopolizing my thoughts, afflicting me with insomnia and making my head spin. While I wandered dazed through each day, they were acting like there wasn’t a problem in the world.
Out of the 11 (yes 11!) schools I had applied to, it came down to three schools: Boston University, University of San Diego, and Gonzaga University. I heard from the last school, USD, on April 15th, exactly 15 days before I had to declare. My parents, already sensing the emotional distress that I was feeling, frantically scheduled trips to Boston and San Diego, conveniently coinciding with my spring break the third week of April.
The Contenders
I first flew to Boston where BU hosted a “Spring Open House” for admitted students. It was very informative, and I met students who were in my major, including someone from my area in California. It was nice to be able to see how kids from my area adjusted. I also had the opportunity to spend the night in a dorm and attend classes with a friend, which I found to be an invaluable experience. I was born and raised about 45 minutes from BU, and it was a short 10-minute train ride to visit my grandmother and other relatives. If I were to attend BU I would benefit from being in a city I was somewhat familiar with, as well as having a place to crash, study or do my laundry in on the weekend if the university got to be too much. BU was also number two in my field. I was there to go to school, right? None of the other stuff should matter.
Yet, BU went against everything I desired in a school: it had more than 30,000 students and stretched for two miles on either side of Commonwealth Avenue, one of Boston’s busiest streets - six lanes wide, plus two sets of streetcar tracks. While the school rallied around the Bulldog Ice Hockey team each winter, I needed more of a community feeling than that. Although I left BU feeling like it was a great school, I knew that it wasn’t the school for me. I arrived back in San Francisco and the next morning my family and I drove 8 hours to San Diego.
USD’s presentation was less informative than BU’s, but it was hard to ignore the magnificent campus and the opportunity to have my own bathroom! I spent the rest of the week hiding from my parents in the back of the mini-van, as they continuously prodded me with “So, where you gonna go, Ashley?” and reminded me that I had to have a decision in three days...two days…this weekend…tomorrow!
The Wild Card
The last school I considered was Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. I had visited the school the previous summer, but most of the feelings I had about the school had faded from memory. I recalled from my notes that I had loved the campus. The only problem was, I had visited during the summer when students weren’t on campus, and the campus tour was pretty lifeless. I went back to my files and re-read all the literature that I had on the school. Luckily, I always took a camera with me when I visited schools, so I was also able to review photos of the campus, which helped jog my memory.
