For many, the most anticipated day is their wedding day. For Westwood Students, the day of equal importance is college results day.

Vaishnavi Sankar ‘17 waited anxiously with her friends at school for the portal to open. At promptly 4 o’clock, she clicked the refresh button several times to load her results. Each time, the portal crashed. Frustrated, Sankar waited another five minutes before trying again. This time, the screen didn’t come up blank; the words, “Congratulations”, appeared on the screen, confirming her acceptance to the Ivy League school Brown.

Brown wasn’t Sankar’s top choice until freshman year. For as long as she could remember, Sankar didn’t have a top choice aside from the college in Canada her parents had attended and other out-of-state colleges.

“When I was little, I really didn’t have any idea of where I wanted to go,” Sankar said. “For awhile, I really wanted to go to school in Canada since my family lives there and both my parents got their degrees in Canada. Throughout middle school, my ‘dream’ university changed constantly between McGill, Duke, Vanderbilt, and Stanford. I didn’t hear about Brown until my freshman year of high school, and once I did more research on Brown’s open curriculum and the various majors they offered, it immediately became my top choice.”

Starting and finishing college apps over the summer has proven to be a difficulty for many seniors in general, particularly for those applying for early decision. Early decision is when a student applies to a college early with slightly higher chances of getting in; however, once accepted, the student is required to attend the college, regardless of where else the student is accepted. To some people, the binding contract was intimidating; to Sankar, it was an opportunity to increase the odds towards her favor.

“I started writing college essays the summer before senior year,” Sankar said. “I finished all my big essays (500+ words) before school started and I wrote the smaller ones in the beginning of the school year.  Since I applied ED to Brown, I only really submitted two applications, one to UT and one to Brown. However, I had eight other applications ready in case I got rejected or waitlisted from Brown.”

In the midst of all the essays, Sankar ran through several rough bumps. The end not only seemed so far, but ensuring that her personality was thoroughly expressed through her words proved to be a difficulty as well. Eventually, Sankar decided to take the comical route, a risky pathway that was often either a complete hit or miss.

“I found it hard to write a well-written, confident sounding essay that still sounded like myself,” Sankar said. “Especially when given the incredibly boring prompts, I had to work extra hard to try to write an essay that wasn’t cliché but still made sense. Since the essay is mainly about expressing your personality, I decided to take a more comical route to my essays. In fact, I wrote my common app essay about how Reality TV made me a better person.”

By the end of the essay and application, however, Sankar felt confident. She had done all she could, asking both friends and acquaintances to peer-edit her work, and knew that she had put her best foot forward.

“Honestly, I probably spent 10 times more effort on my Brown application than any other application, because of how badly I wanted to attend,” Sankar said. “I asked my lab director, my teachers, my parents, and anyone who was willing to critique my application, and I constantly reviewed it to make sure I sounded like myself. I think the huge amount of time I spent on my Brown application boosted my confidence with decisions. I knew that everything I wrote on my application made me come off as 100% brunonian, so I wasn’t too nervous the day decisions came out.”

Once the application deadlines came to an end, Sankar faced another problem of bringing everything she learned and did into perspective. She realized that after many years of studying for tests and stressing over assignments, there was very little to do senior year. In fact, by the end of the fifth weeks, grades froze, causing many seniors to adopt the common condition of “senioritis”.

“We spent most of high school stressing about the next assignment or the next test, but senior year is that awkward time when we don’t know how to prioritize our responsibilities. I tried hard to study in school, but I realized that at some point, I needed to start considering how one high school assignment would actually impact my future. That’s kind of the basis for senioritis, but I didn’t really slack off in school at all. I just stopped stressing out over grades that really didn’t mean much in the long run,” Sankar said.

As Sankar heads off to Rhode Island to join the other 2,722 students at Brown University, she leaves several words of advice for students aspiring to head out of state.

“Finishing college apps is more important than finishing Stat homework!” Sankar said. “Make sure everything on your application says something about who you are, not what you do. At the end of the day, apply to schools you’d actually be happy at. Don’t go through the process of completing another application if you know you’d never consider it. On the same note, make sure your safety school is somewhere you’d actually want to go. Discuss financial options with your family before you start applications. It’s pretty heartbreaking to apply and get accepted to a school you can’t attend.”