Being an Average Student to the Ivy League & How It Affected My Self-Confidence
By: Melissa Sol Lee
Tags: Education, Confidence, Life Lessons, Ivy League, Goal Setting

Starting the summer before my junior year (11th grade), I began to study hard. And I mean, HARD. Because I hadn’t studied very much prior to this, I had a lot of work to do. I stopped going to the gym, stopped learning musical instruments, and even dropped art classes that I enjoyed so much… I just studied day-and-night, many days until 4 AM in the morning to try and catch up to my peers.

I started seeing everyone as my competition, even my friends. I paid attention to what courses they were taking, whether they’re using any tutoring or college-counseling services, etc. I continued to push myself harder and harder, motivated by fear of failure. I constantly compared myself to others, let missing a few questions on a test ruin my day, and sometimes cried myself to sleep when the pressure became too much.

As my parents like to put it, “It was like a miracle.” In the last two years of high school, I took 10 Advanced Placement (AP) classes and received perfect scores on all of them. I scored in the top 1% on my SAT, received three perfect scores on SAT subject tests, and maintained a 4.50 weighted GPA at school.

This put me near the top of my class, except there was one problem. Many of my classmates had similar academic records as me AND had extracurricular activities that set them apart like: conducting scientific research, founding non-profit organizations, and having a portfolio of artwork to showcase.

When it came time for me to fill out my college applications, I struggled. Especially the essays, I HATED them. The part where you explain why you’re different, why you’re not just another perfect SAT score, why you’re an interesting person.

This took a huge toll on my self-confidence. In my eyes, I was still just a mediocre student that had to work so hard to just get to the heel of my classmates. To me, I wasn’t different, I was one of the thousands of stellar test scores, I was not an interesting person.

After many hours of pulling my hair out at my university counselor’s office, I managed to put together an essay related to business operations from my experience of hostessing at a local restaurant for two years.

During these years that I took academics seriously, I took much interest in mathematics and was at the top of my class for the subject. But I never considered applying to STEM programs. I felt that I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, or experienced enough to go into these fields. I was discouraged by hearing stories of how hard engineering is, how many people fail out after the first year, and so on… Despite the lingering feeling of interest in pursuing STEM, I applied mostly to general business and economics programs just to maximize my chances of getting into the top schools.

After months of waiting anxiously, I was finally offered spots at a couple of Ivy League schools along with several other top American universities. I was absolutely ecstatic, to say the least. And without too much thought, I enrolled at Cornell University.

The months leading up to my arrival at Cornell felt surreal. I spent the rest of my senior year flexing my Cornell hoodies, dreaming about all the trips to New York City I’ll take, and of becoming a successful Wall Street banker. It felt as if I had already achieved all of my life goals at this point.