Who’s Off to Where to Break a Sweat?

Krista

Sport: Softball

“I’m excited to meet lots of new people and continue playing the sport. It’ll be fun to start playing for a college team.”

Clare

Sport: Crew

“It’ll be fun to row for my college team!”

Emma

Sport: Soccer

“I am most looking forward to the challenge I will find in college soccer and the chance to make an impact on the team.”

Tade

Sport: Volleyball

“I’m just excited about the new experience with new coaches and playing at a higher level.”

Kaity

Sport: Crew

“I am really excited to compete at the next level, to be able to enter into a program that has been doing really well is really amazing!”

Cloey

Sport: Field Hockey

“I have always loved to play sports and it will be exciting to see what intercollegiate sports are like. I cannot wait to meet my teammates and start training! I really love playing field hockey, so I am glad that I will be able to continue doing what I love at a college that I love!”

Alyssa

Sport: Field Hockey

“I’m excited to keep in shape and be at the next level of competition. I’m excited to meet new people and travel. Travel—that’s a big one. And meet new people from new schools and sports teams.”

College Acceptances

It’s that time of year again. Seniors are checking mailboxes frantically, clicking on portals to check application updates between classes and generally succumbing to the madness that accompanies college acceptances. As responses pour in, it’s important to take a step back and take a deep breath. Read on to find out some tips for dealing with responses of all kinds, from rejections to acceptances.

Rejection
So, you’ve been waiting to attend Harvard since kindergarten, with your room as covered in paraphernalia as Rory Gilmore’s. The letter comes. “We regret to inform you…” is typewritten on the page, signifying that you are not among the seven percent of applicants who were accepted to the university.

Whether you’ve been rejected from an Ivy League, a UC or a state school, rejection can be difficult to face. However, there are a few considerations to think about. First, remember the enormous amount of competition to get into college. This year is extremely impacted, making the process more challenging than ever before. You have already taken the initiative to gain a college education, and you will still have one. Next, try not to take the rejection personally. The college is not pronouncing you a deficient human being; they simply do not have room to admit every student, despite outstanding qualifications from many. They may have had a higher number of applicants for a certain major or activity. Also consider that you will attend the college you are meant to attend. Acceptance to an academically rigorous college that does not fit your skill level will only result in frustration and disappointment.

Despite these practical considerations, you may feel down-in-the-dumps for a few days or weeks. Take some time to recover without going overboard; do not down an entire gallon of chocolate ice cream, but punch some pillows or write an angry letter to the college (that you won’t actually send) if necessary. Talk to some friends who also received rejections to remind yourself that you’re not alone.

In extraordinary circumstances, appealing the college’s decision may be an option. At Presentation, the college counselors have a strict policy about appeals: you must commit to going to the college if accepted on appeal. This is because of the large amount of work and time necessary for the appeals process. If you are willing to appeal, you must be absolutely sure that you will attend the college.

So, what constitutes eligibility to appeal? You may appeal a college decision only if extraordinary circumstances were not included in your original application. For example, if a family member had a terminal illness that transferred the care of the family to you and thus lowered your grades, college would be interested in the information. If these circumstances were not mentioned in the original application, an appeal would be appropriate. Perhaps the grades filled in on the application were entered incorrectly, or a major activity was not included. Simply wanting to get into a college is not a suitable case for an appeal. If you are serious about appealing to the college, first commit to another college that has guaranteed you admission. You can withdraw your commitment if the appeal is granted. Then, make sure to follow the steps for the particular school very carefully, and meet with your college counselor for more detailed information.

Rejection is an integral part of the human experience. Take a deep breath, look at the other doors opened invitingly and soldier on.

Wait-Listed
This year, the UC campuses are employing wait lists for the first time because of the large number of qualified applicants they do not have room for. Depending on how attached you feel to the college, you can decide either to keep your name on the wait list or withdraw it. Wait lists vary by college. Some have wait lists of thousands that give a very small chance of admission, while others have short wait lists that have larger chances of admission. If you would like to remain on the wait list, you must respond to the college’s offer to confirm. Like the appeals process, be sure to commit to another college that has guaranteed your admission in case the wait list college does not work out.

Accepted
Congratulations! You are going to college! A university has decided to welcome you on campus for four years of opportunity and adventure. Once you have all of your acceptance and rejection letters, it is time for decisions. Follow this process in order to make the transition smoothly.

First, take some time to celebrate. Go out to dinner with your family, enjoy some frozen yogurt with your friends or buy sweatshirts of each college you gained acceptance to. Walk around with a smile plastered to your collegiate visage for a while.

Review your financial aid awards. If money is an issue for your family (college is an expensive commodity), look realistically at the colleges you have applied to and whether they have offered you financial aid. If you simply cannot afford a school, it may come off of your list.

Visit each college, if you have not already. Take a tour of the campus, and attend classes with a current student if necessary. Explore the surrounding area to gain a greater sense of the community. Attend a sports game, stay the night with someone you know and have a meal on campus. Immerse yourself in the culture. After each visit, write down your immediate impressions while they are clear in your mind. Is this a place you can imagine yourself living for four years?

Prioritize. Begin to rank your colleges from first choice to last choice. If you cannot decide between two, make a pro and con list. Review how you felt when visiting both of them. If you have decided on a major, consider which college has a stronger program and internship opportunities for your career of interest. When you feel certain, make your decision!

As soon as your decision is made, make sure to withdraw your other applications. Other students who really want to attend those colleges are on wait lists, waiting for students to withdraw their names. Give someone else the satisfaction of an acceptance. Next, accept your offer of admission from your chosen college and submit your Statement of Intent to Register by May 1. Apply for housing as soon as possible, since it operates on a first come, first serve basis. Send in your deposit and accept your financial aid award. If your college provides the opportunity to apply for further scholarships, apply for them as soon as possible. In April, more information will be sent out regarding placement examinations for the colleges in order to find out which level math or English class you will enter. Mark freshman orientation on your calendar.

Finally, make sure that you remember to keep focus on your current schoolwork. The second-semester senioritis can be quite alluring, especially when combined with spring fever. However, colleges have the power to withdraw your admission offer if your grades slip significantly. Plus, an A means that you won’t have to take the class final! Enjoy your last few months of high school, and embrace the college you have chosen. It’s been a long road, and your reward is waiting.

Operation: College Art Supplements

Stanford wants students to write an essay describing themselves for their roommates, while NYU is asking this year for applicants to write about a famous New Yorker they’d like to spend the day with. Students can often spend weeks perfecting a perfect response for the college admission officers to read. It will be, after all, one of the few ways a student can stand out of the thousands of prospective applicants. Every year, however, there are some in the senior class who take on an even more daunting additional task: the art supplement.

The art supplement portion of the college application often requires compositions that involve months of work. The compositions cover a wide range of topics – the visual arts of drawing, painting, photography, and computer graphics as well as the performing arts of music, dance, and theater.

For visual arts, colleges typically require another essay and an art portfolio consisting of at least 10 – 15 pieces of the student’s work. The conditions of the portfolios are as varied as the supplementary essay prompts. Some colleges will give their prospective students free reign, while others have very specific instructions. For example, UCLA requires a self-portrait while the Rhode Island School of Design in the past has asked that all portfolios include a drawing of a bicycle. This year, several Presentation students have become very familiar with the work involved in creating such supplements.

For those who know senior Corinne DiTullio, it comes as no surprise that she has been preparing her art portfolio for four years. The signs were everywhere – the quilt she made for her APUSH project of the events leading up to the Civil War and the dedication she shows collaborating with the Valenzuela Theater to produce the costumes for the school’s productions. For the last seven months, however, she has devoted herself specifically to perfecting her best work for her portfolio.

“My [UCLA] self portrait took over thirty hours,” DiTullio says of her endeavor’s time commitment. “I had a table set up in my room with all my collage pieces and there were some days I would work for eight hours or more on it and stayed up until midnight trying to make progress.”

The time commitment to do the art supplement for the performing arts is just as consuming. To do the music supplement for her colleges, senior Emily Nguyen was required to send in a CD with a professional recording of her work. With piano songs lasting eight minutes each, she practiced for four to six hours a day for a week to make her recording.

“Everyone who submits this supplement is extremely advanced and plays their songs impeccably,” she says as she recalls the experience. “I was so troubled about making it perfect that I had to restart the machine every single time I made a slip or teeny mistake. This meant I spent a lot of time playing and replaying my songs.”

She adds, “You can never procrastinate in music. I definitely put more priority in my college essays, but I regret that I could not completely showcase my abilities.”

The nerve racking demands and the need for perfection also affected DiTullio. Her advice to future seniors considering an artistic future in college?

“My advice would be to start early,” DiTullio says. “I worked over the summer on my portfolio, which really helped me get ahead. If I could change anything, I would have finished even more done in the summer. ”

Nguyen offers further advice for the musical inclined. “If you have an idea of what colleges you want to apply to, research them and see if they accept music supplements,” she says. “Start recording now so you can have plenty of time to perfect your playing. Most importantly, pick pieces you love! If you drudge through a song, the music department heads who will be listening will be able to tell.”

College counselor Mary Connolly says that a dramatic arts portfolio can also give some students an edge in such a competitive admissions environment. While most colleges do not require an audition, it is a way for those interested in a theatrical future to stand out. The National Association for College Admission Counseling knows that many students are unable to easily travel to individual colleges for auditions and so it holds national fairs in exchange. During these one-day events, such as the one held annually in San Francisco in October, prospective students can audition for the attending 120 schools.

While some students say they would much rather draw or play music than write an essay, Mrs. Connolly points to the grueling process of spending time alone for hours on end. As she says, “It’s not like going to art therapy.” Still, despite the extra time and effort above and beyond Pres’ already grueling requirements, these students all say that they hope their work will pay off with an acceptance letter this spring.

music clips from Emily Nguyen’s music portfolio

Appreciating Affirmative Action

White? Check. Female? Check. Affluent? Check. Harmed by affirmative action? Check.

Around this time each year, seniors at Presentation are applying to college. In the application, we are all forced to decide how we want to define our ethnicity. Many white females, like Pres students, are infuriated with “reverse discrimination” implemented through affirmative action, but I have a problem with this mindset.

On college applications, colleges are required to ask your ethnicity. However, you are not required to answer, as there is a “decline to state” option. If students are so worried about reverse discrimination, then why not omit ethnicity? As a white female, affirmative action tends to disadvantage me; but I do not feel the need to complain about this disadvantage if I can opt out of it.

The purpose of Affirmative action is to admit students who are at a structural disadvantage because of race. Presentation girls, for example, have a structural advantage because they do not have to worry about things like affording test prep classes or books as these materials are readily available to them via the Pres staff or library. In contrast, students that come from low-income neighborhoods are at a structural disadvantage, as they do not benefit from the same luxuries offered to Pres students.

Like all policies before it, affirmative action is not perfect. Being a relatively rich white girl, I understand that I am put at a disadvantage in direct consequence. Yet this small disadvantage doesn’t compare to the challenges faced by students in lower socioeconomic brackets. Affirmative action simply attempts to rectify over 200 years of binding discrimination.

To me, there is no reason to complain about something that you are not being forced to do. So to all those confronted by the wrath of “reverse discrimination,” why not decline to state?

Minority Majority

We hear the term “minority” all over the place with immigration and population discussions and especially with the topic of affirmative action. The official definition from the American Heritage dictionary is “the smaller of two groups forming a whole.” But what does it really mean in our society?

Today this term is generally and loosely used to describe different racial or ethnic groups which are, frankly put, not “white.” Sometimes “economic minority” is also used to refer to the working poor or the unemployed. Historically, the majority of students accepted into colleges are middle- to upper-class whites. Some colleges attempt to counteract this by way of affirmative action, which works to diversify the student body and provide the “minorities,” both ethnic and economic, with a fair playing field.

However minority no longer means “the smaller group.” Whites, especially in California, are now becoming numerical minorities. According to data derived from self-identification questions on census bureau estimates, California is referred to as a “minority-majority state,” meaning its combined minority population exceeds its majority population. Other minority-majority states include Hawaii, Texas, and New Mexico. And New York, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, and Maryland, each with a minority population of about 40 percent, seem to be on their way as well. In fact, NewAmericanMedia.org predicts that Maryland will become the first eastern minority-majority state in the next 18 years.

In the coming years, it is speculated that the term “minority” may become fundamentally obsolete. With the continual rate of immigration, it is possible that most, if not all, states will become “minority-majorities,” making all ethnicities “minorities” since they would be under 50 percent.

So what will colleges do if this prediction proves to be true? There is no set protocol but it leaves questions about the future of affirmative action, and whether or not it will even be in existence.

Indian, not Asian!

This is an important moment for you. You’re about to take your first SAT and every piece of information is absolutely vital. It’s time to fill out the race box and you stare down in confusion at the choices…African American…Native American…Asian American…Indian?

Newsflash: India is part of Asia. I know that might be a shock to those of you who never pay attention during history or geography, but it is indeed true. Especially in the Bay Area, people clearly distinguish between “Indians” and “Asians”. “Indians,” of course, being the term used to describe those from the Indian subcontinent, and the term “Asian” being the term used to describe anyone from Japan, China or Korea. For the most part this causes little confusion, that is, until someone tries to rationalize it in their mind. A helpful tip to everyone out there—never try and make sense of two things: government policies and human behavior (especially not parental behavior. You will go insane). For though the stereotypes attached to Indians and Asians are practically the same (extremely smart, focused on studies, clueless about anything considered cool and possessing extremely strict parents), apparent flaws in the teaching of geography have ensured that Indians are never allowed to call themselves Asians.

This idea is especially noticeable when trying to decide on which ethnic group is the most… accurate description for standardized testing purposes. It will forever remain a mystery to me as to why Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans are grouped together, as there is absolutely no connection between the groups. In addition, I wonder why “Indian” is never an option since more than 9.5 million Indians live in the United States according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While it is up to College Board to determine where exactly Indians and every other race fit into place, a little uniformity in categorizing races would be appreciated. The inconsistencies within accounting for races seem to be counterproductive. Why is it that white skinned people are referred to as “White” without hesitation whereas black skinned people are referred to as “African American”? Moreover, why does race ever need to come into play in the first place? When looking at the big picture, involving race in anything is never a good idea; it only tends to lead to confusion and continual ignorance. Who knows—maybe in the future, colleges will stop caring about the color of our skin and focus instead on the fact that we are all human—though I’m sure they will still care about our GPA.

College Equestrian Scene

Many Pres girls have been recruited for college athletics this year, joining illustrious teams such as the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley to forge their ways to victory. However, one sport has been routinely ignored by colleges, but is steadily gaining importance: the sport of horseback riding.

Though many do not acknowledge it as a sport, horseback riding requires an enormous amount of time, athleticism, commitment and humility to forge a successful bond between horse and rider. Lately, Bay Area colleges have been recognizing the value of this sport as more and more schools develop their programs. Stanford University, Cal Poly SLO, Santa Clara University, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz have come to the forefront of California schools ready to compete with the East Coast.

However, horseback riding teams in this area as of yet are not considered varsity sports. In order to gain recognition by the NCAA, 40 Division I or a combination of 50 Division I and II schools must consider it a varsity sport. Due to the small number of schools that host horseback riding teams, this has not yet occurred. Instead, the IHSA, or Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, acts as the governing body for the various teams. The colleges in the Bay Area-Zone 8, Region 1- compete against one another for regional and subsequently state titles in about eight to ten shows throughout the fall and winter quarters. The IHSA competitions are much different from regular horse shows, however. Instead of riding one’s own horse, the host school of the competition provides horses to ride. Riders are not allowed to “warm up,” or get accustomed to, their borrowed horses at all before entering the show ring. The ability to show an unfamiliar horse is a valuable one, and riders switch often during practice to prepare for the competitions.

Since horseback riding is not a varsity sport, it is considered a club level sport by universities and thus does not receive much funding, especially if the school does not have an on-campus equestrian center. Stanford University’s renowned Red Barn is one of the top facilities in California, with state-of-the-art equipment, recognized trainers and clinicians, and twenty donated horses for team members to ride. UC Davis also has a very nice equestrian center, which is being remodeled currently to add on additional arenas and barn space. However, many schools such as Santa Clara University and UC Santa Cruz require members to board their horses in the surrounding areas and book lessons at various places each week.

Skill level for the equestrian teams is all over the map, from novice riders who only walk and trot to experienced eventers who own their own horses. The vast number of divisions in each show allows the teams to accept a wide range of experience levels. Tryouts are usually held at the beginning of the school year or per semester, with riders grouped into levels of competition. Time commitment is flexible, with most clubs requiring attendance at club meetings and one lesson per week. Like clubs at Presentation, Santa Clara requires its members to complete six hours of volunteer work per quarter to remain a member in good standing. The membership scale varies dramatically from school to school; while Stanford has about 50 riders, Santa Cruz boasts a small dressage team of eight. Says Kaitie Daw, captain of the equestrian team at Santa Clara, “We are a very small team and still trying to become more established. We only had seven competing members this year, but also had a few noncompeting members. We are pretty low key; as far as practice goes riders can commit as much time as they like to practicing, but we do require one lesson a week for competing members.

“Currently we don’t have a lesson program set up for girls who don’t have horses. The school doesn’t own horses either. For those who don’t have a horse we help them find a local barn with lessons that will fit their needs. Also, group lessons for team and club members are in the works, so members without horses will have a definite place to ride.”

There are also many different types of riding to choose from, depending on the college. Most possess both western and English divisions, with some English divisions divided into show jumping, eventing (cross-country obstacles) and dressage. The eventing and dressage teams are usually more selective because of the finessed riding required; widely respected clinicians such as Brian Sabo often come to Davis to coach their eventing team.

Overall, collegiate equestrian teams are definitely exploding throughout the Bay Area. UC Berkeley is trying currently to put a team together, Sonoma State has just added one and many other schools may soon follow suit. If you would like to take your love of horses to college with you, these schools’ programs may provide great opportunities.