Our College Experience (Part 2)

Soliana and Liz discuss their experiences applying to and attending college: things they did wrong and right. Learn from what we didn't know as teenagers. (Part 2)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hi, this is Leonardo with Being Beyond Admissions. Today we're bringing you an extended episode in two parts with Liz and Soliana talking about their experiences applying to and attending college. This is part two. We hope you enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

What's wrong with you? Why would you ever want to leave Harvard? Like that's a sentence that like we can all imagine someone saying to someone who's feeling unhappy or who was in a situation where they find the culture isn't aligning, right? And like that's what whatever, you know, the whole brand name of it all, what other people think about your experience, the buildup leading to you going is not your experience. Like your experience is how you feel and whether you're able to use a school to enrich yourself. That is why you're in college. You're not there for anything else. You're there to enrich yourself and to in sort of like you were saying, refine your ideas of what you want to explore in the world. You know, there's so many options. That's what's so exciting. College, you get to experiment with them and to see what you want to do. And, you know, also learn if they're gonna land a career, you know, and if you want to do a grad program because it's going to be fun, or a grad program because it's going to actually lead to a job that you'd like to have, you know, those are the kinds of questions that you can't really figure out until you're in an environment that is asking you to consider them. Um, it's very hard to figure that out outside of an institution. So, like, you know, um, if your institution isn't serving you in answering those questions, if you feel like you're just being taken along for a ride, you know, that's when you like sort of want to pause and sit back and think about are you happy? Did you make the right choice? How's your major treating you? Are you happy in this discipline that you chose? You know, like do you want to take, did you really like that out of the class? Maybe take a couple extra of that discipline and see what went. Because I definitely like I picked a major that I didn't know existed. And then I my double-bearing I d I doubled in political economy of industrialized societies. Oh, cool. But it was really fun. I because there was at Berkeley they had development studies and they had industrialized societies, basically, and you got to choose which was um cool because those are different disciplines, so it's not all putting it together, you know, and then uh pretending like someone can become the expert of these two very disparate things. Um, and then I rhetoric. I found rhetoric late, and rhetoric for me was fun, and that's when I was like, I was enjoyed politically con like P-E-I-S. You know, they're always like the end, they left it out. Um Berkeley. Um, but it was like it, I was really good at it. And I think I enjoyed being really good at it, and I quickly realized that I didn't want that to be my ultimate landing like place. I didn't want to be an attorney. My mom was an attorney and I sort of understood what that was day-to-day. Even the ACLU, I just couldn't imagine, you know, I was thinking about law, like, you know, law school costs. I just couldn't imagine um dedicating myself and my life to that, even if if I really believed in it, you know, just for me in terms of quality of life and imagining having loans and then making a salary of the ACLU. I couldn't, I didn't have any support from my family to help bridge the gap between those things. So um of course I could have gotten scholarships, but this is sort of the mindset, you know. And by the way, I graduated college in 2009, so it was the economic crash. So like all of this was very relevant. Um but um I so I I sort of realized that political economy, I was really interested in talking about like the the theory, the political philosophy and the way that we define ourselves. And like I loved early Marx. I got really into trying to like understand how the way that like the state asks us to sort of like sublimate our identity, the liberal state, to the liberal state as opposed to being workers within something that we aren't defined by our nation, you know, and sort of like that sparked my imagination and creativity so much more than anything. And that was a rhetoric class. Um, I remember taught by this professor, Sameer Esmir. She was such a badass. She was like this tiny woman who always wore black because she'd been a human rights lawyer in um in Palestine. And um, she she said that she would never wear color again because of everything that she'd seen in her cases. Um, and it was her statement. So she was like basically a much badder ass Johnny Cash, and she was so smart. Um, and she had us read Spivak and Talal Assad, and it was like my first exposure to decolonial studies, um, which was not as big of an of a um discipline at the time as it is now. Thankfully. Thankfully, that's become much more the norm in many departments, but it was not in my experience. And so to finally read um critiques of Western human rights narratives from the perspective of the people being saved, it like blew my mind. And then to read speedback sort of like dancing around um uh, you know, uh the same um and sort of like totally outperforming the white male um postmodernist that I'd been like sort of raised to, you know, bow down to. I was just like, what is this? And I just lost my mic. So um, so I ended up staying an extra half year just so that I could do a double major in Reddit because I was having a blast. Um yeah, it was really fun. But you know, I think I became quickly aware that like, unless I was trying to be a professor, there was no career coming from these things, you know. So that was my big question after graduation. I got crushed by the idea of grad school and like not knowing what the career path would be because there was like at that point, it was like being broadcast all over the country that the people who went to grad school straight from undergrad were the ones who were being crushed by debt terribly and couldn't get out from under it. And I was like, ooh, that's you know, what do I do?

SPEAKER_03 6:27

But yeah. Ooh, that sounds like a part two of you navigate graduating from college. I did it in 2008, so it was like I I remember like a lot of people that got offers rescinded from like investment banks and stuff like that. Like it was like a nutty, it was a nutty time.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

I know that's a whole thing we're talking about. They were the economists had a like it came out with an issue when it said the failure to launch generations.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

Thanks. Yeah, well, God's for it. I can tell you how it worked out. But what what was your major? What did you study? Um, I did English literature with a certificate, which is like basically a minor in Spanish literature. Cool. So I tried things and I never found. Like I tried history and literature and I was like, this isn't really it. And I think I tried something else when I was like, this also isn't it. And then I was just like, I like reading books, and then every year I would pretty much read all of my assigned reading the summer after school was done. I'd be like on the beach and be like, oh, George Elliot. Well, that was a good book. Like I just like wasn't I didn't really have any I don't I don't remember having any courses like that that made me feel like, wow, my mind is like I remember like learning interesting stuff, but I don't remember like ever taking a course that made me feel like wow, this is like kind of what I thought college was gonna be. Like it was a lot of other courses where I was just like horrified of being like this is what because you be had shopping period where like the first two weeks of school, you could go to any course and then at the end of the first two weeks of school, you like tell them what you want to take. And like some seminars you have to apply for, but for the most part you can take any course that you want to because they're not like over, they're not too full. Um, so you can go and they call it a shop, like shop different courses, and and the professor will give you the syllabus. It's quite odd because for the first like especially week of school, people are just like walking in and out of the class. Um, because people will just like sometimes people want to shop two classes at the same time. So they'll go to one and then they'll like leave and then like go to another one, or they'll leave early weeks backward. It's really weird. And then like people will just and like the questions that people are asking to or like in the service of deciding if they want to take the court, but people will be like, but what is the final, you know? Like, and just like whatever. Um, but you have like, yeah, so I took I had the experience of going into a lot of courses that I thought were gonna be like so fascinating, and then just being like, This is what I remember was like one that it was like something that has fashion in the title, and I was so excited because I was really it to fashion, and then the professor was just talking about like like metaphorical spaces, and I was like, This is not this is not what I wanted to be doing at all. Like it was this like so I was like the most like esoteric thing ever, and I was like, I don't even know what you're talking about, like so far. And then there was this like one Jamaica Kincaid course and Thomas Jefferson, and she was just like she she was like so obsessed with him, and I was like, This is like so not also what I want to be do. So I just I mean I had there were some like I remember taking like a course like on like I mean actually that's not true. So what my favorite course probably was music, like music mon B, which was about like um I think it was like a Beethoven bookstart to like sort of flip glass kind of and we listened to music and we had to like identify music.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

That was a really cool course, yeah. And I took like a course in extreme religions, and that was really cool. Cool. I took a wine course that was like a history seminar because of some professor who was this great who used to be the head of history department, and they like couldn't fire him because he was tenured. So he had at Harvard there's a thing where it's like if a professor has um had like misconduct with a student, they have to have an open door policy. Like open open door for office hours. That's like that's so much. What a great, yeah. It tells you that the professor has or gotten in trouble. So we know that when the professor because they're obliged to tell you they have an open an open door office policy at some point. So that when they tell you, you know. Oh, okay, but it was like all of them. It was like the how did English department have one because like he had had like he was having affairs with like boys, like it was just like a it was kind of a terrible place, you know. But um this history seminar, he like he would ask he would choose like a he would choose someone who he thought was pretty and ask them to like choose the course, the people who they want to take the course with, and then they would be able to count it as a history seminar. But we we drank wine. We learned about wine. It's like it's probably the one that I've employed. I was gonna say we learned how to like buy wine, think about wine, choose wine. It's always just like local, yeah, like everything else. So there were some like interesting, you know. And I said it abroad, which I loved. And I, you know, I took advantage of different like things, and for sure I had some wonderful experiences, and I would have um I think that if I thought that like it would have been, I think for me it probably was like a combination of like it was the culture, cultural, and like it was also me too. Like, so I think that like if I had thought like, oh, if I go somewhere else, like it would definitely be better. But I I don't know, it's really hard to say.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

But like yeah, well, it's important to have like I know like there's so many mistakes I made while I was there, but like overall it was the fit, you know, that I needed. Like I tell totally could have used resources better in many ways, like just things I didn't really know to do, you know. But at the same time, I basically use it as like in service of my intellectual development, but totally miss the boat on everything in terms of like networking, right? Like and um and setting up, which is classic for me. Like that's that's if I were to always do something, that would be the thing. So I had a great experience, but then I missed certain boats too, you know. So it's it is really hard to tell like what one could have even done, you know, and what to do, but it is nice to be like in touch with what, you know, you used it, it sounds like to then choose better each time that you chose another institution and to like choose what you you need, and like you still were able to like use that experience positively in many ways, right? Um and like Berkeley had its problems too because it really let you loose. Like there were kids who totally spun out, you know, completely spun out and like didn't receive counseling and not 100% needed it, you know. And then like we being the peer group would notice really late in the game, you know. So there were a couple of like pretty big tragedies in that sense. Um, so it's like it really is like in terms of knowing yourself, like it's hard to know.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

I think the most important thing is to just keep having those check-ins, you know, because like and that's also making me think too about how like um like I don't know if it's every school, but to my knowledge, it is like cover up those sorts of incidents, like when school and they're like when they're a mental health crisis, when students commit suicide, like they try to bury that stuff. So that's also just making me think about how like if you do go to try to like figure out some of this stuff through data, you will likely not be able to. You look at the wrong picture. Because like Harvard probably has the highest or the top three like retention rate, meaning that their students are not transferring, but that's also because of their own system, like Mark Zuckerberg is still enrolled, probably, because they don't unless you go through a formal process to like unenroll, then they just leave you on the books so that their numbers look better. So, you know, and then there's a lot of data that they don't want people to know so that they hide. So, like, you know, it's really important to talk to people, or like I'm sure that there are like I know on YouTube, on TikTok, there are a lot of current students, you know, like try to find people who are who are at the institution or have left very recently and listen to them sharing their experiences. Like if you have been accepted somewhere, you can almost always ask um the department of where you're interested in majoring to connect you with a current student. Um, and they're very likely to do that. Not every school will do that, but a lot of them will, and you can ask questions, and a lot of students will give you the truth. I've had those conversations, and students will tell you about negative things because no school is perfect and every school has their thing. And it's like it's really useful. Like I did that with grad programs more and I was able to like decide like, oh, what it what what of the negative things that are present at these different schools, like which are the ones that I want to choose to deal with? Because they all had positive things, and that was like an interesting criteria.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

So yes, I like that. Yeah, like what is the thing that you can tolerate versus not tolerate? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I really do like feel like for me with Berkeley, it was like having a wide array of things after having a very limited one, and like it was like this experience of going because I it's hard to explain the wealth that like I was alongside in high school. Like I we were not low income. My mom's a professional, but we had crazy debt, you know, and so we just weren't very we weren't well off our furniture, but like people come over and they'd ask me why my furniture didn't match. They'd ask me, like, you know, they I remember one time making a joke being like, well, like I we don't like can't vacuum every day. And they're like, oh, our house gets vacuumed three times a day. Like, you know, you said certain and like like the Ellisons went to my high school. Like they like people were getting flown to yachts all the time, you know, like to and the popular kids would get like flown to the yacht, and me with my little studded belt definitely wasn't getting flown to any yachts. But like, um, you know, I had a fine time because I found people outside of school and I found people like at shows and I found my people there, and then I got to be a nerd at school and I got through it and I was fine. I wasn't upset. It was it was totally okay. And I just knew like I didn't want to again not be able to afford like the ski trip that everyone was going and to clearly be on the outside of that, and that that was like had become for me a weirdly high level on my like what I need, my rubric of things I need from college, right? And I think that like to your conversation or your point of knowing yourself, knowing the things you need out of college, right? And out of this experience is important, right? So it's like I have transfer students now who are really intellectual, but know that like their awesome small institution that is trying to nurture them. They're like they need to party, like they just like need to go to a single party. And they're there's no social, they feel like they know everyone already, right? And they're like a sophomore. And that sounds superficial, but it's that sounds like a culture problem. It's a culture problem.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Yeah, you know, which again, like to your point, doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the school, but it's like that's a culture problem for that student because the culture of the school is what the issue is. So that's like more clear-cut to me.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Exactly. And that's not something to be ashamed of or to like say like it's a or to discount. Like if you feel like you know everyone and you haven't found your people and you do kind of need that feeling of like a big place, like great, know that about yourself, you know. And for me, that was kind of high up there. Berkeley's not a party school. I didn't go to like not do my studies, I just did there to be a lot of people and a lot of things going on and many options. And then on Thanksgiving break, I went and visited a bunch of my friends in LA who um from you know, from Berkeley, and none of their furniture matched, and I was so happy and it felt so good.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

This is to kind of wrap things up, this is making me think that like, you know, we're both saying in different ways, and that like you really shouldn't choose the school like on the reputation. Yeah. And like I think that we both would have known more about the schools if we were applying in 2026, because we'd be, you know, we're both researchers, like we'd be on YouTube and TikTok and like looking for those first person accounts and like you know, just having I think access to a lot more information than we did, you know, 20 plus years ago. And I think that like, you know, tell me if you agree with me, but it's making me think about how of course if you can visit campuses, you should, but that's not necessarily going to give you access, especially if it's an official campus visit tailored for, you know, prospective students. It's not necessarily going to give you the information that you want to. It might be different if you go and visit a friend or like uh, you know, a sibling and you go to classes with them, like that might give you like a more sort of you know picture. But that like you really need to be um doing your own research. And it doesn't necessarily mean going to the school, but like you need to be like finding people um in order if you want to figure out some of these things that we're talking about. If you're thinking like, how do I know what the culture of the school lived before? Or like, how do I know if like the school is telling you that they have like a really low student, you know, teacher to student faculty ratio? Like, how do I know if I'm really gonna get a great advisor or not? Like, you know, I think that what I'm what I'm thinking is like you can do a lot to figure that out. Um, and you know, let us know. Uh, leave us comments, let write to us, like tell us if you're having trouble finding some of that information because we also are a resource, and that's something that we are happy to like make specific videos or interview people who went to different schools and stuff like that, and try to bring you um information that would be relevant and figuring some of the stuff out because we recognize like we're we're not even like we're you know, we applied 20 plus years ago and we're not we don't, and we've been helping students apply since then. I don't think either one of us can say there's like a clear-cut way of like this is what one, two, three, four, here are the steps to be able to like not make the mistakes that we did. Because I don't even think that it's clear to me like to say what are the mistakes that we did. It's like you're a kid when you're doing this, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Totally. And yeah, like to your point, like definitely look for multiple accounts, find multiple, because there were some, and we can talk about this another time. There's some schools I didn't go to, like UCLA for one, and a couple of others, just based on like the one person I knew who went there and their personal experience of it. Right. You know, and it's like, oh, if that person, I don't, I you know, I can't know for at all if that person wasn't taken care of because they'd made crappy friends, or if it was because like they um actually Actually, like that was the culture that they found, like of UCLA, right? Like, for example, you know, of it's a massive school, right? But then I became biased because I only was listening to one account. Um, so it's really good to find accounts, definitely seek them out, but seek out multiple ones for a school, just because we all know like it's individual experience, right? And so like also making oh sorry, yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

You were making me think about how like I don't want to suggest that like it has to be a cultural problem either, because like we were making me think about how I think weather could like it could be both. Because like for me, certainly it was cultural that I had to like completely like you have to wear snow shoes, your jeans get all screwed up because of the salt, like it eats the fibers. So everyone has these like weird, like the back of your jeans will like it'll have like a it's like a bite taken out of it because the salt just like eats, yeah. It's like a it's like a thing that happens, like when there's snow on the ground for because there's like salt on the ground for like five or six months until April, there's like snow. So, like it's somewhat cultural, but it's also very much like a personal thing. Like people like different kinds of weather, and sometimes people will bashfully be like, Well, tell me that weather's an important bash to them. And I'm like, if weather is important to you as a person, then it should be an important thing, it should be up there. Like nobody can tell you what your priorities are. Like it's helpful for you if you figure out what they are, but no one can tell tell you that they're wrong. If you're like, I want to go to a warm school where like I'm gonna have small classes, like, and I don't have to like go into a lot of debt.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

That can be your listed priorities. Great, that narrows things down. That's fantastic, you know? Like, and like, yeah, it and and then if you change and you get their first year, it's okay too, you know. Like you're doing your best to make all of these decisions. So I think at the end of the day, like take some pressure off, like you're you can change things. We both found ways to sort of like stick with that first school, found ways to be happy within it or to like learn from and both, right? And like, but you can always change your mind.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

And always change your mind.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

And take, yeah, take the burden off. You're doing your best, and that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

That's all and there is no perfect school.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Yeah, definitely not, definitely not at all. Um, and you know, I wish school were I wish I wish you had um the like shopping period, but for schools, but sadly I know you know, that's what we really need is like to really know it's like you need speed dating or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

But totally, and I think that's important to think about, which is just that like as people who are I mean, I don't want to speak for you, as a person who wants to control things, like you know, it's um it's really helpful to know that like there is no way to like do this right, basically. Like my system of being like, oh, 10% of the acceptance, blah blah blah. It like it's so stupid, it doesn't make sense at all.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

And I know that now because I understand something about sadistics like but like but it worked for me, and there's no other there I cannot say that there would have been a better one.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Like there's there's because ultimately what it did was it it helped me to like finish my list and to like commit to the process, and like there's it actually would made no difference because it didn't, you know, it made no difference had I applied to less or more. Like it just I mean it would have made a difference um to me, I'm sure, in different ways. But it didn't like it didn't impact like my outcome um to apply to more schools in the way that I thought it did, but also like it didn't negatively impact me in any way to like enter into this process of like a completely wrong idea of how it worked, you know. So, but and I don't think that there, yeah. I mean, do you think that there's like a way, like even if you have like all of it's the personal decision that you don't have the information to make? I don't think there's any way it's gonna be different than that, even if like your whole family went to that school and your siblings gone there and you visited, like, of course, you're much more equipped to know, and you probably do have a good idea compared to somebody who's never visited the school, but you still visiting a school is not attending it. You know what the school was like in 1975 when your dad is there, it was not what it's like today. Like it's just like you keep it. So you know, going for a bit the big game is not going to a final. Like you just can't, you can't know. And I think that that's like really helpful, especially if you're somebody who likes to control things. If you want the answer, if you want someone to tell you, like, this is how to do it, this is how to make sure that you're gonna get into X number of schools, and you're gonna have this much, you know. It's like it's just there's no way. Like, there's there's no way. And every time someone gets in front of it, like the varsity blues, if you want to call it getting in front of it, like you know, like every time someone thinks that they've gained it and they've like figured out how to do it, it's like, I mean, I think guess that you can buy a like a building of a school. Like you can, you know, you can do that. That doesn't seem to work, but unless you want to buy and people sometimes think that they can donate a lot, but it's like it I think it needs to be like a building for them to do.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

No, like there's so much. It needs to be so much. Speaking from like experience with counseling, like I think when they're like, is it a donor? Like, does your do you pull weight?

SPEAKER_03 27:20

Like it's yeah, how much it means to be it doesn't mean that like you've given them a million dollars over the course of like donating for 20 years, it means like you've given them like sizable you know, resources that is going to like basically you know have them do something that they don't want to do, which they don't want to do most of the time. So they don't want to be like forced, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

And that's wild. And if that's you, congratulations. But it's not most of us, right? So, like there's no surefire way. There's no surefire way, it's random. If you really still want to go somewhere and you're you're a sophomore, you can apply. Again, you can try to transfer. Like I helped kids when I was teaching at NYU because I did end up going there for my master's. I helped kids transfer. Like it's to Brown, you know, like it's totally fine. You can do that. The most important thing is there's no silver bullet, you're doing great, you're working your hardest. When you get into a school that you wouldn't mind going to, celebrate. Celebrate because you're fine. So if you're still waiting for acceptances from your top places, you know, and you're not going to get them until like March, April, but you start hearing maybe from one or two safeties that you don't hate, just sit pretty on that. Like accept that. Pat yourself on the back. I've got a place. I feel good. And let yourself feel good in it because you could probably excel and have a blast at that school. Or you could go and decide to change. Like it's really low stakes at the end of the day. Like you're okay, you know. You can, it's you're gonna grow no matter what, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

So great if you get into your top school once we get around to, you know, um, the accept, you know, March, April, right? That's fantastic. But um, in the meantime, like let yourself and also maybe great if you don't.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

I mean, I don't say that I had a top choice, but I was just saying, hopefully, like, you know, anybody like listening can also, if you have any kind of like if you have your mind fixed of any kind of like big name school that you want to go to just because like you think that it's going to afford you some kind of like ambiguous opportunity because of the name of that school, like that's I would say a little bit true in the sense that I I think that I I I helped students apply to college because I worked at Harvard. Like I think like in that way, like, you know, but that's not the kind of career that most people are envisioning if they're thinking about like a school helping them get a job. So I think that like that's like, you know, I I don't I don't necessarily think of myself as like a cautionary tale, but I do think that like it's you know, it is not a good way to go to just like to think to think that to imagine the school has like earned its reputation because of you know, the wonderful, wonderful things that it does, if you are not like sure about like what those things are, and you specifically not to engage with.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

That is really good. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Um, a hundred percent. Let's talk again soon about also sometimes it's nice to go to a s a school that might be a little bit easier if you want to go to grad school because you want to be able to make those connections with professors.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

There's all these reasons why the brand list of top schools is should not be the thing that's that's um yeah, we should have a conversation about how it came totally not to interrupt you, but like we should totally have a talk about how it can be strategic to not go for a top school for undergrad and just like how to think about how to think about options post post the undergrad. Yeah. But this was so I loved hearing more about your experience. I'm glad that we got the talk about like you know, what it was like for us 20, 22, 23 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

We're giving away our ages.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

Okay. I mean, I just think it's like it's relevant in because it was such a long time ago and so many things have changed, and yet it's interesting how like so many things have changed. Like we apply the paper, and yet, like, still after 20 something years with all the experience we have, but we still are saying like there's no like right answer, there's no way of doing this. There's no like we can you can you can get guidance that will help you for sure like navigate it much better than you would without guidance, but like yeah. And if anybody tells you that they, you know, that they do have the right answer, I would suggest you don't believe doubt that. Doubt that. But yeah, it's so I like I'm looking forward to having more conversations with you.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

We're not gonna look under Lenora about you know, just anything, anything college, college related, admissions, college life, finding your place, anything, whatever it is, we're here for it.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Amazing. Thank you, Liz. Thank you for listening to our extended episode with Liz and Solana discussing their experiences applying to and attending college. We hope you enjoyed, and please check out our other episodes about strategizing and writing your college application essays. And as always, if you have anything you would like us to discuss or have any questions for us, you can just ask hello at cbeondections.com.