Wow, final blog huh. That’s crazy. Honestly I think this semester has really flown by and it’s crazy to think that I’m almost done with the first major stage of my life. However, on the topic of reflection, let’s take a look at what basically defined this semester for me, my classes! Against my better judgment, I will score all my classes out of 10 and just talk about my overall experience with each one. I’ll go in order of which period I have them in, and it’ll be great fun. 

 

Period 1: Linear Algebra – 9/10

Linear Algebra gets an overall 9/10. I’ve always enjoyed my math classes not so much for the content, but more the environment of stressed out coping students that really makes it feel connected. I would also like to shout out Mrs. Moore for being a very cool and fun teacher and really helping to bring the package of ELA together as a whole for a very entertaining (albeit stressful) class. In addition, the conversations that people have at 7:00 am before class starts are actually some of the funniest things I’ve heard in my life. The only caveat is that I’m bad at linear algebra so 9/10.

ELA in a nutshell

 

Period 2: Film and Video – 8/10

Film and Video gets a solid 8/10. Now why am I taking film and video? Because in order to get into any of the UC system schools I needed two credits of fine arts in the same subject, and me being a moron took acting in semester 1 of freshman year (which was a mess), so here I am. However, I would say I quite like this class overall. It’s pretty chill, the teacher is very nice, the projects can be pretty fun, and overall it’s a very solid class. The only reason that I don’t raise it higher is because none of my friends took the class with me (because they’re not bozos who didn’t read the UC system requirements).

Period 3: AP Lit – 10/10 (of course!)

Now for my first 10/10, AP Lit. I actually had a lot more fun with this class than I thought I would coming into it. I really liked watching some of the films, reading some of the books, and the overall class environment. However, I would say the reason this gets a 10 instead of a 9 is because of the blogs. I’ve really enjoyed the blogs because I can write random stuff and have fun with things, and I really appreciate that.

Period 4: Physics C – 7.5/10

Physics C gets a 7.5/10 because it reflects my physics grade. I actually don’t think the class is too bad. Mr. Farrell, while albeit a bit inconsistent in terms of teaching quality, gets the majority of stuff done pretty quick and can be pretty funny. I have quite a few friends in the class that make it enjoyable(it’s the Linear Algebra situation of many stressed out coping students fighting for their lives). However, the reason why I don’t like the class as much is because I can’t understand electricity and magnetism for the life of me and I’m actually going to bomb my AP tests in a few weeks.

Me reading the first page of every physics exam (I couldn’t do a single question)

 

Period 5: Strength and Performance – 9/10

I give S&P a strong 9/10. I think having strength before lunch is really nice because once I’m done working out, I can go eat. It’s also a really nice break in my day and I get to hang out with Mohammad and Matthew Ru who are my favorite lifting partners. The only issue with the class is that it’s after physics and it’s pretty hard to resist the urge to drop the bar on my face after failing an exam (physics can end the pain of physics).

Period 6: Lunch – 9.5/10

I rated lunch a 9.5/10 because I actually have a lot of fun during my lunch periods. I’m a peer tutor so 3 days a week I head up to the Lit center, and I actually look forward to it a lot because we have some of the most ratchet conversations in that room when the days are slow so it’s great fun. I like normal lunch periods too, but the only issue is that I always have chem lunch so I don’t get as much time to chill and eat my food, but overall, a pretty good period.

Period 7: AP Chem – 9/10

I gave Chem a 9/10 because I actually really like the vibes. Despite chem being lowkey kinda hard this semester, I really like the people in my class and Mrs. Brucker is a great teacher who gets stuff done and has a good sense of humor to make the class quite enjoyable. I have nothing bad to say about chem this semester besides the fact that I have a skill issue in doing chemistry, but overall, really good.

Me on my way to turn in my lab with 472% error

 

Period 8: Blended AP Macroeconomics – 10/10

I really liked Macro this semester. The vibes are great, the people (mostly) are good, and the class isn’t that hard while also being pretty interesting, so all major pluses. Mrs. Barbino is a great teacher who manages to tame the very hectic 8th period nature of the class while also teaching well. Finally, this class is blended so like 20% of time, I get to go home early so major W’s there. Very good class that I would recommend everyone going through high school to take.

 

Overall, I had a pretty good time this semester. Definitely some rough bits where my grades didn’t look so pretty, and looking at my finals and AP schedule, I think I better buckle in for one last rodeo unless I want to fall flat on my face in the final moments which would be super embarrassing. Other than that, I would like to thank everyone for reading all my wonky blogs across a whole year, and I wish everyone the best!

Hi. So I was brainstorming ideas in the middle of math class when I came up with an ingenious idea to do a tierlist of how much I liked (or disliked) writing all of my college essays. I wrote essays for about 13 different schools (I’m counting all the UC’s as one big school) in addition to the common app, and like many others, I did not have that much fun with them at the time. But now that decisions are back and the journey is over, I thought this would be a good way to reflect on a frankly awful experience. 

 

The criteria for ranking high is based on my a.) difficulty of the prompt(s) b.) the amount of essays I had to write c.) how fun/unfun the prompts were d.) how well I think I did with the essay e.) how much I spited the process of writing the particular essay. Whether or not I got admitted will not be considered (because then the salt factor would take over). The tiers will be ranked from A tier being the best to “Punch Me” tier being self explanatory. Contrary to most traditional lettered tier lists, there is no S tier because, in a vacuum, all of these essays were horrible and I never want to do them again. 

POV: Me going to sleep on 12/31 after hitting submit for my final college

A Tier:

This tier basically consists of all the schools whose essays were really easy. Wisconsin and Michigan both had very long form essays, and the content was very similar, so in reality I only had to write one then reuse it for the other. I thought that the actual content of the essay was also pretty good thanks to the increased amount of space. Then, I used the exact same format and content in my Cornell, UIUC, and Northwestern essays so that’s why they are in A tier as well. Finally, Emory was also really simple and short and I quite enjoyed the second essay asking about witnessing a historical event so I also put it in A. 

 

B Tier:

I only have one school in the B tier and that is Yale. Now did I get into Yale? No. But I did think Yale’s essays were pretty good overall. Many of the short answer questions were pretty fun and I managed to pump them out in a day. The long essay for Yale was also pretty easy because it was a “change the community” type essay of which I wrote like a bajillion times. Now the reason why Yale is not in A tier is because of their really awful “Why Us” essay. Now “Why Us” is pretty common, so why couldn’t I just copy and paste? Because the limit was 125 words. So while it may seem easy considering it’s short, I actually very much disliked this limit. I think that it’s such a pointless limitation because what am I supposed to express in 125 words that adds any sort of substance to my application. So I thought really hard, didn’t come up with anything meaningful, and eventually just wrote something down because the deadline was coming up. Thus, B tier.

C Tier:

This tier are essays I thought of as “mid”. I did not enjoy these essays, but when looking at some of the other ones I had to write, these honestly weren’t too bad. The major issues with these essays were either length or difficulty. The UC applications were 4 separate 350 word essays which in my opinion, was a lot, and their weird deadline meant that I spent most of November grinding out these essays. So while I think my essays turned out alright, I did not enjoy having to spend a whole month writing those essays (also really didn’t like having to fill out an entirely different application). UPENN was my ED school, so maybe it’s in C out of spite, but honestly, the essays were pretty short and honestly not that complex. However the amount of stress that these essays caused me because it was my ED school was so immense. In addition, I was pressured by my parents to change these essays drastically in the last hours before I turned them in, so honestly I didn’t feel very confident about them, so UPENN gets a C. Finally, UChicago. UChicago was the first essay that I wrote because I initially was going to ED there, but then I saw their “special prompt” question, and I immediately switched up. Overall, once I actually sat down to write the essays, they weren’t too bad, but the bogus factor puts UChicago in C.

Me staring at the UChicago prompts having no idea what to write for 2 months.

D Tier:

These essays I have bone to pick with. The first and most problematic was the Common app. I started my Common App in July and I didn’t finish until November because I was switching things up so much. I had to do so much for this awful essay that I think I would literally bleed from my eyes if I had to read it now, so D. University of Washington is also there because I applied last minute (I was very scared I was just not going to go to college so I just threw it in). Considering the time crunch in addition to the fact that I chose to write the Honors Program essays which were absolutely awful in a day definitely puts it in D (definitely not my fault). Finally Stanford. Now I would have really liked to go to Stanford, but my essays were so booty. My parents (a common theme), also really wanted me to go, so they put a lot of pressure on me to make these good, and just like Penn, I changed a lot of them up last second and the stress and the pure amount of writing I had to do for Stanford was not fun at all so D.

Punch Me:

Harvard was so bad. Of all the essays that I chose to write, I regret picking to apply to Harvard the most. Now some of the questions were ok, but I really didn’t like how they hid them in different sections of the common app when they should have just been listed all together, and I didn’t even notice some until the last couple days so that was not fun. My biggest bone to pick is the fact that they just have a completely open ended question. Maybe Harvard thought they were being so clever with their decision to make a long open ended question, but this stressed me out so much. I remember being in total shambles for weeks on end, eventually just writing something down, then reading it again then going back into a vegetative state because of the absolute atrocity that was my essay. So a month passed and eventually I had no choice but to hammer the essay out, and it was the very last essay that I chose to finish, so overall a very bad experience with Harvard all for me just to get rejected. I would rather have Mike Tyson sock me in the face than do that all over again. 

Final Comments:

So despite all my hatred for all of my college essays, I’m happy that I’m done. I’m happy with where I ended up, and honestly, I quite appreciate the time to take a look back at all that I did (even though it felt hopelessly inadequate at the time), and I will most definitely use this awful experience to make sure that I enjoy the next couple years of my life so when I look back, it isn’t as hopeless as it was this time around.

Final List

Link if you wanna try