Is there a word for the feeling when you’re driving home on a road trip and you see the particular roll of a familiar hill, the specific shape of an underpass, or a certain clearing in a row of roadside trees and realize you’ve seen it before? There’s probably one in German (the Germans have words for everything), and I bet it includes that overwhelming wave of familiarity. “You’re almost home,” the landscape says. “It’ll be okay.”
I felt that wave at Exit 45 of I-90, right by Eastview Mall, driving home from Tufts University (my dream school), the last stop on my pandemic college tour. In that moment, I knew I would enroll at the University of Rochester, and although the stress of uncertainty was gone, I couldn’t help but feel I’d settled for second-best. I was uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the way home.
I wonder now — what was it like for my parents, just one week later, watching their daughter sit at the family computer and sob as she makes one of the biggest decisions of her life, knowing she’s turning down her dream? What can you do in that moment?
You might tell her that it’s still ultimately her decision — that although Tufts isn’t realistic, she has other fantastic and affordable schools to choose from. Or that she can wait until Decision Day in case she changes her mind. But she won’t.
When it’s over with, you’ll encourage her to join the “UR admitted students” groups, and that helps. She’ll meet three of her best friends in one group — and her future boyfriend too. She’ll accidentally join an LGBTQ+ affinity group chat and not realize she’s the only straight person until several weeks later (years later she will realize she was never straight to begin with, but that’s another story). She’ll get a tour from your colleague’s child, and they’ll tell her about all the perks of campus life that she hadn’t considered.
And one day, months, or maybe years after that day when she sits, making the leather of the office chair wet with tears, she’ll realize that it was one of the best decisions she could ever make.
Not all campus brats are made the same way, but this is my story.
I had decided at a very young age that I would go to URochester (although it’s always been “the U of R” to me). I would get free tuition and I could hang out with my dad all the time. From a slightly-less-young age, I threw out that idea entirely and decided I would attend MIT or maybe CalTech. I knew nothing of these universities except that they were Good, and I, as a “gifted kid” needed to attend a Good School.
Lockdown began in my junior year of high school, right around the time I might have started researching and visiting colleges. It was hard to get a good idea of my options without live college fairs and guided tours, but I managed to narrow my search down to six schools. URochester only made the cut because of the tuition benefit.
I also developed a set of criteria for what makes a good school for me:
1) Lecture class size (small)
2) Name recognition
3) Prettiness of Campus
4) Proximity to Wegmans
Also considered, though far less consequential, were things like quality of mascot, pleasantness of color scheme, and catchiness of alma mater song.
At the top of my ranking was Tufts. Tufts was basically like this university’s cool older cousin. The campus was modern and fresh, the course catalogue was teeming with fascinating classes, and the professors loved to work with undergraduates. Their mascot was the regal elephant, my favorite animal as a child, and their colors were a dignified light blue and silver. It even had a Wegmans (rare in Massachusetts) just eight minutes from campus.
During the months of composing my applications I was told endlessly not to get my hopes up. I wrote and rewrote supplemental essays until they stopped looking like words. I put more effort into my appearance for my admissions interview with Tufts than I did for my high school graduation.
The work paid off. I got in. I got into five of the six schools I applied to, in fact, but Tufts was the only one that mattered. The dread I’d been feeling since March 2020 was finally lifting. The only problem was cost. I am lucky that both my parents were able to graduate college without debt. This meant they could start saving for my and my sister’s educations as soon as we were born. I’m incredibly lucky to be in the position to say this.
However, to private universities like Tufts and URochester, college funds aren’t all that helpful. When these universities audit your finances, they see just how much your family is able to spare and try to take everything they can. At Tufts, my acceptance came with the expectation of me paying full tuition, which, at the time, was about the value of my childhood home. Per year.
I was heartbroken. I’m sure I’m not alone. Many of my friends chose this school over their real top choice because of financial aid. I blame the culture of American high schools which are in an almost incestuous relationship with the higher education industry. When you spend four years of parties, family reunions, and holidays being asked “Where do you want to go to college?” and when others act like the college process is the only interesting thing in your life, it starts to become what you build your identity around.
I felt shame turning down Tufts. I told my mum I’d rather have been rejected because then at least I would have had no part in the death of my dream. The shame was deeper, too, because in turning down Tufts I was settling for my hometown. I’d always been the least adventurous in my family, and now here I was accepting my fate to live, study, and sleep within a one-mile radius of the hospital in which I was born. I have a feeling that most campus brats carry a piece of this shame. The shame of settling. But it will fade, most likely. For me it did. Here’s what might help:
The biggest factor in my journey was getting in contact with other admitted students as soon as possible. In the same way that Tufts was my dream school, this university is the dream of hundreds if not thousands of high school students every year. When you hear your peers gush about their programs, about the campus, about the research, you might start to see the University through their eyes. You’ll meet people who are astoundingly brilliant and incredibly accomplished in these groups and you’ll realize that if they chose to come here, there must be something special in this school that you can’t see.
Another piece of advice: Talk with currently enrolled campus brats! I was shown around by my fellow history brat, Eleanor Lenoe ’21, and knowing that she’d gone through the same choices and worries about staying in Rochester meant I could be more honest with her about my hesitations. Just seeing how at-home she felt on campus — how she had redefined her relationship with the University to be her own rather than an offshoot of her dad’s — I saw what my future could look like and I wasn’t scared or ashamed.
Although I still have gripes with the University (the ever-shrinking footprint of the Campus Times office, for one, and the authoritarian protest policy, for another), ultimately, I’m confident I made the right decision enrolling here. I’ve discovered parts of campus and the city I never would have found without my time living on- and off-campus. When I think about myself five years ago at that computer, I wish I could hug her and say, “It’s going to be okay. You’re not settling. You’re going to love who you become.”
Any questions or topic suggestions for Campus Brat can be directed to kjarvis4@u.rochester.edu.
