My College Rejection Letter

March 26, 2010

Dear Admissions Office:

It was the saddest thing I ever did.

The constant checking of the Common Application Online (And I mean constant.). The retooling of my essays dozens, maybe hundreds of times. The incessant chatter about the SAT. For the last year of my life, I have taken part in the most stressful part of being a Senior: Applying to your school.

Applying to College in Brooklyn Tech was never a cake walk. See, I’m one of about one thousand two hundred people: fighting for spots in a cold, cut-throat, and at times torturous environment where everyone had their eye on everyone else, and everyone underwent scrutiny from all corners of our globe.

I, myself, had two conflicts with my best friends about you. (Yes, applying to you guys can kill relationships like no other… But that’s behind us now.) Not only that, but at times, I would battle up to 100 other people about your school, and whether I was a worthy enough to gain acceptance.
But, you guys were worth the sweat (supplements), tears (envelopes), and blood (paper cuts). If I didn’t see myself wearing your sweatshirt sitting in the front row of your Biology 100 class in the fall, my application would not have reached your doors. What was awesome, though, was that you thought the same of me, and I couldn’t be more humbled and grateful; I really had my doubts that you’d like me at all, but I guess we hit it off quite nicely.

But sadly, there was one place; the one that really caught my heart and my mind (Look at me, I sound like a Lady GaGa lyric). This place is relatively new, not really a household name, yet it has all of the same characteristics and qualities that I found in your school. I like this balance: not having the name of a school weigh you down or precede you, yet forming your own identity and personality in an academically provocative environment.

Come Fall 2010, I will be a matriculating freshman at the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, a wonderful institution that the City University of New York created based on the indelible mark your school has left on the face of the College World. I hope to meet some of the brightest, wittiest, and practical minds that this institution has to offer (—the leftovers, I mean. You do take them all…)

Once again, it was my greatest pleasure to fight for you, but like a horse bridled, or butterfly dawning from its cocoon, I must let you go.

This is the saddest thing I’ll ever do. But who is to say that we won’t cross paths again? Chances are, I have a friend coming to your school in the fall. We’ll keep in touch. I’d like that.


Yours in Solidarity,

Kwame Ocran

P.S. I’d like to keep the letter you sent me as a memento of our tempestuous, passionate yet brief romance. It would mean the world to me. Thanks!