What I wish I'd known

But for the high school seniors (“prefrosh” in college parlance) who arrive on campus today, that part of the process — the agonizing, nail-biting, hair-pulling suspense — is over. The tables have turned, and now it’s their turn to accept or reject the schools that just got through accepting and rejecting them. If that isn’t irony, I don’t know what is.

So, to those of you visiting this weekend: Over the next few weeks, you’ll get enough advice to make you sick. Friends, family, extended family, super-extended family and admission offices will bombard you with publication after publication and rationale after rationale explaining why one decision is superior to another. Some advice will be helpful. Other advice will royally suck. As if the process weren’t confusing enough already. But there is good advice to be had, and with that in mind, I’d like to offer a few humble suggestions about how to evaluate Princeton this weekend and other schools you will revisit in the coming weeks: things I wish that people had told me a year ago, when I was in your shoes. Think of this as the real deal on your first year of college from someone who’s lived it for the last seven-and-a-half months.

To begin with, don’t sweat the small stuff. Psychology has shown (disappointingly) that the weather on the day you visit a certain school, the quality of your tour guide and the apparent happiness of the students you see all have a disproportionate effect on your decision to apply or enroll. Your prefrosh weekend host may be an alcoholic, or a workaholic, or addicted to mangos. If so, he or she is definitely not a good indicator of the “typical” Princeton student (if there is such a thing). Make a conscious effort not to be swayed by mediocre food, bad weather or weird stories you hear. All schools have them, and they should more or less be canceled out of the decision-making equation. This seems almost tautological, but it’s easy to forget.

Second, at least for this weekend, forget everything you thought you knew about college and about Princeton in particular. Princeton may be exactly what you thought college would be like. If so, great. If not, don’t worry. Take the time to be open-minded about the process. Even if you’re 150 percent sure you’re going to the Massachusetts Institute of Los Angeles, give Princeton the time of day that it deserves.

Third: a word on the admissions office. I’m sure you’ll be skeptical about what people tell you makes Princeton great. That’s fine. That’s healthy. I was too. All the same, seven months on the inside has shown me that what the Office of Admission tells you to try to get you to come here really does matter. In fact, it matters a great deal. Immediate contact with the best professors in the world instead of their TAs or secretaries is invaluable. A truly comprehensive liberal arts education is immensely useful in preparing you for the harsh realities of real life. Maybe most importantly, the University truly is focused on undergraduates. Graduate students here are few and far between. This place isn’t perfect: Princeton has its flaws. But what we focus on, we do extremely well. If you learn nothing else this weekend, remember that.

Finally, relax. While this may seem like a life-or-death decision now, it won’t next fall. The overwhelming majority of people are ultimately happy with where they end up. Most of those who aren’t probably wouldn’t be happy anywhere. The academic explanation for this comes from psychology, which calls the phenomenon “loss aversion”: We place a higher value on goods we own than goods we don’t. (Interestingly, Princeton Professor Daniel Kahneman was influential in developing this idea.) The less esoteric explanation, though, is that college is a genuinely awesome place: a place with 5,000 other people pre-selected based on their likelihood of being compatible with you.

It’s difficult to believe that it’s been a full year since I wrapped up my college admissions process. Time really does fly. I think, though, that that’s perhaps the greatest testament of all to Princeton’s greatness: I swear that time passes faster in Mercer County than it does anywhere else in the world. Blink, and you’ll miss it. But after all, you don’t have to take my word for it. See for yourself. We’d love to have you.

Charlie Metzger is a freshman from Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached at cmetzger@princeton.edu.