Inside the head of a prefrosh

This Princeton Preview was particularly special for me because my recently admitted brother came. Whenever I saw my brother, he was bubbling with wonder, awe and random Princeton facts. Coffee on Friday featured an analysis of the structure of Princeton’s Chinese program and an inquiry into eating club stereotypes. Brunch on Saturday was peppered with amazement at the International Internship Program.

My brother’s exuberance made me think back to when I was looking at colleges as a senior in high school. My criteria for evaluating schools were absolutely convoluted. I only applied to two Ivy League schools — Princeton and Brown — because I feared I would damage my intellectual street cred by going to an overrated, highly ranked institution (pretentious, I know). Princeton only made the cut because I wound up here while I was searching for ice cream on a secret adventure with a two-week-old driver’s license that scared the bejesus out of my parents. The campus was too pretty to pass up, and the blend-ins at Thomas Sweet were delicious. The other seven schools on my list were seemingly random: They ranged from institutions with reputations for nerdiness, like the University of Chicago, to more hippy-granola-crunchy schools, like Macalester College.

Once I got into college, my process for deciding which school I would actually attend was equally nonsensical. I was tricked by websites like College Confidential (admit it, you looked at it too) into believing that I would visit a school and suddenly feel a deep, undeniable connection to it while walking around campus. Alas, this love affair never happened. I liked all of the schools to which I was admitted just fine. Since emotions would not help me make my decision, I had to depend on cold, hard facts. After parsing lists of student organizations and study-abroad programs, comparing and contrasting meal plans and evaluating each institution’s closest cute, independent coffee shop, I settled on Princeton. It offered many more resources than other institutions, and Small World served up a decent cup of joe.

Today, I am happy with the choice that I made. However, I wish I could say that I used better reasoning to arrive at it. If I could talk to high-school Haley, I would tell her that her concerns about intellectual street cred were obnoxious and that she should worry less about nebulous terms like “fit” and “feel” and focus more on the resources that each institution offers. Virtually all colleges provide fertile ground for making friends, but few give every student the opportunity to complete an independent research project and can afford to finance summer projects overseas. I doubt that I would be spending my summer backpacking around farms in Central America and working on travel writing if I were anywhere else.

I know that I am not the only Princeton student who questions her college selection logic. This morning at breakfast, my best friend told me that her biggest concerns had been having a good dorm room and making friends. Now she has a tiny room in Walker Hall, but it is not a big deal.

As much as we may want to lecture our prospective-student selves about their reasoning skills, I think that they also have something to teach us. So many of the prospective students I met this weekend were utterly amazed by Princeton. They could not believe the size of Firestone Library, the diverse range of extracurricular activities and the beauty of campus. Once students matriculate, they lose that excitement. Picking up a book from a library’s third subterranean level, reading it over lunch one table away from John Nash GS ’50 and then discussing it in a class led by a professor who has won a Pulitzer Prize becomes mundane. We are living in an academic Disney World. Every once in a while, it is worth it to pause and take it all in.

Haley White is a sophomore from Chatham, N.J. She can be reached at hewhite@princeton.edu.