As a second-semester senior, I often find myself reflecting on the many reasons why I have come to enjoy my undergraduate experience at Georgetown University. Several events during the past week made me especially appreciative of being a Hoya.
On Friday night, nearly three hundred of my fellow seniors and I packed into The Rhino Bar and Pumphouse for a night of drunken revelry. Between taking full advantage of the open bar and watching intently as my peers stepped up to auctioning block, I would say the evening was a great success for nearly all involved. After recovering for a few days, I had the opportunity to witness a historical event in Georgetown’s McDonough Arena. Although Hamid Karzai, the chairman of Afghanistan’s interim government and keynote speaker of Sunday’s event, did not directly address the students in his audience, the emotion expressed by his Afghan-American supporters was such that everyone could appreciate the significance of his address. I knew that Chairman Karzai came to Georgetown University because it is the most prestigious institution of higher education in the District of Columbia. Again, I felt lucky to be a Hoya.
In spite of the excitement that I experienced over the weekend, there was more to come. My feelings came to a head on Monday night at the MCI Center as I watched my Georgetown Hoyas defeat Syracuse for the first time in my three and a half years as a Hoya fan and a Georgetown student. Two weeks ago, I remember fearing that I might never rush onto the court of the MCI Center slapping fives with other jubilant Hoyas, but Monday night I got my chance. MCI security tried to stop me, but their physical strength proved no match for the force of my elation and yet again, I felt incredibly lucky to be Hoya.
However, despite all of these feelings of excitement and joy, something else I experienced that night tempered my enthusiasm, even if just for a moment. As the television cameras spanned the student section at Monday night’s game, I noticed that some students were flocked around a sign that read, “Syracuse was my safety school.” While the sign made me feel embarrassed because I did not want to be associated with such an ignorant statement, I was particularly disturbed because it was clear that these students did not appreciate how truly lucky they were to be here.
Many individuals, admittedly, myself included, sometimes fall into the trap of believing that acceptance to Georgetown or any other highly rated school anoints them as somehow intellectually superior to anyone who attends a less prestigious school. This assertion could not be further from the truth. As a student representative on the undergraduate admissions committee last semester, I gained a unique perspective on this subject. After reviewing applications for the Georgetown College class of ‘06, I began to better understand that college admissions is often a craps-shoot at best.
Each year thousands of students with high test scores, an impressive r?sum? and transcripts loaded with A’s compete for a considerably lower number of offers of admission. Although admissions committee members spend hours upon hours reading essays and letters of recommendation in order to distinguish between all of these highly qualified individuals, ultimately, difficult decisions have to made and many students described by their teachers as “the best I have ever encountered” are sent rejection letters.
Based on my own personal experience, it seems that whether or not a particular person is offered admission to a particular school has much less to do with his or her intelligence than one might think. Intellectual ability is something that can often be taken for granted in reviewing applications at elite schools. As a result of this fact, who reads your application and how he or she reads it can mean everything. What pile your application is put into when it enters the admissions office can determine what pile it will sit in when acceptance and rejection letters are distributed. However, regardless of the unpredictability inherent in the college admissions process, mocking Syracuse as a “safety school” reflects a level of insecurity and immaturity that I would hope does not flourish at Georgetown.
I am not going to try to convince you that Syracuse is on par with Georgetown as it relates to academic excellence or rigor, because I don’t believe that it is. However, I am also not so arrogant as to assume that there are not a great number of students who are as intelligent or more intelligent than the average or even the best Hoya student. The fact remains that Georgetown University is an academic institution that attracts the most gifted and talented students in the world. Georgetown University provides many opportunities that one cannot find at other colleges. As the most competitive school in the nation’s capital, Georgetown is often the site of historic speeches by various national and international leaders. Our storied basketball program also enables students to come together and bond as Hoyas. We should remember, however, that the margin separating us from 37th and O, and any “safety school” is a lot slimmer than we might like to think. Maybe we should have a little bit more respect for students who attend those so-called safety schools instead of taking the opportunities that we have here for granted.
