Assorted Afflatuses

Nothing makes me happier than a coincidence with a positive results. Last week, however, I encountered serendipity's opposite. As I wrote on Friday, the fine folks at the University of Chicago ran out of positions for prospective interviewers who planned to visit the campus in Chicago. That was something of a minor tragedy because I do not think that my unique presence or personality can be conveyed as successfully to someone through the words of an alumnus or alumna.

As such, I settled for the next best option: an alumni interview. I clicked the link on the U Chicago application to request an interview and waited. As luck would have it, I was contacted by one of the University's assistant admissions directors, who, as it happens, will be in the Portland area to do interviews with applicants this weekend. Given that I do not suffer from any severe mental handicaps, I leapt at the opportunity, and, fortunately, I will, in fact, do an interview on Saturday.

Hopefully, the fact that I will speak directly to someone in the admissions office — who may make the final discussion regarding my application — will increase my chances of gaining admission. I have long believed that, had the schools I applied to offered interviews with the actual admission committee, I would have been able to stand out much more easily (and perhaps more successfully) from the mass of other highly-qualified people seeking entrance to America's top schools.

Come December, I shall either be vindicated or, not for the first time, thoroughly disappointed. This time around, however, I do have a fail-proof plan. Depending upon the decisions I receive in December, I may or may not re-apply to Princeton, Pomona and Northwestern and apply, for the first time, to the University of Rochester, Carnegie-Mellon University and, as a last, but very certain, resort, the University of Oregon honors college. The Stanford Sticker Paradox, as I call it — the strange phenomenon whereby the Stanford admissions office loses far more application material than other schools despite their overly persnickety rules about envelops, staples and labels — combined with their less-than-stellar reputation for undergraduate education, when compared to their graduate programs, removed that institution from my list. My interest for Dartmouth has waned to the point that I no longer see the point in applying. I may apply to Yale or Columbia in addition to the other schools, but I have yet to make a decision in that regard.

All in all, the stage looks set for at least some measure of fortune in my future. And, if the Chicago interview coincidence is any indicator, everything may turn out rather splendidly.