Written by Stefan Nikolaj
17 Jun 2023
Since I’m a student who just finished high school, the most common question I get asked is “where are you going to university?”
The answer is: nowhere, probably.
I started my final year of high school with a simple plan – I’ll study in Germany. Then I did my SAT – 750 English 800 Math (1550 total) – I was in the 99th percentile globally. Good enough for any US university, theoretically, especially when combined with my many extracurricular activities. Yet, sticking with my Germany plan, I just didn’t bother with applying to US universities, apart from Indiana University’s scholarship program (didn’t get in) and NYU Abu Dhabi with the hopes of getting full financial aid (I got in, but only 70% financial aid, so I declined).
However, the fact that I got in NYU emboldened me to take the US seriously, particularly when I got the results of my second SAT – 790 English 790 Math (1580 total, 1590 superscored) – which is an incredibly good result. So, I went and applied to eight universities that I saw as a good fit. All of them were in the top 100 in the world, but given that NYU had been in the top 20 and I got in, I thought that statistically I’d be fine. Also, the North Macedonian government had for years been offering a full scholarship for anyone accepted into a top 100 university in the world, so I hoped I could get that.
Unfortunately, my luck had never been good. I got accepted into only one university – Purdue – which was great, since I could fully afford it with the government scholarship… until the government decided just this year to basically cancel it. Also, Purdue is one of those universities that offers zero financial aid, so no luck for me at all. As a result, after writing around 8000 words of meticulously crafted essays (thank you Sara for helping so much!), I had basically nothing to show for – not for lack of trying. I’d probably have gotten accepted to every single university had I been able to pay, and not asked for financial aid. Some people I know who could pay, got in with much worse stats.
So, May came and I had basically nothing. May ended and I still had basically nothing. There is one last hope, though – the Technical University of Munich (TUM). They offer a nice program in English for studying Aerospace Engineering (which is fine by me). The only problem is that they have an arcane application process which I don’t understand, and the deadline is in less than a month. One upside of this, however, is that I have a friend applying there and we may get to live together. However, I feel like I have a curse on me – each time I feel happy about an upcoming event, it turns out very negatively. This happens so often that there’s basically no happiness left. I hold out absolutely no hope that this plan will ever work out.
So, what’s left? Despite the hopeless situation, I’m still going to try to apply there, and I’m getting all of the documents ready for that. At least I can say that I tried. In the meanwhile, I’m just trying to rest a bit, and learn full-stack web design. I might as well try to salvage this life and live decently in my little hellscape.
Also, I’ll try restarting the blog – it makes me happy.