Hello everyone,
It's been almost a year since my last update! I hope I didn't leave you hanging for too long because I went through a looooooong battle called college applications. It was exhausting.
But I'm not ending up at a university.... because I'm going to a small liberal arts college! Never heard of that? But here's something I really want to say about how I feel with this whole college application.
If I’m being honest, ending up at a top liberal arts college is a lonely journey. Even though I worked hard to get in, not many around me had heard about them. Not many people are there to validate this success. “Where’s Colgate?” “What's Carleton?” followed by confused stares and awkward silence. I had to answer those questions several times. My parents, while proud that I got into a school with beautiful facilities, didn’t necessarily understand the significance. To me, all of this felt a little disappointing, knowing I had to figure out plenty of information on my own just to get here. That’s the cost of choosing the road less traveled.
However, liberal arts colleges face a decline as a whole: the elite ones become more competitive to get into while the lesser known ones are closing. Recently, Hampshire College, a member of the esteemed five college consortium and a top PhD candidate producer, announced its upcoming closure due to lack of funding. This school clearly isn’t bad at all; however, the value of everything is determined by how much you, the consumer, are willing to pay for. And that’s my motivation to write this guide: to encourage you to reconsider the value of a liberal arts education. You are powerful; your perspective on the liberal arts can change the market value of this type of education and prevent them from disappearing.
Nonetheless, this road is not doomed. I am convinced that the liberal arts will survive the age of AI because they are the only thing distinguishing us from machines: our distinct culture, our unique way of playing with language, and our courage to be raw and vulnerable. Writing is a skill that the liberal arts colleges place a great emphasis on. If writing is outdated, then why do many still need AI to write? Liberal arts also teach you to see the big picture. When you specialize in a subject like business, you know how to do business. But since your subject area is narrowed to business, you won’t even realize it when your business plan or product line could wipe out an entire natural ecosystem or cause the extinction of a species. And who would we be if we lost our very soul? That thought often terrifies me. Society pushes us to pick a path early when you don’t even know what your path is about. What if you actually don’t have to go to a preprofessional school? What if your life won’t fall apart if you don’t end up working for a big tech company?
I want to say that you’d be fine just the way you are.
If you're interested in the small liberal arts colleges, I created this accessible Google Doc about my detailed experience with applying to those type of colleges, cultural critique, and practical advice. I attached the link to this page.
Overall, thank you so much for reading this! And yes, I'm back.
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