Some people have compared finding a college to your “wedding dress moment” — you know it’s the one as soon as you step on campus. Others said the institution they ended up attending was the one they kept thinking back to, comparing other schools to. I fell into another camp altogether. I was so excited for college that almost every school I visited, I found something about the school that made me excited, whether it be the community, a unique major, the location, or pretty much anything. When I reflect back on these visits, I realized that it wasn’t because I was equally excited about every school – it was because I wanted to believe any of these schools could be my home. I was terrified of what would happen if I found “the one” and then didn’t get in. I wanted to be equally as happy at any of the schools. It wasn’t until the first weekend of April my senior year, less than one month before I had to pick a school, that I realized did have a perfect fit, and I could finally believe it.
I visited WashU that weekend and that’s when everything clicked in my mind. I had found people who were just as academically motivated as I was, but had so many different experiences I felt I could learn from. I had found a school that offered me the opportunity to immediately start taking business classes, but also explore all my other interests and discover new ones I didn’t know I had. I had found a community that I could see myself spending four years learning from and living and studying with, not ever in competition with one another, but working together in all we did.
If you had asked me at any point before April where I wanted to go to school, I would’ve listed my criteria I was looking for in a school, and maybe a few schools I had looked at. Had you asked anyone who knew me (and I mean anyone), they would’ve said they knew I’d end up at WashU. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I wore my WashU shirt almost every week, couldn’t stop talking about opportunities the school had and would explain to anyone who said “D.C./Seattle is a great place to live” that no, WashU is located in Missouri. After that weekend in April, I could finally admit to myself that the school I was afraid I wouldn’t get into was going to be my home for the next four years and I couldn’t be happier with the decision I made to come to WashU.
