—
I couldn’t sleep that night.The knowledge of Laura’s acceptance to Harvard played in the back of my mind like a horror movie I couldn’t turn off, her petty smile a jump scare that kept me wide awake. To think that Laura got in while I didn’t…the notion was too much to stomach. I tried to think of anything else, any other gruesome image that would be disturbing enough for my brain to hold on to instead of Laura’s terrifying smile. A stab wound, a pile of puke, dog shit. It didn’t work.
Occasionally I comforted myself with the knowledge that I still had a few applications out. I was still waiting to hear back from Yale, Stanford, and Columbia. Sure, Harvard was considered the best university with the best name recognition in the country, and I had secretly assumed that I would get in, but it was fine. And sure, all my hopes and dreams of impressing my dad and everyone I went to high school with were predicated on the expectation that I’d get in, but that was also fine. But the sense of comfort from these mental affirmations was hopelessly fickle, and I always ended these ruminations even more depressed than before. Attending a still-good-but-indubitably-inferior school was a Pyrrhic victory. It was basically admitting that you still wanted to go to law school but couldn’t get into the best one. Because if you did get into the best one, why would you go anywhere else?
As if it weren’t bad enough that I didn’t get in, I couldn’t believe that out of all the people who could have bested me, it had to be Laura Kim. Laura, who didn’t even need Harvard, who would be fine working in one of those underpaid jobs forbrain-dead trust fund kids in industries like fashion or interior design or PR. And why law school? She already had the coveted internship at Goldman Sachs, the object of envy from all the economics majors on campus. And she already had everything else: looks, wealth, status, popularity. Why did she need more? Why did she need to take the one thing that I wanted, the one thing that I worked so hard for? If I were more prone to believing in conspiracy theories, I would think that the universe was in cahoots with the elites, that meritocracy—such as the idea of getting into law school based on your grades and test scores—was a lie to keep strivers like myself complacent with the status quo, complacent with the notion that we couldn’t move up in the world because it was we who didn’t work hard enough, not that the system was rigged against us.
It was simply impossible to fathom that this had been a fair outcome unless Laura had truly surpassed me in both grades and test scores, which I found ludicrously unlikely. I had spent the entire summer between junior and senior years studying for the LSAT. Meanwhile, she had been interning at Goldman Sachs. I worked my ass off to obtain a 3.9 GPA. Meanwhile, she spent Friday nights taking tequila shots with promoters in the Meatpacking District.
I wanted proof of her inferiority, proof that the system was rigged against me. At least that would bring a little bit of comfort. The problem wasn’t me; the problem was the system. But I didn’t know how I could get my hands on the information I was looking for.
I checked Laura’s LinkedIn profile. She didn’t list her test scores, but she did list the semesters in which she had made it onto the dean’s list, which included every semester besides two.The dean’s list required a 3.6 GPA. I pulled up a spreadsheet on my laptop. Even if she obtained a 4.0 every other semester, anything below a 3.6 for two semesters would pull her GPA down to 3.87 or lower, which was inferior to my 3.9.
The light from the laptop screen cast blue shadows across the white walls of my room, making them look bruised. Sitting at my desk, I could imagine Eunjin asleep through the wall we shared, almost as though I could hear her breathing, like a whistle from a teakettle each time she exhaled. It was already 3:00 a.m. Physically, my body was urging me to sleep. My eyes burned from staring at the screen, and the drowsiness reverberated in my chest like when you throw a pebble on the surface of a lake. But when I closed my eyes, all I could see was a split screen of two terrible images: On the left, the letter from Harvard spelling out that I wasn’t good enough for them. On the right, Laura’s smug smile when she told me she had gotten in.
FOUR
The day after the lawschool panel, I sprang into action. I emailed the Harvard Law School admissions office. I knew I couldn’t just come out and say that I had deserved to be accepted and they must’ve made a mistake, so I asked for some clarity on their decision. I was walking back to my table at my favorite dining hall, Ferris, with a hot cup of coffee when I saw their reply in my inbox, prompting me to spill half of the coffee onto my shirt. It was only after opening it that I realized the reply didn’t warrant my reaction. It was just a canned response, reiterating that they had carefully evaluated all applications, they couldn’t comment on individual decisions, and the results were final. Unless, of course, I wanted to apply again next year.
Later that evening, I was returning to my room with a bag of clean clothes from the dryer—I needed to get the coffee stain out before it became permanent—when another new email caused me to drop my laundry basket. I wobbled back to my dorm room and threw the basket onto the floor. Inside the emailwas a link to my application portal. I clicked on it, typed in my username and password, and read the result. I kicked the laundry basket as hard as I could, but that wasn’t satisfying enough, so I grabbed armfuls of clothes and threw them against the wall.
I had gotten rejected by Yale.
I locked myself in my room for the next two days. My body felt hollow, my motivation excavated from within. I hadn’t cared about Yale, but I had thought that maybe I could convince Harvard to reconsider the rejection if they found out I had gotten into their top competitor. The next week, more rejections: first Stanford, then Columbia, the latter of which I had frankly considered a target school at best, and a safety if I didn’t make an attempt at modesty. Clearly, Columbia didn’t feel the same way. I felt numb to the results, numb to the contrived niceness in the rejection letters. “We received a lot of applications…”Yeah, no shit. I know you received a lot of applications. I know you’re selective. That’s why I applied for your program in the first place.
Finally, I received an acceptance letter from Georgetown. It was my safety school. My LSAT score was in the 90th percentile of their student population. My GPA—75th percentile. The confetti that appeared on my screen upon opening the application portal only made me feel worse.
If I had gotten rejected by Georgetown, I would’ve known that something major was wrong with my application. Maybe the Law School Admission Council, which administered the LSAT, had mixed up my score report with some other, inferior applicant named Elizabeth Zhang, or maybe one of my recommenders had lambasted me in their letter. Otherwise, there was no way I could’ve gotten rejected. But now I knew for sure—it wasn’t them; it was me. I just wasn’t good enough.
I wondered if Laura had gotten into Yale, Columbia, and Stanford. I mean, I was sure she had gotten into Georgetown. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would get into Harvard but not into Georgetown. I checked social media for signs, but there was no self-congratulatory post, no indication that she was celebrating a milestone.
—
The next day I walkedto my appointment with Robert, the prelaw counselor. It was around 4:00 a.m. the previous night, right before I succumbed to unconsciousness, that I realized perhaps I was thinking about the situation the wrong way: it wasn’t that Laura didn’t deserve to get in, it was that we both deserved to get in, and I didn’t. It still was not a pleasant thought to assume that Laura, too, deserved a spot, but it was better than the notion that she deserved it more than me. Perhaps the answer was that my scores and grades were indeed better, but I had accidentally screwed up some part of my application. In retrospect, I realized that I asked other people to edit my essays, but no one actually proofread my application from beginning to end in the application portal. I could’ve misread an instruction, or formatted an essay incorrectly. With this possibility in mind, I felt light as I walked toward Robert’s office, even stopping to chat with a couple of acquaintances I passed on the way. As soon as I fixed whatever silly little error I had made, I would have another shot. I just needed to explain to the admissions officers what happened, and I’d be on my way to Harvard Law School. Just a temporary hiccup, that was all.
I felt even better when I walked into Robert’s office and saw him for the first time. There was something about him thatimmediately elicited my trust—maybe it was his round metal spectacles, free of any smudges or specks, unlike the glasses I wore before going to bed—or the olive plant next to his desk, which I knew was not easy to keep alive. Despite my intense sleep deprivation, I felt newly energized. Robert would be able to explain what was going on. Robert would be able to fix it.
“How can I help you?” he said when I sat down across from him at his desk. I told him about my situation; I kept my voice as steady as possible to minimize the chance he’d think I was just delusional. When I finished explaining my problem, he took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a microfiber wipe.
“Harvard Law is tough to get into,” he said, and put his glasses back on. “I mean, all these schools that you were rejected from are extremely hard to get into. I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I know that. But I have the scores and the grades. One seventy-eight LSAT. Three-nine GPA. You can even take a look at my personal statement. It’s solid.” My fear of appearing delusional dissipated in favor of a stronger emotion: pride. I handed him a folder containing printed copies of my essays. He skimmed through a few pages, grunting occasionally, but I couldn’t figure out what any of the grunts meant. Finally, he set down the folder. In the second that followed, I began to doubt myself. What if it wasn’t just a tiny little error; what if Robert was about to tell me that my application wasn’t strong enough? I waited for him to say that my essays were actually horrible, and that everyone who had helped edit them was intentionally or unintentionally sabotaging me this entire time by making terrible recommendations and telling me my essays were ready to submit when they still contained quite atrocious grammaticalerrors. It wouldn’t be good news, but at least it’d be news, at least I’d have an explanation. Robert opened his mouth slightly before speaking.
“You’re right. This is solid.”
I put the folder back into my backpack.
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Regardless of what the law schools decide, you should feel proud of yourself. For all of this.”
“I am. But I just can’t fathom why it wasn’t enough.”
“Law school applications can be unpredictable.”
“I still have a hard time believing that it was a long shot.”
“You didn’t only apply to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia, right? What was your safety?”
