Princeton Preview
Throughout the year, my friends and I have often joked that if I were a host for Princeton Preview (the prefrosh weekends), I’d thoroughly convince them against coming here. With the last batch of college admissions results out as of a couple days ago, I found that a handful of my friends back in high school had gotten into the tiger cage. For some odd reason, I felt the desire to contact each of them and let them know that I was there in case they had questions or wanted someone to show them around if they visited. One of them was actually a good friend of mine, T, and I offered to host him for Princeton Preview. He agreed, and that’s what is going down.
I’m a little excited, because I want to show him how great Princeton can be and all the positive aspects of it, but I feel a little bit like a liar because it’s far from the Ivy League wonderland it is sometimes made out to be. T will be shadowing some of my classes, and he’ll be doing his own admit weekend activities. He’s mainly deciding between here and Stanford, which, in case you didn’t know, was my dream school for basically my whole life (I was and always will be a California kid at heart). I asked him which one he was leaning toward, and he answered Stanford because of the proximity and what other people are telling him (Stanford is the shit in California).
When he told me, a lot of the heart went out of me. I don’t feel like I should bother convincing him to come here anymore, and I half-expect him to go there already. Of course, I’ll try to be a good host and show him around and tell him about the way life is around here, but I’m not going to try and make him choose Princeton over Stanford. Because I would easily choose Stanford as well.
I guess more than anything, these events have shown how selfish I am - I want familiar people here with me, so that things are much more bearable. It’d be so reassuring to have someone here who went through the same high school experience with me, to know that there’s that common bond with someone on campus.
So selfish as it is, I still hope he comes here.
