My admissions process is over and done with. As this roller coaster that I’ve been riding for more than 10 months comes to its final stop, it appears that I’m only transferring rides. College — the bigger, faster, and even more exciting ride — is just about to begin this fall.
 
For me, college is entirely uncharted territory. I’m a first-generation student, and I really don’t know what to expect, just as I really didn’t know what to expect during the admissions process.
 
Now that I know that I’m going to Yale, I’m looking forward to experiencing new things. But I also have a few concerns about going to such a high-caliber school.
 
Yale attracts some of the brightest students in the world, but the assumption that students have to be smart to enter the Ivy League is not true.
 
I’ll be the first to admit that I am not smart; I’m just a hard worker. People often confuse the two, but the natural ability of being intelligent and working hard to achieve the same results are two different traits.
 
My ACT score was a 28. Surprised? Me too. That’s why I was dumbfounded when I was admitted to Yale. My G.P.A. was 3.95 unweighted and 4.44 weighted. I am also ranked third in my class of 317. My test score, as you can see, is nowhere near the admitted class average of any Ivy League school.
 
 I asked one of my closest teachers what her thoughts were about me going to Yale. She replied, “You’re going to have to work your butt off, and you know that, but you can do it.” She continued: “If you weren’t capable of doing so and competing there, I would have told you that from the beginning, but I believe you can. But in the end, it’ll be interesting to see how it all turns out.”
 
I’m ecstatic about starting my life as a college student, about meeting new people, exploring new places and creating new memories. At the same time, however, entering this new chapter has me a little concerned. That’s not because I’m going to Yale, specifically. It’s simply because I’m going to college. I would have felt the same way if I decided to go to Amherst or anywhere else, for that matter.
 
As much as I wanted to believe that I’ll have it as easy as some of my other fellow classmates, the reality is that I won’t. I’ll have to work harder and longer to compete with them. What I do have on my side is the will to succeed, even in the most difficult of situations.
 
The most important lesson I’ve learned over the course of my time as a teenager has been that no matter how difficult the obstacle or how far-fetched the goal, the cliché is true: when there’s a will, there’s a way.
 
To prepare myself for college, I’ve started reading a book called “First in the Family” by Kathleen Cushman. It provides tips for first-generation students heading to college. I’m hoping it will give me some sort of heads up in terms of what to expect.
 
I may not have natural talent on my side, or the statistics of other students admitted to Yale, but I know that nothing can stand between me and what it is I set out to do. No matter where I am — whether it is at Yale or in the work force — once I’ve set a goal, there’s nothing that can stop me from getting to where I want to be. Absolutely nothing.