In this admissions process, every choice I face means the stakes become greater.
 
When I had to make a definitive list of the schools to which I would apply, I felt as if I was making make-or-break decisions.
 
Now that I have to decide whether to enroll at the University of Kansas, Bowdoin College in Maine, Amherst College in Massachusetts or Yale in Connecticut, it seems as if this is, in fact, harder than any decision I’ve had to make.
 
If you’re wondering why Kansas is still on the list, it’s because I was admitted into the university’s honors program. In my opinion, having access to academic advising, tutoring, early registration for classes and opportunities to intern and travel abroad make Kansas competitive enough against the other schools to stay on my list.
 
My recent conversations with faculty members and students there, however, have pushed me away from considering Kansas with as much interest as I previously had.
 
I’ve been told that the honors program isn’t as beneficial as people make it to be. The program provides the most benefits during the first two years of college, when large lecture halls are more prevalent as undecided students are taking general-entry courses. Although academic advising and other benefits remain after one’s sophomore year, classes become more challenging and smaller as people choose them based on academic focus.
 
Then there’s Bowdoin. Even though I loved the school when I visited in November, since then, I’ve also visited Amherst, which I feel suits me better.
 
I like that Amherst has an open curriculum. I want to try everything before deciding on a major. An open curriculum offers the best opportunity to do just that.
 
I also like that Amherst has a shopping period, in which students have a few days to try out classes — and get a taste of the material being taught and the professor’s method of teaching — before officially enrolling in them. The shopping period increases the student’s control over his or her education.
 
As I sat in on a class during my visit to Amherst, Prof. Austin Sarat took a moment to address the prospective students in the room. While explaining Amherst’s mission, he quoted Albert Einstein, saying: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
 
The professor went on to say that “knowledge will be forgotten, but worlds that haven’t been born will never cease to exist,” and that it was the “collective commitment of the faculty to not just know the students as they are, but to imagine what it is that they can become.”
 
I also sat in on his class about America’s death penalty. I’d never been more intrigued. The class wasn’t only discussing the subject through a video conference with another class halfway around the globe in Germany, but the students were also discussing clemency, its role in American and German governments and how it differentiates, and the idea of lawful lawlessness. (As a potential political science major, that concept blew my mind.)
 
These are the types of classes that interest me. They’re the ones that can engage students intellectually while forcing them to “think about the strange,” as the professor said was Amherst’s aim.
 
Of course, it’s never that easy to make decisions this grand. I still have Yale to consider.
 
Before I went to Yale for Bulldog Days, I was honestly afraid — afraid, this is, of being disappointed if New Haven, Conn., ended up being as bad as everyone had previously noted on forums across the Internet. Luckily, for me (and everyone else I talked with), the city turned out to be normal. Of course, there are the bad parts, and good parts, and campus parts. I’m glad to report that I felt safe the entire time I was visiting. (And yes, I did go off campus quite a few times, including after midnight.)
 
Unlike Amherst, Yale is an urban university that provides its students with the opportunity to be heard nationwide. Even though Yale doesn’t have an open curriculum, it does have a shopping period like Amherst.
 
Yale also offers something that my other prospective schools do not have: a residential college system. It would be nice to be part of a small community within a larger university. I’m stuck deciding whether or not that itself makes up for the open curriculum at Amherst.
 
I’m taking my time. Weighing so many things at the same time can make things confusing and overwhelming.
 
I just want to be sure that the school I choose is one truly represents where I fit in the most. I’m willing to choose Amherst over Yale if I decide that Amherst offers me more opportunities that suit me better.
 
Making a decision based on what school is more known around the world isn’t a factor for me. I don’t care if it was a small school or a big school. I just want a place that can challenge me academically and is a place where I feel I can fit in and make the most of my four years.