This is my high school application. I would say it was pretty good, but it's definitely not Harvard material. I was eighth in my high school out of 1,100 seniors. I was the math team for two years in my high school.
I played lacrosse and I helped schools win first place and second place. I was the orchestra concertmaster and student vice president. I won personal awards in Science Olympiad.
So I think this overall is pretty impressive, but it's not nearly as... as impressive as someone who should be getting into Harvard. In fact, I applied to Harvard only because it was on the common application, and I don't need to spend too much time on the application.
So I figured maybe I'll just fill out the application, and then one day, maybe like today, I could tell people that I applied to Harvard. And that makes me sound really smart. Little did I know I got in. And so I figured, no, I want to go and check out how Harvard is. I went to Harvard.
There's this pre-freshman weekend for incoming students. And I met really cool friends, I met really cool people at Harvard, and cool professors, I attended classes, and classes seemed really cool. I had no idea what was going on, I was sitting there, but it seemed like it was a really cool place for me to be. So I signed up, I confirmed that I wanted to go to Harvard as a class of 2010. And a few months before then, I remember during my Harvard interview, my interviewer asked me, what I wanted to go to Harvard.
And I told him. I didn't have really anything prepared, so I just told him straight up that my family immigrated from Taiwan to America for to get me a better education. And I figured that, you know, the definition of a good education is probably at Harvard. So I figured if I could go to Harvard, then that would be my way to say thank you to my parents and show them that they made the right decision.
So the following year, the following semester, I went to Harvard. And I didn't have high expectations for myself because I knew that I was in Harvard and I wasn't a genius like my classmates. But even with the lower expectation, I was struggling. The first semester at Harvard, I had a C+.
My first C plus ever in my life. And imagine having all the... the bright minds from around the world, all the number ones, the valedictorians, the perfect SATs, the student athletes, all the entrepreneurs, everyone together in one place. We can't all be number ones anymore.
After the first semester for the next four years, I was always invited into our resident dean's office for Jasmine Tea because that's what happens when we're struggling in class and we're invited into the office to talk about what's going on. And every time to go in. and tell them, you know, classes are hard, and I was already doing my best. For me, it was okay.
High school, for most Harvard students, was a breeze. For high school, you just work hard and you get the grade. If you don't get the grade, you work harder and you get the grade. And I think that's the case for, I would say, almost all Harvard students. But imagine someone who was always number one, who had never had a grade lower than A, not even A-in their life.
So you go to Harvard. Harvard and for the first time in their life seeing that little minus sign next to A or perhaps seeing B's and C's when they try to work harder they still get the B's and C's and that's the pressure that will be will be with them because this is a new world that they have never seen before. Students are always involved in extracurricular activities.
Harvard students are overachievers, we're perfectionists and we're leaders. So back when we were in high school we're team captains, we're club founders. club presidents, company founders.
So when everyone's together in one place, we can't all be presidents anymore. In clubs, someone has to be the president and someone has to be the vice president. Someone can't even be the vice president.
And so these club elections can get really dirty and stressful also. You've probably seen this diagram. In college, there are three things that you have to balance. There's academics, there's social life, and there's sleep. In most cases, you're told that you can only choose two out of three, and it's impossible to balance all three together for me because college was tough there are many times when I even couldn't manage just one out of the three and then there's expectation from friends family and everyone around you if you go to a place at Harvard or any Ivy League school or any top universities around the world you're expected to do well and you're expected to always be that perfect model for everyone else so imagine a time when someone like me or my classmates don't get that job that we want.
Or don't get that internship that we want, or don't get that grade that we want. The world gets different, and we become really, really stressed. And it's even more stressful when we realize that all of our friends around us are seemingly doing well. They got the jobs that they want. My friend got into Microsoft.
friend gets into Google, this other friend got Facebook, Apple, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and if I'm the one who hasn't got the job yet, it's really stressful because when we're talking to friends, when we talk about what's going on, what are you guys doing for the next summer, what are you guys doing after senior year? Everyone else has a really cool answer that we can congratulate them, but I don't have an answer yet. I love my parents, my parents love me.
And whenever I have phone calls with my parents, this is pretty much every day in my junior and senior year, they will ask me how I was doing, they will ask me how was the job application, whether I got the interviews that I want at Microsoft, or Google, or Facebook. And over the phone, I have to repeatedly. tell them that I don't have the job yet. Tell them that I'm still waiting, this other place rejected me, I'm trying to apply to two more, this other place got their first interview but they never got back to me the second round, and so on.
All these phone calls, the care that they're showing me, are becoming a burden for me. And I know that my parents will be okay with wherever I end up. I don't have to go to the top names. But part of me want to be successful in front of them. Part of me don't want them to.
to worry about me and I want to be able to become successful so that they could be really proud of me. You guys probably know who this guy is. This is Judy the rabbit from Zootopia and in the beginning of the movie, I don't know if you guys remember, but in the beginning of the movie when Judy was having a horrible day in the police department, her parents called her and asked her how she's doing. The faked a smile and said everything was going well.
everyone's really nice. In fact, that didn't happen at all. But she was only putting on a face, a fake side of her, just so that her parents would not be worried about her.
And I would say that that's the most, that's very common at places like Harvard. It's a very stressful place and because we're so used to being successful in high school, it's hard for us to deal with failures. It is believed that more than half of Harvard students encounter certain symptoms of depression during their four years at Harvard. Harvard. And what makes the matter worse is that we're afraid to show this feeling because it's a sign of weakness that we're not used to.
It's embarrassing also to admit to friends that we're struggling. hi to our friends, we say what's up, the answer would be nothing. The answer would be I'm busy or the answer might be I'm tired but it was never ever I'm struggling, I feel stressful and I need help. In my sophomore year, it was a week and a half after Thanksgiving, one morning at 7 a.m. our resident dean came and knocked on our doors.
I went to sleep at 4 a.m. the night before because of problem sets. So of course I'm not going to be the one to wake him up. person get up and open the door. I'm going to wait for my roommate to open the doors.
So my roommate opened the doors. He came back to me and said, hey Alex, the resident deans and the proctors are all outside. You should probably wake up.
So I went over, opened the door, let them in. feeling really grumpy and they said they want to come in to tell us something. I said, all right, but our roommate John is not around. The guy wearing red.
John is not around. So you guys can come in, we can chat, but we'll have to relay the message to John later. And then the proctors tell us, yeah, that's actually the reason why we're here. So we sat down.
And the proctors told us that John committed suicide the night before in his lap. And it was, we didn't know how to feel because we never knew how to feel. We never encountered death in our lives. And John looked perfectly happy.
John broke up with his girlfriend, a high school girlfriend, a few weeks ago. And we knew he was sad at that moment. Except, soon after that moment, he looked very happy.
He was starting to meet other friends. The weekend before, we went to MIT for a party, and he seemed like he got over the breakup. And so little did we know that that happened, and even till today, we still don't know what happened, because we're all very good at hiding our feelings. even for me I think during my time at Harvard since freshman year there are many times I wanted to run away. In one April Fool's I lied I put on my Facebook that the following year I'm going to transfer to NYU partly as a joke but on the other side that was half-truth because I was afraid that I can't survive at Harvard anymore and I need a way to escape.
In my junior and senior year, I thought about what would happen if I don't get a job. Would I be an embarrassment to my parents? Would I be an embarrassment to Harvard?
And then I thought about what's the purpose of being around them if I am an embarrassment. Maybe I should just run away and disappear forever. So it was really four tough years for me.
I got a lot out of Harvard. The academics here were awesome. The friends I met there were awesome.
And I think what I got the most out of Harvard was what I called the Ivy League mentality, which is... perseverance, confidence, passion, and ability to deal with stress. While I was at Harvard for four years, I regret it. After the four years, now looking back, I was really glad I had the experience there.
So in the end, I want to share three lessons I learned from my life, and maybe you guys can resonate with this. For seniors or soon-to-be seniors, if you guys get into your dream schools, congratulations. But be careful.
It's called dream school because it's not within your ability. It's a school that's above your ability. That's why you call it dream school.
So if you go there, expect other people to be smarter and brighter and better than you are. Know that the stress might be there, and it will be an uphill battle. if you go there.
If you don't end up in your dream school, it's okay because what matters more is not the school title. What matters more is who you are. I know it sounds really jaded but it's true.
You don't have to put on a fake side of you. If your level is there, then go to that school and do well in that school. If your goal is to go to a grad school, if your goal is to find a good job, then having a good GPA in that school, in a school that fits you, might be better than trying to trying to get into your dream school and struggle there. And lastly, if you overachieve, you will feel stressed at some point. But know that it's OK.
Know that other people may not speak up, but know that other people are equally stressed as you are. And it's OK for you to speak up and say that you're struggling. If you're not doing well in school, it's also OK. It's probably not OK if you're in China, because if you're in Asia, you have to do well in school, do well in,, get into the best universities, and get a job.
job that's the only way to success to success in Asia but if you're in America that's not that's not the right way to do it you could go to the best school and be successful or you could go to a decent school and have the right mentality and become very successful in the future so I'll leave you with this your success and your pride to your family does not end with your college admission letter and it's not defined by it also it's defined by who you are it's defined by your mentor mentality, and that's what's going to be with you forever. Thank you.