Since 7th grade, I’ve had an online best friend of 5 years, Tin, with whom I’ve planned on going to college with. Unfortunately, despite our planning and wishful hopes, our plans fell flat when college acceptances were released.
We first met in “The Labyrinth,” an adventure game on the gaming platform Roblox. Although he had already been on my friends list for a few months, we rarely communicated. That was until one summer day when I noticed him in the game, and feeling bored, I decided to join him to chat for a bit.
To my surprise, we connected rather quickly and grew fond of each other. After a few days, for the sake of convenience, we shared Discord to communicate with one another. There, we would talk to each other in our free time, so naturally, we found out more about each other. Then, we found out that we have many similar interests, and we naturally became comfortable around each other. We would have hour-long late night talks so often that we struggled to find new topics to talk about, and we would sometimes FaceTime or livestream our daily lives. We quickly became best friends, yet we remained separated by a screen.
Initially, I thought Tin was at least older than me by a year if not a few years. I was astonished when I found out that he was actually in the same grade and lived near LA, only an hour plane flight away. Our close distance made us determined to meet up one day, and college seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. We considered the idea heavily, deciding to focus on it more when we got into high school to make our dream a reality.
In high school, we continued to talk intermittently about our plans, discussing what we would do when we met one another and promising to room together. We also consulted other friends who were already in college for advice. Coming to a decision, we both set our sights on UC San Diego because it had good facilities, was a good location geographically, and was a good school for the majors we wanted to go into.
To boost our chances of getting in, Tin encouraged me to take some extracurriculars and we decided to take some of the same AP classes such as AP Lang, AP Gov, and AP Calc AB so we could help each other out. At the same time, he involved himself in his school and participated in outside activities like Eagle Scouts.
However, a problem arose at the end of my junior year which made me worry about our chances of both getting into the same college. First, Tin received a low grade in AP Chemistry, then I realized I didn’t have enough extracurriculars. While this wouldn’t have guaranteed that I would be rejected, it likely lowered my chances of getting in and seemed less appealing to colleges compared to other applicants. This problem became apparent when we were filling out our applications together in November. We smoothly filled out the schools and campuses section, yet I paused when it came to extracurriculars and awards. My extracurriculars consisted of some clubs, community service, and a summer program, but they didn’t seem like much, especially considering that I didn’t have a significant role in most of them.
Even with the worry that our applications weren’t as strong as they could be, we submitted them and waited with baited breaths, hoping for the best. On the day acceptances came out, we both logged on to the portal at the same time, only to be met with double rejection. After planning and working towards our goal for so long, hoping desperately for acceptance, it was incredibly disheartening to see the results. The rejection greatly disappointed both of us, leaving us unsure of how to move forward. While it didn’t change our relationship, it certainly shattered our hopes of attending college together.
After taking some time to think about it, considering the competition and lower acceptance rates this year, not being accepted was understandable, although we thought at least one of us would get accepted. After deliberation, our outlooks changed, resigning ourselves to our fate and realizing that we couldn’t change what already happened. We instead focused on how we could meet in the future.
In the end, the rest of our schools were mismatched, with either one or none of us getting in. Although this was certainly crushing for both of us, we came to terms with it and decided that not going to the same college isn’t the be-all and end-all. Although we could have shared many more fun experiences in person, we can still interact as we usually do online. So instead, we planned to visit each other after finishing college, or hopefully sometime in the summer.
