Chapter Four
FOUR
The day after the law school panel, I sprang into action.
I emailed the Harvard Law School admissions office.
I knew I couldn’t just come out and say that I had deserved to be accepted and they must’ve made a mistake, so I asked for some clarity on their decision.
I was walking back to my table at my favorite dining hall, Ferris, with a hot cup of coffee when I saw their reply in my inbox, prompting me to spill half of the coffee onto my shirt.
It was only after opening it that I realized the reply didn’t warrant my reaction.
It was just a canned response, reiterating that they had carefully evaluated all applications, they couldn’t comment on individual decisions, and the results were final.
Unless, of course, I wanted to apply again next year.
Later that evening, I was returning to my room with a bag of clean clothes from the dryer—I needed to get the coffee stain out before it became permanent—when another new email caused me to drop my laundry basket.
I wobbled back to my dorm room and threw the basket onto the floor.
Inside the email was a link to my application portal.
I clicked on it, typed in my username and password, and read the result.
I kicked the laundry basket as hard as I could, but that wasn’t satisfying enough, so I grabbed armfuls of clothes and threw them against the wall.
I had gotten rejected by Yale.
I locked myself in my room for the next two days.
My body felt hollow, my motivation excavated from within.
I hadn’t cared about Yale, but I had thought that maybe I could convince Harvard to reconsider the rejection if they found out I had gotten into their top competitor.
The next week, more rejections: first Stanford, then Columbia, the latter of which I had frankly considered a target school at best, and a safety if I didn’t make an attempt at modesty.
Clearly, Columbia didn’t feel the same way.
I felt numb to the results, numb to the contrived niceness in the rejection letters.
“We received a lot of applications…” Yeah, no shit.
I know you received a lot of applications.
I know you’re selective. That’s why I applied for your program in the first place.
Finally, I received an acceptance letter from Georgetown. It was my safety school. My LSAT score was in the 90th percentile of their student population. My GPA—75th percentile. The confetti that appeared on my screen upon opening the application portal only made me feel worse.
If I had gotten rejected by Georgetown, I would’ve known that something major was wrong with my application.
Maybe the Law School Admission Council, which administered the LSAT, had mixed up my score report with some other, inferior applicant named Elizabeth Zhang, or maybe one of my recommenders had lambasted me in their letter.
Otherwise, there was no way I could’ve gotten rejected.
But now I knew for sure—it wasn’t them; it was me. I just wasn’t good enough.
I wondered if Laura had gotten into Yale, Columbia, and Stanford.
I mean, I was sure she had gotten into Georgetown.
I couldn’t imagine that anyone would get into Harvard but not into Georgetown.
I checked social media for signs, but there was no self-congratulatory post, no indication that she was celebrating a milestone.
—
The next day I walked to my appointment with Robert, the prelaw counselor.
It was around 4:00 a.m. the previous night, right before I succumbed to unconsciousness, that I realized perhaps I was thinking about the situation the wrong way: it wasn’t that Laura didn’t deserve to get in, it was that we both deserved to get in, and I didn’t.
It still was not a pleasant thought to assume that Laura, too, deserved a spot, but it was better than the notion that she deserved it more than me.
Perhaps the answer was that my scores and grades were indeed better, but I had accidentally screwed up some part of my application.
In retrospect, I realized that I asked other people to edit my essays, but no one actually proofread my application from beginning to end in the application portal.
I could’ve misread an instruction, or formatted an essay incorrectly.
With this possibility in mind, I felt light as I walked toward Robert’s office, even stopping to chat with a couple of acquaintances I passed on the way.
As soon as I fixed whatever silly little error I had made, I would have another shot.
I just needed to explain to the admissions officers what happened, and I’d be on my way to Harvard Law School. Just a temporary hiccup, that was all.
I felt even better when I walked into Robert’s office and saw him for the first time.
There was something about him that immediately elicited my trust—maybe it was his round metal spectacles, free of any smudges or specks, unlike the glasses I wore before going to bed—or the olive plant next to his desk, which I knew was not easy to keep alive.
Despite my intense sleep deprivation, I felt newly energized.
Robert would be able to explain what was going on. Robert would be able to fix it.
“How can I help you?” he said when I sat down across from him at his desk.
I told him about my situation; I kept my voice as steady as possible to minimize the chance he’d think I was just delusional.
When I finished explaining my problem, he took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a microfiber wipe.
“Harvard Law is tough to get into,” he said, and put his glasses back on. “I mean, all these schools that you were rejected from are extremely hard to get into. I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I know that. But I have the scores and the grades. One seventy-eight LSAT. Three-nine GPA. You can even take a look at my personal statement. It’s solid.
” My fear of appearing delusional dissipated in favor of a stronger emotion: pride.
I handed him a folder containing printed copies of my essays.
He skimmed through a few pages, grunting occasionally, but I couldn’t figure out what any of the grunts meant.
Finally, he set down the folder. In the second that followed, I began to doubt myself.
What if it wasn’t just a tiny little error; what if Robert was about to tell me that my application wasn’t strong enough?
I waited for him to say that my essays were actually horrible, and that everyone who had helped edit them was intentionally or unintentionally sabotaging me this entire time by making terrible recommendations and telling me my essays were ready to submit when they still contained quite atrocious grammatical errors.
It wouldn’t be good news, but at least it’d be news, at least I’d have an explanation.
Robert opened his mouth slightly before speaking.
“You’re right. This is solid.”
I put the folder back into my backpack.
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Regardless of what the law schools decide, you should feel proud of yourself. For all of this.”
“I am. But I just can’t fathom why it wasn’t enough.”
“Law school applications can be unpredictable.”
“I still have a hard time believing that it was a long shot.”
“You didn’t only apply to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia, right? What was your safety?”
“Georgetown.”
Robert gave me an indecipherable look and noisily emptied all the air out of his mouth. “Georgetown was your safety? And have you heard back?”
“Yeah. I got in.”
“Oh.” He took off his glasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket. “Way to bury the lede. So you’re worried because you got rejected by four of the hardest programs to get into. And you got into Georgetown. Plenty of people would say that’s their top choice.”
“Maybe it’s their top choice, but it’s not mine. It’s not Harvard.”
“Why all the fuss about Harvard? Most people would say Yale is the best program.”
“Well, I didn’t get into Yale either.” Robert was starting to annoy me. Could he just get to the point already?
“Sure,” he said. “But you seem very set on Harvard, so I was just curious.”
“Harvard is the best for corporate law. And it has the best name recognition.”
“Huh, okay. I guess as an institution overall that’s the case.”
“Exactly. So why didn’t I get in?”
He cleared his throat and rolled his chair toward the water cooler.
He didn’t actually get out of his chair, which meant he had to push his feet against the floor in an awkward waddling motion.
He didn’t appear self-conscious about it, even though I thought he should.
We sat in silence as he filled his metal bottle to the brim.
He gestured toward me to ask whether I wanted water as well, and I shook my head.
I began tapping my foot, hoping he would notice, but if he did, he didn’t apologize for taking so long.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said after first taking a lengthy sip. “Sometimes these things happen. Sure, if I had to place a bet three months ago, I would’ve said you had a decent shot. But no one is 100 percent.”
“You’ve seen my scores. Isn’t there just some explanation you can give? Anything.”
“You’re very persistent. It’ll make you a good lawyer.”
“I just want to know why I was rejected. You can tell me. I’m not going to freak out. I genuinely want to know.”
He put a hand up. “Hey, I get it. You want a postmortem.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, is there anything you aren’t telling me? Disciplinary measures? Were you ever canceled for saying a racial slur?”
“No. I promise. Search my name.” I gestured at his computer. “You won’t find anything.”
“I believe you.”
“So what is it? Why was it not enough?”
“I don’t know.” Robert put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
I squinted my eyes. Something about his answer felt off, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. “It feels like you actually do know, you’re just not telling me.”
“I understand this is hard to process. But the truth is, sometimes these things happen. It’s like undergrad. There are thousands of valedictorians who don’t get into their top choice school. Maybe Columbia wasn’t even your top choice school.”
“It actually was, and that’s a false equivalence. Undergrad admissions are completely different.”
We stared at each other for the next few seconds. He broke off contact first.
“Okay, fine.”
“Fine? So you do know why I didn’t get in.”
“I have my suspicions.”
“Does someone powerful hold a vendetta against me or something?”
He laughed. “No, you’re not that important. It’s something else, but it’s not going to be fun to hear.”
“And you’re sure that this is the reason I didn’t get in.”
“I am pretty sure.”
“Great. Then tell me where I went wrong.”