My Cornell Blog

I WAS ACCEPTED!

I can't believe it but I was actually accepted to Cornell Engineering! That day was the longest day of my life! Ah, but it was all worth it. I can't wait to get up there and start working my tail off!

This blog was created as a way to add an even more personal feel to this website and, of course, to say a couple of things directly related to Cornell. This blog has been used so far to say anything from site updates to my current health, but overall it is meant to present my passion for Cornell. I have applied early decision for this amazing university and check the status site repeatedly, as well as surfing the college's website. I first fell in love with Cornell when I toured few different colleges on my way to a Duke TIP program; ok, so Cornell was a little out of the way from North Carolina, but I'm glad we took the detour! Cornell is the most beautiful school I have seen in the most beautiful landscape of Ithaca, New York. All the staff and students were friendly when I got a chance to talk to them and the admissions officers have been very accommodating whenever I have called them about any questions. Cornell is, without a doubt, my dream school. Rural landscapes, fresh air, great community, intensive academics, undergraduate research and facilities, and fun little traditions. Cornell is gorges.

Only a week till the decision will be official, that is if everything stays on schedule for December 14/15. From what I have heard they are a little behind on everything because of a new computer system, even so it shouldnt be too much longer. I havent blogged in a while primarily because I figure this site and blog has probably already been looked at. I still wanted to add one quick update though, which is that I got to talk to a Cornell alumni!

He contacted me over email and we met this weekend. It was a bit of a drive to his office, but it was well worth it. He asked me a few questions, from which he will write a small report to Cornell, but the best part was getting to talk to someone who had lived the Cornell lifestyle. It was especially nice that he was also from Florida so he talked about how the culture is different up there and the leaves changing color and those northern kind of things. I was amazed at how devoted he was to Cornell; even if he said anything about having to go up a steep hill to classes or a few cut-throat classmates, it was always obvious that he would love to do it all over again and had no regrets about it. I hope to learn that I will get the chance to make my own Cornell memories next year! The wait is almost over!

Three more weeks! That seems to be all that is going through my head recently. I can't believe the decision will be made in only a few weeks! I am so incredibly nervous. Over and over I try to visualize what it is going to be like seeing an acceptance or denial or a referral to regular decision, but I cant seem to see it anymore. The future really is unpredictable and I suppose I need to accept that and try to relax, but that sure is easier said than done.

On a more casual note, I have come across an awesome Cornell site! It is a bunch of different projects done for a microcontroller class all hosted here: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/. This site has all kind of cool projects all done by students at Cornell. I actually got inspired and began trying to reduplicate the laser pong project, though I have ran into a few problems with the sensor and controller. Another result from this inspiration is I have begun making my RGB LED lamp computer controlled! That project is running smoothly so far, so you can expect some pictures of both the lamp and the controller program soon! Hopefully a year from now I will be working on projects with other Cornellians!

I now have all green check marks on my application status site! It also has a small blurb at the bottom saying my app has been forwarded to the reviewing committee! This really is nerve-racking, an admissions officer could truly be looking at this site at any time...or already has. I'm so nervous, but so excited. I have been checking all the different blogs on the Cornell engineering sites and uncovered some different interesting facts about the application process. The big one is that the decision will be posted Online, so I won't even have to wait for the letter to come in the mail. I'm not sure if that adds or takes away from the suspense. Unfortunately, it seems I have done just about all I can do, now all that is left is to hope and pray that I get admitted.

This brings me to another topic that I have been meaning to talk about, the counter at the top of this blog. This counter is counting down to December 15, which is when I thought I would know the decision based on the information that the decision would be made in mid-December. Now I have found out that last year the decisions were made by and posted online on December 14, so my counter may be a little off, but it still is a nice way to count down to a very important decision to be made!

I was hoping to wait until my application was officially complete before another blog, but a lot has happened so I wanted to write at least some of it down.

I have updated the site in a couple different ways. The main change is that I have added some photos from FCRAR 2006 (Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics). This was a nice little convention I got to go to down in Miami at FIU. There were many different colleges there with different robots and presentations. Since I have been working on my robot quite a lot lately, I was interested in perhaps taking him to the conference again this year. When I was looking at the site for this year's conference, I found a link to the one in 2006. From there I found, and now posted, some photos taken of me and my family.

This leads me nicely into the next update, which is Supe related. I have updated him so that he is now wirelessly controlled via the computer's serial port. Unfortunately my laptop did not have a serial port, so I had to purchase a usb to serial converter (which worked flawlessly). I have been doing a lot of programming lately and am now at the stage where I am just working out a few glitches as I discover them. Overall, I am about at the stage where I just need to reassemble him, add some legs, and create some different moves for him to execute. Of course, that is all a lot harder and time consuming than it sounds. Hopefully I'll have some more progress photos up soon.

Ok, now on to a change in topic back to the main purpose of this blog; Cornell. First off I would like to say that I am now enrolled in Physics! All I have to do is make the welcome call, which I am going to do today. I know that physics is an important course to take for an engineering applicant. Also, I have been doing a lot of surfing on the Cornell website, mostly through the engineering blogs. I also did get a response to my comment on the engineering admissions officer's blog. She said that they would most deffinitly enjoy the break from reading essays to look at a website; given that they weren't too close to the deadline. So as long as they aren't too rushed, my website should get to be taken into consideration in my application! I also have been finding out cool little snippets about Cornell, such as the swim test and the book you have to read for freshman orientation. It is such an amazing school!

The deadline for early decision is finally here! I'm assuming this also means the applications are going to be reviewed. Unfortunately the status site still say my second teacher recommendation isn't there, but I know that it is, so no worries. On the site they put up a big bold notice telling people not to worry that the deadline is here and that it can take up to two weeks to get the application complete even if the materials have arrived. I'm not surprised considering last year they had over 3,000 applications just for early decision; still, I'm sure even with the notice they are being swamped with calls from potential students asking where their stuff is. It really is exciting that my application could be reviewed soon!

P.S. I'm still unfortunately quite sick, luckily I was able to go to school today and I think I'm pretty close to already caught up. Hopefully I'll be entirely better by Monday.

I believe I'll address all that I put in the title in their respective order. So, to start out with we have the numerous updates that I have done to this site. All of these updates put together come out to the result of absolutely no ads on my site! I payed a little bit of money to upgrade my geocities plan and get rid of the annoying ads on the side. I also found a nice program called flowplayer that allowed me to host my videos on my site(before I had them hosted elsewhere and the videos would have random advertisements at the end). So the website is even more professional looking now, hooray!

Waiting: I now know from the USPS tracking service that both of the teacher recommendations that I had sent recently have been signed for at Cornell. Unfortunately, the application status site still says I only have one recommendation in. I'm not really worried about it since I know they are there, I'm sure it is just a matter of the site needing to be updated/ waiting my turn for my application to be reviewed. It still will be nice when I can see all green check marks and know that I have everything there that they need.

Ah, the blogs. I have been surfing around the Cornell website quite a bit lately and one of the things I found was an assortment of blogs, specifically from the engineering department. It is interesting reading different takes on separate aspects of Cornell as told by actual students there. I also read that at least one or two of the students who were blogging had gone to a summer thing at Cornell before being admitted. I would have been interested in something like that. There is also a blog kept by an engineering admissions officer. There are some standard tips on there like "don't write I want to go to college A in your essay to college B." I think that is the one I hear the most about from the admissions officers. I don't really have to worry about that with Cornell though since it was the first college I applied to and is the first one that rolls off my tongue. I am thinking that I might comment on her blog though and ask about the chances of my website actually being viewed. I have put a lot of time and devotion into it and hope that they at least look at it. Who knows, she may be the one who looks at my application!

Ok, this is turning out to be a long post so I'll keep this one short since it isn't as important. I have been sick for the past few days which has really been horrible. I have been keeping up with my online classes, took an exam today, but I am a little worried about falling behind in AP environmental science. This little experience has caused me to ponder about being sick at college/Cornell. That isn't really part of the college experience you normally think about. Well, I hope I get better for tomorrow and I'll be sure to blog again whenever I get all green check marks.

Well, now that I have everything for the application basically handled, the wait begins. USPS does say that one of the teacher letters has been processed and sent out of their NY office. As of this morning, there still is a red X beside the second teacher letter. At least I know that there will be a letter there on time. There should be straight green check marks all the way down my application status page in the next couple of days.

One more update: I have changed my picture on my homepage. It was originally a picture from homecoming last year, but I received my senior picture today in Calculus. I scanned it and then put it up to display a more recent, purple cloaked, version of myself.

Update: I just realized that it is only a week until the November 1st deadline! Also, I checked the USPS tracking and one of them has been signed for by someone at Cornell. The other one has been accepted at my local post office, I hope they don't get annoyed by me sending more than two...The main reason for me having so many sent by accident is because one was late and I wanted to ensure that at least one of the letters got there by the deadline; which one did, so mission accomplished.

I am glad to say that I am slowly seeing more and more green check marks on my application status site. The transcripts and secondary school report have been added. I also had an interesting little run around today. Worried that my English teacher hadn't sent in the report, my mom and I went and got two over-night envelopes to give to two more teachers, along with the recommendation forms of course. It turns out that my English teacher sent it out this past Thursday and she was sorry for having lost it until then. I still gave two more teachers the overnight letters, better safe than sorry. I still hope that they read the English one though because I don't think the other two will have time to write an actual letter/will just fill out the forms.

In other news, I have been inspired to look through some of my old electronics books to refresh my memory of the basics. I hope to put some pictures of them up on my site to show some more of my inspirations that helped me get started. I also found a Cornell engineering panthlet I got last summer and have been leafing through it. It will be so exciting if I get in.

P.S. I just wanted to say that I really have had a lot of fun working on this site. Even though I really really hope it wasn't in vain, it is still something that I enjoyed doing and am quite proud of. I learned a lot of different things while working on it too, especially different html tags.

I have given in and decided to do this blog with the most recent news at the top.

That news right now is a variety of different things. I might as well start off with the most Cornell related news. I have been checking the application status online every day since I got the pin. One problem I noticed was that just my SAT critical reading score was missing, but that got fixed today. I wasn't quite sure how only that score could be missing. I have also been trying to find out about my second teacher recommendation. I know my transcripts and secondary school report have been sent, but I had to call today to find out which teacher's report had been received. Unfortunately I have no way of getting in contact with the teacher who wrote the one that isn't there yet, since she is on jury duty. So, tomorrow I will be pleading another teacher to write me a recommendation on short notice so I can overnight it. I hope everything gets in on time:-(

I have also updated a few things on the website. I added pictures of Supe's legs, my burnt-out RGB LED lamp, and my most recent project "puppetmaster." I really like the puppetmaster but it is taking a lot of debugging to get functioning.

One last thing that I am just going to say now is: I hope soooo badly that this site wasn't created in vain. I think that is my biggest worry. I hope that my essay with this link will be read on the computer so all they have to do is click the link. I know there is a lot to sort through on this website, but I've done my best to keep it user-friendly. I just want them to look through it and see what I have done and realize that I am a good kid. I want them to read this blog and realize that Cornell is really the only college I can picture myself at. I'm going to be walking on air all of winter break if I get in. This site is my way of talking to the admission officers to show them who I really am and what I have to offer. I was reading through the statistics of the incoming class, and I definitely have the test scores and class ranking and such....but some people even with all those got turned away, while some people with lower academics were accepted. I wish I knew what set those people apart and I really hope the site helps set me apart as well.

Now, it is time for me to go to bed, and pray that I get into Cornell.

Ok, I have decided to add this blog onto my website to try to help convey my enthusiasm for Cornell. I was reading through my essays that I have already submitted and I must admit they are quite dry. The same is true for this website. I created this website to try to display what I have been working on, but even more importantly to show what I have to offer colleges, in other words: Cornell. This blog will be a place for me to keep track of my progress with my application and just spout out anything I have to say during this long nerve-racking process. My essays are all pretty good and do say quite a bit about my accomplishments, but I am human too. I am not just my accomplishments. Cornell is my first choice of college by far. It is where I day dream about being in a year from now. I visited there a little more than a year ago and was just astonished.

Ithaca on its own is a breath taking sight, especially for a Floridian. The huge hills, the waterfalls, the lake, the crisp cold air, and the frost on the windshield in the middle of July! I realize it is probably going to be quite a shock at first, all the snow, ice, and those weird heaters in the hallways and dorms; but I am not going to allow that to hold me back. I want to go to Cornell so badly.

I spend my days, after school work, talking to my mom about how amazing it would be to get in; and how I am going to be so depressed if I don't. I really wish there was a way to find out if I am accepted even earlier than it is with early decision. The school is so majestic and old fashioned looking, while having the most advanced technologies. I am personally a large fan of the rural and the fact that Cornell is all the way out in upstate New York, instead of being in a city, is a huge plus for me. I just felt so at home when I toured the campus; as the recruiters would put it: it was a perfect fit.