Self-presentation is one of the finest arts that Penn students partake in, and it comes in many flavors. During NSO, you’ll undoubtedly hear a classic humble brag about how someone only placed second in Debate Nationals. A hallmate might share their two cents about which part of The Hamptons is the best place to summer. And during midterms season, you might facetiously complain about the measly B+ you got on an exam.
But one kind of image curation, in particular, goes unrecognized: your explanation for why you think you got in.
Acceptable answers are surprisingly difficult to concoct. They walk a fine line between self-aware and self-aggrandizing, humble and confident. A prime response balances acknowledging your low SAT while mentioning your non-profit.
Some people ditch convention entirely and shamelessly proclaim their triple legacy. I’ve heard it all. That is, except for one glaringly obvious answer: “I think I just got lucky.”
Which is ironic, considering that most application discourse cautions students of the sheer randomness of admissions. But the moment you get in, and especially once you move in, that narrative dissipates. Suddenly, there’s a pressure to act as if getting into Penn was entirely predictable.
Maybe we all do actually just feel that way (I don’t). But this complacency in our acceptance is more likely an overcorrection for Penn’s most pervasive insecurity: impostor syndrome. For anyone not well-connected, whose application was more than a mere formality, the college process was likely turbulent and debilitatingly uncertain. We silently crossed our fingers while convincing ourselves that we would likely end up at our state schools. We equivocated between optimism and realism. Given this history, it tracks that we would want to abandon that fatalistic feeling before arriving on campus.
A crisp, red-and-blue acceptance letter from Penn feels like an ultimate vindication, like permission to accept that you were always good enough and a shield to dispel self-doubt. Leaving that uncertainty in the rearview, convincing yourself that you belong, feels rapturous. But, it’s fleeting.
Once you get here, the novelty withers. Among your fellow first years, your Penn acceptance is, shockingly, unspecial. The objective suddenly shifts to convincing others you belong; believing you belong is a prerequisite. In conversations with peers for whom being at Penn was truly a given, suggesting that you got in out of luck rivals social suicide. The corresponding blasé, although socially advantageous, is corroding our humility.
The tradeoff of clout gained while posing as an auto-admit is perspective lost. This front of self-assuredness seeps through superficial social settings into our lifestyles, imploring us to pathologize one another’s adequacy. Consider how many times you’ve shied away from expressing your concerns about a class, afraid of appearing undeserving. Or, the countless jeers you must have heard about how the recruited athlete or the legacy student is stealing a spot.
Regardless of their validity, those retorts are a projection of the creeping impostor syndrome we all want to outrun. Labeling a classmate as undeserving relieves the pressure of justifying your own belonging, making it easier to run away from the luck component of your acceptance. It makes it more plausible that you aren’t the impostor. But maybe you are.
While applying, you probably knew of someone who seemed completely qualified, but got rejected. And in consolation, you likely explained it away with bad luck, ensuring them that they deserved to get in. That line of thinking is much less assuring when you flip it and ask yourself if someone out there deserves to be here more than you.
Ultimately, proving that you’re the most deserving of your seat is not the point of being a Penn student, because nobody truly can be. Our purpose is to wield that seat with intention, and from it, enrich our peers’ experiences, not attack their presence. Most of all, our deserving shouldn’t be defined by who we were before getting here. In the pursuit to convince ourselves that we belong, I think we’ve neglected the power of creating that belonging for ourselves.
It’s high time we embrace uncertainty, including the randomness of our admissions. If you find yourself in mildly awkward small talk about college app season, ditch the carefully constructed answer. I promise it’s alright to admit that you thought you had no shot. On your afternoon walk down Locust, as you pinch yourself that you’re really here, recall what that uncertainty felt like. You don’t need to embody it, but recognize it. Recognize the randomness as an ever-present truth, not a possibility to be disproved. After all, the present is the result of a series of near misses.
DEW UDAGEDARA is a College first year studying Neuroscience from Long Beach, Calif. His email is dewdunu@sas.upenn.edu.
