Maybe I was a little harsh yesterday because I was all stressed out. But let me clarify my situation a little bit.
First I just wanted to respond to, “The problem is that you’re citing an average application.” But that’s what I’ve been asking you guys. How do I make it more than average. You keep saying that my application is average yet no one steps up and tells me what to do to make it above average.
Also, just as a side note, people were complaining about my grammar and punctuation. Sometimes it may not be the best because sometimes I also use mobile devices to type up responses and it’s hard to be accurate in those situations. However, when I’m on the computer, you can expect near perfect grammar (although mistakes can still happen because again, this is just a forum website. I’m not trying to be as cautious as I would be while typing an English paper.)
Now for my situation:
I’m in a really though situation right now in terms of choosing a career because it’s very unclear what I should do.
To make things make sense, let me break it down a little bit into simplified parts so that it’s easier to weave out of the mess.
I really like STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), particularly the “Mathematics” part of it. But STEM education is my area of interest.
Now I’m very talented at the violin, and it’s something I would like to continue playing throughout my life, but it’s not something I want to make a career out of. Yes, I’ll still continue to play in an orchestra probably, but I’m not aiming to make a huge career out of it.
The problem is that I want to start out at least $100,000 a year and after a few years be at $150,000 - $200,000 a year, and apparently I can’t find jobs that involve mathematics, science, engineering, etc. (the career cluster I’m interested in) that makes that much.
The Business, Management, and Administration career cluster is one that I keep considering because my primary goal is money. So that’s why I keep going back to this career cluster. The problem here is that my parents keep saying that it’s not something I’m going to enjoy doing. They say that it doesn’t fit my personality and that I won’t enjoy this job. They say that you have to be clever and have really fine speaking skills, and apparently that’s something I lack, or at least I’m not the best at (I wouldn’t say that I lack it, but it’s not my strong point).
I know I keep beating my frustration on what college to go to, but inside of me, this is the REAL frustration that is going on. What career to I take?
The reason it’s frustrating me is because if I don’t even know what career I’m going to choose, then I don’t know the major I’m going to take in college, and if I don’t know what I’m going to major in in college, then how am I supposed to know what colleges to be aiming for. So in reality, all this talk is useless if MIT doesn’t even come on my list (but it probably will actually because usually it comes in the top 3 for basically any major I think about).
What I would really like to do is figure out what I’m going to make my career in, then find out what major(s) are require for that career, and then search the top 15-20 colleges for that major (I’m only going to apply to colleges that are within the top 20 for any given major).
So for example, let’s say I find a career in math that fits my salary desire (which is $100,000 a year starting out and with few years of experience, increased to $150,000 - $200,000 a year), and I know that I want to major in mathematics.
Then I know that here are the colleges I have to choose from (I went to US News):
Rank
School name
Score
#1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA
5.0
#2 Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
4.9
#2 Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
4.9
#2 Stanford University
Stanford, CA
4.9
#2 University of California–Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
4.9
#6 University of Chicago
Chicago, IL
4.8
#7 California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
4.6
#8 University of California–Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
4.5
#8 University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI
4.5
#10 Columbia University
New York, NY
4.4
#10 New York University
New York, NY
4.4
#10 Yale University
New Haven, CT
4.4
#13 Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
4.3
#14 Brown University
Providence, RI
4.2
#14 University of Texas–Austin
Austin, TX
4.2
#16 Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
4.1
#16 University of Wisconsin–Madison
Madison, WI
4.1
#18 University of Minnesota–Twin Cities
Minneapolis, MN
4.0
#18 University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
4.0
#20 Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey–New Brunswick
Piscataway, NJ
3.9
#20 University of California–San Diego
La Jolla, CA
3.9
#20 University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL
3.9
#20 University of Maryland–College Park
College Park, MD
3.9
#24 Duke University
Durham, NC
3.8
#24 Johns Hopkins University
And then, I would probably choose 10-15 from this list and record them as colleges I’m thinking about applying to.
This is what I’m trying to do. But it can’t happen until I know where I want to make my career in.
The other confusion that I’m trying to clarify is: is it okay if I use my talent in violin just as a side activity when I’m an adult. Meaning let’s say I find a job in STEM/Business (what I’m trying to do), then I was wondering if it was okay for me to play in an orchestra along with my job. Because I’m not going to stop playing the violin, and I know this. But like I said, it’s not something I’m going to make my career out of.
And this leads me to the next thing. To sum it all up for what I should to for the whole “applying to top colleges” situation is continue what I’m doing, except stop acting desperate, find something that I love and really take that to the next level. And don’t think, “Will MIT like this? Will Harvard approve of this?” That’s what my guidance counselor said, and she also said that the best thing for me to do would be to start playing my violin in nursing homes, for the sick, etc.
But there are two problems here:
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I feel like my brain is poisoned. Because I can’t get this out of my head, “Will this get me into MIT?” I can’t eliminate those thoughts from my head anymore. It’s like, almost 24-7, those thoughts are in my head.
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The problem with violin is that I guess you can assume that violin is one of those things that I “love” to do, but like I keep asking, is it okay if I don’t make a career out of it, but still do very well in it and take it to the next level. See the problem that keeps occurring to me is that, okay, I like playing the violin and it’s something I plan on expanding on, but when I apply for colleges, do they expect me to make my career out of this? Meaning will colleges be turned off by me playing the violin and taking that to the next level, yet have no intentions for a career in this field but in STEM/Business. This is one of the complexities that is actually the most frustrating. If I can solve this problem and figure something out for this conflict, then a lot of my stress will be relieved (but there’s still more cleaning up to do obviously).