For many teens, college has
been looming on our horizons
since junior high.
Though we have a vague
idea of what we want — brick
buildings, vines of ivy, lecture
halls of avid learners clicking
away at their laptops — most
of us aren’t 100 percent sure of
what we want to study for the
next four years, and eventually
do for the rest of our lives.
For my friend Fiona
Doherty, a senior at Cherry
Valley-Springfield Central
School, the search for the right
school was overwhelming,
but
ultimately successful
after
realizing her
passion and
working hard
to get into
her perfect
college program.
Fiona
began visiting
colleges
at the end of
her junior
year.
“I realized
that
college was
pretty imminent,”
she
said. “It’s daunting to find a
school that fits you. It means
you have to start thinking
about that inevitable question:
What am I going to do with my
life?”
But, with the help of a
supportive family, Fiona was
ready for the challenge.
Before her junior year of
high school, Fiona avoided the
college question at all costs.
She wasn’t interested in
selecting a college based on
the extracurriculars she has
excelled at in high school.
She has co-captained the
varsity soccer team, started for
a Tri-Valley League Champion
basketball team and set school
records for running events in
track and field. But she has
never felt that sports are her
true calling.
“I’d like to play for intramural
teams in college,” Fiona
told me, “and I’ll always be an
active person. But I don’t have
a desire to seriously pursue
competitive sports past high
school.”
She is also a talented musician
_ she’s participated in
All-County band and New
York State School Music Associationfestivals
as a soloist
every year since she began
playing the flute in fourth
grade. But music isn’t her true
passion, either.
Though she’s a voracious
reader, she doesn’t
want to major in literature.
She loves to travel,
but she isn’t interested in
any field that could take
her around the world.
Fiona always thought
she would enter college as
an undecided major, get a
solid liberal arts education
and choose what she
wanted to do as a junior
in college.
But to her surprise,
she stumbled across
her passion during high
school, in the kitchen.
“I started to cook at the
end of my junior year,” she
said, “and (last) summer, I
got more serious about it.
In our culture of fast food
and TV meals, it’s sometimes
hard to make good
nutritional choices. The
more I cooked, the more
aware I became of nutrition
and its role in our
lifestyles.”
She didn’t discover
her passion a moment too
soon.
“I started visiting colleges
at the end of junior
year, looking mostly
at state schools. When
I decided that I wanted
to concentrate in nutrition,
I started looking at
schools in the Northeast
with good nutrition
programs, which
really narrowed my
options,” she said, thinking
back on the process
with a sigh. “I visited (the
State University College
at Albany,) which I liked,
and (the State University
at Geneseo,) which I
didn’t.” She also visited
the University of Rochester,
the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst and
Cornell University, which
she fell in love with.
“(Cornell’s) campus is
so busy and exciting in
the context of this funky
college town: Ithaca.”
One of Cornell’s public
sectors, the College
of Agriculture and Life
Sciences, offers a variety
of nutritional programs,
including international
nutrition. “It was perfect,”
Fiona exclaimed.
“A major where I could
explore my love of travel
and nutrition at the same
time.” Cornell was her
first choice.
The problem was that
Fiona only realized how
badly she wanted to go to
Cornell when she visited
the campus in September.
She had to raise her
SAT scores, take two SAT
subject tests and send in
her application by Nov. 1
for early decision.
I watched her bury her
nose in the fattest SAT
books for two months
straight and scribble college
essay ideas in the
margins of her notebooks
during English class.
In a matter of weeks,
she had improved her
SAT score by almost 200
points, earned impressive
scores on the Math I and
Literature subject tests
and sent an application to
her first-choice school.
She also sent out applications
to the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst
and SUNY Albany
and had an interview at
the University of Rochester.
Then was the notorious
“waiting game.”
“I tried not to set my
heart on Cornell and I
knew that I would be happy
wherever I ended up,
but no other school in the
area had the perfect program.”
On Dec. 11, Fiona got
her acceptance letter
from Cornell University.
After the frightening process
of choosing a career,
the hectic search for a
school and the lengthy
applications, she was
bound for the school of
her dreams. The next step
is simply going.
Maggie Millner is a
senior at Cherry Valley-
Springfi eld Central
School.
