For many of you, the next few days will be a time of tremendous emotional turmoil.

For those who applied early to one of Princeton's peers there will be scenes of joy and others of soul-wrenching devastation. Even with the higher acceptance rates in EA/ED rounds, over two-thirds of you will find yourselves holding the dreaded thin envelope or slumped over your computer keyboard wondering what more you could have done. You will second-guess every comma and wonder if your essay was too long or if you should have retaken the SATs one more time. You'll hide from the pained smiles and words of comfort coming from parents and friends who just don't get it, who just don't understand how you hurt. On the one hand you'll rage at the school that made you feel this way and on the other, wonder if classmates who snickered at your application to school X, Y or Z really did have it right and that you are, just as they guessed, a poseur who reached too high and got what you deserved.

To anyone in this situation, I say this.

Know that your value as a person cannot be determined by a group of overworked admissions officers. You have something to offer the world and whether or not it was revealed in those maddeningly constricted spaces on those pages of impersonal forms...it is real. You are more than a "fill-in-the-blank". Remind yourself of that.

To those who were accepted early at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, MIT, Stanford, UPenn, Yale or any one of many other wonderful and competitive schools--congratulations! To those who were deferred or rejected, take heart. The admissions season is far from over. In the next two weeks there will still be plenty of time to fill out applications to other schools.

One of them, I hope, will be Princeton, and this is why.

When I first saw Princeton it was easy to fall in love. Under brilliant skies the gothic spires and quiet courtyards spoke to me. I had some familiarity with the UK and saw an American version of Cambridge before me. Still, I was cautious. I had visited the campus unsure of what to expect. Competitive classmates had urged me to ignore a school they derisively characterized as a haven for the wealthy and a playground for the privileged. The eating clubs, they said, were places no civilized liberal high school student like me would be able to stomach. The town would be dull, the student body "preppy" and I would be marginalized without a name followed by a roman numeral.

They could not have been more wrong.

My most vivid memory was of my first night in my host student's room. There were no subtly probing questions about my family or my SATs or anxious and defensive questions about other schools to which I was applying (all of which I'd heard at schools I'd just visited). My host was uninterested in whether my high school was public or private or where I had 'vacationed' last summer. Instead, he leaned toward me and asked a single question. "Are you doing okay?"

"I'm asking," he said, "because I remember what a totally [explicative] time applying to schools was for me."

I breathed out slowly and then drew in the aroma of stale pizza and patient piles of dirty laundry that permeate all college students' rooms. "Yeah," I said, "and thanks for asking."

There would be many other questions in those two days. I asked about the Princeton Honor Code, if it worked and if it were true that, because of it, exams were unsupervised. I asked about the eating clubs and was taken to Charter for some fun meals with my host's decidedly unpretentious friends. I met my host's Mexican-American family and his little sister who, at the age of six or so, told me confidently that someday she was going to go to Princeton too. I found a quiet classroom with a single student hidden behind stacks of books who stopped and took the time to tell me about the workload and the opportunities, about her senior thesis and her plans for the future. I sat in on a lecture by a philosophy professor, whose name I can't remember, but whose riffs on Locke's Second Treatise on Government left me simultaneously laughing and in awe. I met a football player who also happened to sing in an a cappella group and an engineer who wrote short stories. I was introduced to a young professor who spent at least half an hour over coffee answering my questions and encouraging me to consider Princeton seriously.

Everywhere I went those two days, I found an institution serious in its purpose and determined to expect and demand the best from the members of its community. There was no arrogance, little talk of comparisons with other schools and no more popped collars than I had seen anywhere else. I heard plenty of laughing, strolled the busy town, overhead conversations in languages from across the globe and worked out in a sweaty gym with dozens of friendly students. Two days may not be enough time to see deeply into the soul of an institution, but it is long enough to realize that it has one.

In the end, I applied to all of Princeton's peers and was lucky enough to be offered a place at each of them. Now, a number of years out of Princeton, I look back and know that I never really had a choice. In passing under those vaulted arches, while sitting quietly in Princeton's magnificent chapel as stained glass rainbows bathed me in their soft light, in finding friends everywhere I turned during those magical autumn days...I had asked the right question. I had found the "me" that had been looking for an academic home.

Of all the things I learned at Princeton, these are the most important--

Life is not always easy but it is rich beyond any eighteen year old's imagination and it is all ahead of you. Be humble and work hard. Give thanks for the gifts you've received and remember that some will be earned while others will be handed to you as a result of glorious good fortune. Be strong when things go badly and forgive yourself for your failures. Avoid both false modesty and crippling pride. Be real, and finally, care about those around you in the same way Princeton cared about me. And, oh yes--every once in awhile, ask them how they're doing.

Dear Zhong Yang:

It is with very real regret that I must tell you that we will not be able to offer you a place in the class entering Duke this fall. I realize that this is disappointing news; I want to assure you that we considered your candidacy carefully and that our decision was not an easy one.

This was in many ways an extraordinary year for the admission process at Duke. We received more than 20,300 applications, the largest number in our history and over a thousand more than last year. The applicant pool was one of the strongest academically we have ever had. As a result, in filling just 1,650 places in the first-year class the Admissions Committee faced a number of difficult decisions, and found itself not being able to admit students it might well have admitted just a year or two ago. After reviewing each application at least twice, it is clear to us that almost all of our applicants are outstanding young women and men, people fully capable of performing well in Duke’s classrooms and contributing to our community. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of applicants means that we can admit only a small percentage of the students we find appealing, a task made exceptionally difficult by the unusual strength and size of our applicant pool this year.

You may be asking what was lacking in your application; for most of our applicants the honest answer is nothing. If you’re like most of the students who applied, you’ve put much effort into doing well in school, you made significant contributions in your extracurricular activities, and you worked hard to balance the many demands on your time. The Admissions Office staff and the Admissions Committee carefully and fully evaluated each application, finding it extremely challenging to distinguish among the many exceptional students who would flourish here. The decisions of the Admissions Committee are guided by our understanding of our applicants as individuals, and our sense of which students together, with their particular combination of interests, backgrounds, and experiences, approach our sense of the class that is most appropriate for Duke right now. We have no quotas by school, by state, by race or ethnic group, by gender, or by area of interest. Our decisions are ultimately based on our evaluation of the many factors that together suggest to us the best match between our applicants – individually and as a group – and Duke. In creating our class and choosing among the large number of outstanding candidates, we could select only some of the many applicants who would be wonderful Duke students and alumni. I can tell you that at one point or another every staff member remarked how difficult the selection process was this year.

You and your fellow applicants have exceptional academic and personal qualifications, and I truly regret that we could not offer you a place in the first-year class. I know that you will find an institution at which you will be happy; I know, too, that the school you choose will benefit from your presence. I wish you all the success I know you are capable of as you pursue your education further.