Thursday, July 2, 2009

#32: Not Admitting Notre Dame Wasn’t Their First College Choice

When seniors in high school apply to colleges, many have already determined which school is their first choice.  This is the school that they will absolutely attend if they are accepted, regardless of what other schools accept them.  For thousands of high school seniors [and Boston College Students] Notre Dame is the dream school that is far and away their first college choice, but for reasons unknown to this writer, this does not hold true for all high school seniors. 

Some high school seniors have Notre Dame as their second choice.  For whatever reason, these students prefer schools such as Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, and the Ivies.  These students long to attend secular schools in actual cities or moderate climates with less prominent football teams; they long for higher US News and World Report Rankings. 

Shockingly, some of these troubled youths actually become Notre Dame Students when their first choice schools reject their applications.  However, once they enroll at Notre Dame they will do anything they can to prevent their peers from discovering that Notre Dame was not their first college choice.  They will research historical football results, watch Rudy (see #30) over and over, memorize Heisman Trophy winners, purchase previous years versions of THE SHIRT (see #2), and begin going to mass regularly (see #4) to make it seem like they had visions of leprechauns dancing in their heads all throughout their youth.   

However, cracks in their disguise will eventually begin to show.  They might accidently wear apparel from another university, become overly enthusiastic while watching another schools sporting event, or even relate stories about how awesome something at another campus is (i.e. Tenting at Duke, the Michigan-OSU game, the Stanford Marching Band). 

Despite the inevitable cracks, these students will insist that Notre Dame was their first college choice just so they can more easily fit in with all their hard core legacy and overly Catholic friends.  Before long they will come to understand how wrong they were about their first college choice, and realize how fortuitous it was that they were denied admission.

10 comments:

  1. Ha Ha ya keep telling yourself that. BC is way better!! South Bend is a joke and so is ND football.

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  2. Boston College.

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  3. Boston College students eat shit.

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  4. Boston College? [slap slap] You just lied to me twice.

    Notre Dame was hardly my first choice, in fact, I almost didn't apply. But after not getting into the two schools I was legacy at and getting into ND where I had no family connection, it was sort of a no-brainer. Looking back four years later, I can't imagine having been anywhere else. The Lord moves in mysterious ways...

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  5. Two sisters I knew from high school wanted to go to ND but one was rejected and the other wait-listed. They both got into Duke and ended up there. Just saying.

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  6. The propensity in South Bend to think that deep down everyone really wants to go to ND is endemic, and I believe if you check admission records you'll find BC has more crossover applications with Harvard and Georgetown.

    The students there love to taunt BC students with "Backup College", and BC students chant back "middle of nowhere". The reality is that a large proportion of BC undergrads are from the East and West coasts, wanted a more urban location, and never really gave serious consideration to spending four years in the middle of Indiana.

    ND is fine school, but I sincerely doubt the assertion that many undergrads at BC wanted to go there. Personally my choice came down to BC and Brown and I opted against Providence. I knew Notre Dame existed in the same sense that I knew Penn State existed, but thought of applying to a school that remote never crossed my mind.

    And by the way, Rudy was filmed at halftime duing the 1992 BC game.

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  7. Hey Bob,
    Ask anyone with a brain which school is more prestigious, has a greater history, and has the superior tradition (be it football or anything else) and you are going to get the University of Notre Dame as the answer every time. (Except from BC graduates who can't cope with that fact.) The location and weather are lame excuses for picking an inferior institution. I hail from South Florida and was raised in what most people would consider paradise weather. I wouldn't trade my ND experience and degree for that at any other school anywhere, let alone one with butt ugly colors like yours. BC may not house as many ND wannabes as it used to, and admittedly your football team has caused us some problems and won some big games, but to put the two schools in the same league (beyond both being Catholic) is absurd. You should have gone to Brown. Oh, and you shouldn't try to be an authority on a school you only knew existed when you chose to apply to BC. The movie Rudy was filmed over a number of weeks including football weekends. A significant portion of the movie was filmed during the famous Snow Bowl game where the Irish came back last second and beat Penn State. BC got any historic games like that (other than the few when they beat ND)? Maybe Penn State should have been an option for you. Very similar to your school as the only time anyone hears about it is when you play Notre Dame. Sucks to be so second rate huh?

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