My experience with ILC was a whirlwind from start to finish.
Because my sister had taken in part in
it a few years before, I had heard about the ILC before the presentation that
they give every year at each of the schools in WCCUSD. I was younger when my sister
participated, so I did not fully understand what the program consisted of, but
I knew I wanted to eventually be part of it. I applied to a course called Women
in Leadership at Brown University, as well as Biotechnology at Brown
University. I was accepted for an interview for both, but did not make the
final selection for either. I felt that at that point, I was done and that
maybe I would apply the following year.
One day while sitting in class, I got a call to come down to
the principal’s office where I saw Don. It was explained to me very quickly that
Chicago was offering a scholarship for multiple students, including myself, and
that I needed to decide if I wanted to take part right away. I said yes, of course. This was an amazing opportunity. One unique
aspect of my ILC experience was that I had a choice of what class I wanted to
apply for while already being accepted to the ILC. There were about seven or
eight classes to choose from, and about two I really wanted to apply to. The
first was Contagion because of my interest with health and medicine, and the
second was Developmental Psychology for the same reason. I
eventually decided that if I got accepted, I would take psychology because I
felt I knew less about it.
The application
process turned out to be a lot more than I expected because I had to apply to
multiple programs, in case one class got filled up. Luckily my top choice class
was available. Right away my cohort was informed of multiple events that were
coming up shortly. These included a meet and greet with our chaperone (not very
high pressure), the school board meeting, and the dinner in San Francisco with
admissions officers and alumni. Meeting Alie and my cohort was exciting, but we
did not really get to know each other much better until our first week of
traveling. The dinner in San Francisco was a preview of what our first week of
on the east coast would look like. One skill I feel I developed while away is
the ability to converse with strangers. At the first dinner, the dinner in San
Francisco, I was nervous about how to engage in conversations with people I did
not know because I am not so extroverted. By the last dinner in Chicago, I was not
nervous about talking to the admissions officers and asking questions. Just
being part of these few dinners helped me feel like I had expanded socially and
become more comfortable with people I am not necessarily close to.
Our first week was filled with non-stop traveling, touring,
and dinners. Each college I visited seemed to appeal to me more than the last
for the first couple of days. I really enjoyed the campuses, but after a couple
of tours I started to notice what I did and did not enjoy about college
campuses. I found myself preferring campuses that were within a city, but still
had defined campuses, like the campus of University of Pennsylvania. Another
thing about attending so many tours and information sessions is that because when
they begin to sound similar and scripted, it is easier to spot the differences.
Before we left, each of us was required to blog about one college we were going
to be visiting. We may have learned a lot about the college, but you simply
cannot tell if you are going to like a college or not until you visit it. There
is a certain factor that clicks with people at certain colleges, and you can’t
get that factor without visiting. Talking to students at the dinners was also
very beneficial. Although they were usually students who worked in admissions
and who were used to talking about their school in an exclusively positive
light, I feel like I saw their school in a new light after hearing what they
had to say. I got a feel of whether or not I would like a school based off of
their experiences. For example, Peter, a UChicago alum, told me that UChicago
had a big focus on core curriculum and humanities in particular in the core. He
told me that since he was really interested in literature and philosophy he
enjoyed UChicago, but for someone who was not so interested in this it might
not be the best fit.
The class I took was really interesting to me. Even though I
might have been tired because of long nights, I was always very engaged in the
discussions in the class because the content was stuff I would want to learn
about even outside of the classroom. One of the greatest aspects of the classes
at UChicago in my opinion -- not just my class, but all of the Insight program
classes -- was that they all had about 15 to 25 students maximum. I heard of no
one taking a class with more than 22 students. The small class size allowed for
students to actually form relationships with each other and with the professor.
Last summer, I took a summer class, not through ILC, at Brown University, and
the class I was taking had more than 100 students. Even though that might be more
like an actual freshman class, just for the summer experience I enjoyed having fewer
people in the class.
The class was short and intense. We had a lot of content to
learn and activities to do in a very short amount of time. We read multiple
chapters of the textbook and research papers, as well as doing a study with
children. For this study we had to write a research paper as well. It was a
challenge learning how to manage my time to read a good amount of material. By
the end of the first week in the course, I had figured out how to read
efficiently enough so that I could hold my own in discussion the next day, and
still not spend my whole day over a book.
Unfortunately, I did not get into the city as much as I
wanted to. We went to see the landmarks and to eat deep-dish pizza, but I would
have enjoyed spending more time downtown. It was unfortunate because Chicago is
such an interesting city that we were so close to, yet spent little time in.
Overall, I felt as if my time traveling on the east coast
and my time in Chicago was full of learning experiences and because I was
always so busy, it felt like it went by so fast.
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