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The university application is full of surprises.
It all started in year 11, during Warwick open day. I fell in love with the campus and the MORSE course seemed perfectly suited for me. It seemed hard to achieve but I worked hard in order to go there someday.
Oxbridge didn't appeal to me so much, they did not have a course that seemed to combine maths and economics enough to please me.
But a guest speaker changed my mind, she talked about how maths-heavy the Cambridge economics course was. I went to St Catharine's open day and it confirmed my thoughts: I was going to apply to Cambridge, just in case.
It did seem impossible at first. I started with a prediction of A* chemistry AAA, applying to 4 courses requiring an A* in maths, Cambridge requiring another A* too.
I worked really hard at every stage of the application process. I loved the ECAA and was really surprised to be called to an interview.
I will always remember my interview day. As I was walking to St Catherine's I felt so proud to have gone this far.
Unexpectedly the interview went really well, I had a lot of fun. But everything crashed: I got an offer.
An A*A*A*A offer to be more precise.
This drove me insane. Everyone else got rejected in my school so I had no one who could relate to me. This offer drove me mad. I felt like I couldn't be happy when everyone else was so sad. I thought I had to target full marks in every subject. I put my alarm to insanely early times such as 2h30 in the morning in order to revise 6h before 10 AM. It drove me crazy for a while. I couldn't tell whether I was glad or not I got this offer.
Then I got to talk to some other offer holders. Their support was a huge relief to me and I am very glad I got to meet such amazing people. I still often felt "inferior", "not good enough" compared to most of them, who got better grades than me, internships in financial businesses and so on. But eventually everything went back to normal in my emotions and I revised a healthy amount.
I underestimated the impact of the exam period. I had 15 exams, 3 clashes including an overnight clash and I had no time to rest or revise between then. The workload all year was fine. But the exam period was horrible. I sacrificed 3 maths exams and my economics for an A* in maths and an A in chemistry. I have done my best.
Results day comes in. I have A* maths A furthermaths A economics and A chemistry + 2 in step 1 and 3 in step 2. (+A* french 2016). 2 A*s below my offer.
The wait during the summer p