Five years ago, senior Evelyn Alt’s journey to New York University [NYU] began with Lana Condor, the Coveys, and a hatbox full of teenage crush confessions.
“NYU has been my top choice since eighth grade, when I first watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” Evelyn said. “I was in my Lara Jean moment.”
While her interest in New York may have begun with a romantic comedy, as she grew older, her intrigue for the Big Apple quickly grew beyond the screen and into a destined reality. Fast-paced, diverse, and full of palpable ambition, the city itself became just as compelling as the school she hoped to attend.
“[To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before] introduced me to New York as a concept,” Evelyn said, “and the idea of living in New York made me want to go to NYU. I love the city, the diversity, and the cosmopolitan aspect. It’s a cliché, but it’s like everyone who’s there wants to be there so badly. There’s a culture of, ‘I worked hard to get here.’ I think it’s gonna be really interesting to meet people who are like me in that way.”
While her cinematic introduction to New York ignited her initial spark with the city, a hunger for understanding the world’s fractures compelled her toward political science, a major that offers both a framework to engage with pressing global issues in a meaningful way and also a means of wielding tangible impact going into her future career.
“When I was picking political science,” Evelyn said, “I was thinking about what I wanted to do not only as a major, but for the rest of my life. I want to do something that has the potential to make a difference, and I think that there’s so much going on in the world right now that I wish I could understand better. If I end up being a journalist of some sort, I think that being a political journalist would allow me to make my work accurate and informative in the best way possible, and it would be easier to focus on the things that really matter.”
Through political science, her commitment to creating substantive change in the world finds its intellectual foundation; similarly, this notion of enduring human connection reflects a broader emphasis that she places on her interpersonal ties. From tight-knit to peripheral relationships, it was the collective tapestry of daily interactions with her peers that enriched her high school experience in irreplaceable ways.
“I put a lot of emphasis on my relationships with people,” Evelyn said. “All of my friends and family are like the most important things in my life. Even outside of friends, acquaintances [are important to me], like the people that I talk to in Chem. I don’t interact with [them] outside of school, [but] when I really think about them, they make my life better. I think I’ll miss not having a high school environment, because I think it’s such a specific feeling to know the people you’re around every day, all day, for so many years in a row. It’s so specific, even being vaguely known by all the people around me.”
Despite her senior year providing the opportunity to cherish her high school connections more profoundly than ever before, the college admissions process soon presented its own formidable challenges. Yet in spite of doubts about her application prospects, she simultaneously found deep fulfillment in taking the next steps towards a new chapter of her life, no matter how scary it might have been at first.
“For a while,” Evelyn said, “[NYU] was basically just a far-fetched dream. I was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to get in, which made it frustrating because during applications, it’s hard to stay motivated when you’re convinced that you’re not going to get into the school you want to get into. But it felt like I had been studying all of high school, and even applying was rewarding because the fact that I got to that point where I was confident enough in myself to apply instead of backing out and thinking, ‘I don’t think I’ll get in, so I won’t apply,’ was really surreal.”
Though acceptance felt like a toss-up throughout much of the admissions process, her persistence would end up culminating in an unforgettable decision day. After applying Early Decision to NYU and receiving her decision letter in December, it was years of preparation—marked by blood, sweat, tears, and finally, celebratory confetti—that confirmed her hard work had come to a well-deserved fruition.
“I was crying half the time signing into my portal to view my decision,” Evelyn said. “When I finally clicked it, I was so distraught and stressed that when there was all this confetti, I was like, ‘What is all this confetti? I need to see if I got in or not?’ When it finally clicked, I don’t think I will ever feel anything like that again. It was such an insane feeling. I could just feel the five years of stress paying off, and it was like everything had led up to that moment.”
In her calculated approach to applications, it was especially imperative for her to find alternative motivations beyond her primary ambition to attend her dream school. By temporarily compartmentalizing her top-choice school, she was able to maintain the focus necessary to complete her applications effectively while still remembering that discovering schools where she could thrive and learn passionately was the ultimate priority.
“I think that,” Evelyn said, “especially if you’re someone who has a dream of going to a selective school, it was so helpful for me to put the school that I wanted to go to the most in the back of my mind for a moment, and let it settle there for a while. I thought, ‘If I didn’t have this school, where would I want to go?’ Finding other schools that were also places that I knew I would love and be happy at and learn the things that I want to learn made it so much easier to apply to NYU.”
As she now carries this hard-won wisdom into her next chapter, she prepares to exchange the familiar rhythms of her hometown with the relentless pulse of The City that Never Sleeps. Though the cultural and lifestyle textures differ markedly from what she’s known her whole life, she is certain of her destined alignment with its ambitious, blossoming spirit. A full circle moment of fantasy and now lived reality, her once-distant future now sits firmly at her fingertips.
“New York is a lot different than the culture of Forest Hills,” Evelyn said, “From the fashion to the food to the way people interact, and it’s going to be a culture shock when I get there. But I don’t think I’ve ever really had a bad experience with people in New York. I’m a very extroverted person, and I like talking to whoever I can, so I’m excited to have a whole new city of people to talk to and get to know. I just can’t shake that big city dream.”
