Entrance exam and college thoughts
Things have been going well.
Sat down for my SAT exam mid-October. It was somewhat earlier than I'd have preferred but after a streak of perfect scores on the mock exams I had no reason to push it off further. I know other students who took it even earlier to meet early action requirements but such a thing wasn't in the books for me. The way I see it, my academic history up to my senior year was not strong enough. It wasn't bad per say but it was before my huge learning curve and therefore wasn't impressive enough for the places I'm thinking of applying to. No, better I wait for regular action and apply from a stronger position.
So on a perfectly normal Saturday morning I had my dad drop me off at the school and went through three hours of standardized testing. I'm likely the only one to say this but that thing was really easy. Like seriously, a multiple choice exam that I studied hours for on top of having a high INT stat which came with perfect recall? I expect to get full marks which is way better than the eleven eighty I scored last year.
Basketball is the biggest change in my life so far, aside from the whole gamer thing. We practice four days a week where we do drills, scrimmage, and watch old tapes. We're also required to work out in the weight room so we have an alternating cycle. All of this has led to an increase in my END and AGI stats. Just one point each but the moment where stat changes kick in is always memorable. Likewise, the various practices and personal coaching raised basketball by a lot and I've put Clutch to use which taught me that it's the one skill I have that can't be leveled.
With team practice came meeting the team and forming friendships. I knew of some of the guys and shared a class or two with one of them but actually being on a team together made us interact. They're all cool in various ways and none have given me issues yet. Hopefully that doesn't change. We go out to eat after some practices and even hung out as a team on a couple weekends. Unlike what they show on tv, the stereotype that athletes are cool and have to remain with the popular clique isn't a thing. Which is good because I didn't want to abandon the people I knew before. My previous niche while smaller was more comfortable, more familiar; I actually liked it and the friends I had there. So I was left with the task of balancing it all, slowly widening my comfort zone while not alienating old friends.
My extracurricular studying is starting to pay off with actual money. After leveling a bunch of skills including coding, digital design, and marketing I was finally comfortable in creating an online account and sending out my reel. So far I haven't gotten too many commissions but that's still a couple hundred into my bank account. I'm sure the requests will pour in when I get a larger following.
Cool fact about skill-books, I can learn languages from them. Found a well-used intro to Spanish which I bought and learned as soon as I was alone. I'd already taken two years of Spanish since colleges like to see stuff like that but I'll be the first to say it didn't do me much good. Getting the credits was my focus so I'd memorized conjugations and vocab to the best of my ability and fumbled my way through orals and after the two years, almost all of it left my mind. Now though, after learning the book, I could feel the information integrating with what little I remembered and forming a solid foundation to becoming fluent. I can probably just watch and read things in Spanish and level it up further.
Went out and found another cheap book on French and a brand new one on Mandarin. The last one cost quite a bit but I felt it was worth it; the tongue is in demand enough that I could probably create a YouTube account teaching Mandarin and get a good amount of subscribers. Assuming I had the time to make and edit videos on top of my already busy schedule.
And speaking of that, I still haven't made a final decision regarding my plan to create books to absorb. I was all gung-ho about the possibility of creating skill-books at a discounted rate but then those two points to WIS hit and suddenly I wasn't so certain anymore. It's not necessarily a bad idea, I simply hadn't given it the forethought that it merits. My parents would definitely want to know why I bought some fancy printer when we've made do with the one we own for years. Assuming the thing isn't dead silent, the constant printing would raise questions as well. Just what exactly was I printing and where was it going? After all, absorbing a book makes it disappear for good. The purpose behind the miscellaneous tools I'd need to efficiently bind the books would be another area of interest. All in all, those are questions that I didn't have responses for because I hadn't given them much thought before. There are others as well – mostly about time constraints – so in the end, I've decided to bookmark the idea for later.
…
1600.
Satisfaction wells up inside of me while the number stares back from the phone screen.
A perfect score.
"How did you do Lucio?" My second period class is all seniors and a good number of them took the SAT on the same day I did. Enough that when the first student mentioned getting an email notification about released scores - no one asked why he'd been on his phone in the first place - the teacher paused class for a minute or two so those who needed could check. So in response to that question, I turn my screen so he can see for himself. "Sixteen hundred? Wait, what's the most you can get again?" I nod my head at the phone, "No way… yo, Lucio got a hundred percent!"
Those in my immediate vicinity come for a look while those further out hype up the moment in their own ways. Hell, even the teacher gets in on it, giving me an impressed congratulations. I have no doubt that this will spread throughout the school in no time, and quite frankly, I won't mind. This is pretty big after all. According to statistics, out of approximately two million plus test takers per year, only about three hundred of them might get a score of 1600. For the sake of simplicity, that group of people who ace the test score higher than ninety-nine percent of all test takers. Yeah, it's that rare and that big of an accomplishment. I'm the first from this school to do so and it's not likely to happen again any time soon. I'm certain they will get some type of recognition for it anyhow.
Of course bragging rights and attention from colleges aren't the only thing I get out of this. There's also the personal satisfaction of seeing my time spent studying pay off, who doesn't like seeing the fruits of their labor. In light of that, the XP gain is relatively minor. It's not that big a deal; only like THREE THOUSAND POINTS! That's the number three followed by THREE zero's!
Little over a month ago I got five-hundred points for making it onto the team and thought that was a lot at once, well this takes the cake at six times that number. It also pushes me over the threshold for the next level and nets me three more stat points which I've long since planned for. My physical stats are serving me well where they're at and are also the easiest ones to level up naturally so I won't add any to them now. I also don't want to spark any rumors of enhancement drugs so yeah, I'll let them progress on their own.
That being said though, if I were to allocate some points to them then my focus would likely be END. It's much easier to conceal and harder to train than STR or AGI.
With three stats remaining and three SP to distribute, I'm thinking one to each should work. One can never have too much WIS and while I might not need more INT at the moment, more can't hurt can it? As for LUK, I did say I would give it a point every other level meaning the next one rather than this one but I've decided to amend that idea. I want to be luckier so although I don't know how such a thing is calculated, having a higher stat will undoubtedly help. And if I do need something like double digits to see any affect, it's better that I start working towards that now rather than later.
Plus one to my intelligence, wisdom, and luck. And for the foreseeable future, this will be how my free stat points are spent.
…
I have my college entrance exam scores so logically the next step is to apply to colleges.
Even before taking the test I'd given some thought to where I'd like to go and even chose a few colleges that College Board could preemptively send my results. Places like MIT, Harvard, Stanford… can you tell that I'd been super confident in getting a good exam score? Cockiness aside, my reason for choosing those places was because they were great schools and they had good engineering programs. I've learned that majors can take time to really figure out but I needed something to put down when the applications ask for it and engineering sounded like a good idea. It's one of those fields with a lot of variety and a lot of room for growth. My powers come with the chance to be a top tier genius, the likes of which we only see in fictional works, so being in a field where the work I'm doing can scale to me is key. And besides, engineering pays well, is respectable, and had been one of the fields I'd considered before the gamer. Business and law were a couple others.
It took a lot of time and research before I ended up with a list of my top four schools. I considered majors, athletic divisions, tuition and scholarships, clubs and activities, dorms, etc. The list of criteria just kept growing and although I could keep it all in my head, I went out and bought some boards to create a visual representation. I brought in my parents and George to get second opinions and then went out and talked to other people I knew including Shelby and my guidance counselor. I would say they had a good bit of influence on what the final list came out to be.
University of California, Berkeley.
Stanford University.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Harvard University.
Out of the four Stanford is my number one choice while the rest are tied for second through fourth. I put UC Berkeley at the top of the list because the application deadline is the last of November with the others being due in January. Compared to the hassle of narrowing down my options filling out the first application isn't all that bad. Tedious for sure with all the required info and essays but all that comes from within as opposed to researching the various schools. I'm grateful for the waivers, not having to pay out of pocket for the applications. Instead my hard earned money went into buying a camera that would be used to record my highlight films for recruitment purposes. The thing will have been worth it if I manage to interest some college coaches but for now all I can see is the black hole I threw almost two grand into.
Who knew college could be so expensive before even attending one?
Didn't realize what day it was today. Or yesterday actually.