UPenn’s Wharton Business School, which ranks No 1 amongst Undergraduate Business  Schools in the US, has given Bilal an unconditional offer of admission, for the Class of 2016. Only 6% of students who applied to Wharton for the 2016 session were actually given offers of admission.

“Going down memory lane, I am becoming increasingly discontent with my inability to put the last two years of my life on paper – a situation reminiscent of a blank college essay in the few hours before an application deadline. But, unlike those college essays, this inability thrives on the sheer multitude of emotions that have been a part of the Nixor experience of which a vital component has been applying to college through NOCC.

​

The college admissions process has been intense, that is, to say the very least and no doubt NOCC has been an indispensible part of it. Nerves, paper work, essays, recommendations and a heap of meticulous details – all with time breathing down your neck – once you’re in it, it seems like it will last forever.

​

From finalizing your Final University List to deciding which SAT Subject Tests to take – and most important of all, when to take them – there will be countless choices, sacrifices and irreversible decisions that you’ll have to make. Some will work out. Others won’t. That is how you’ll learn.

​

Lesson # 1: Given that you’re ready and willing to give your best, NOCC and Nixor’s unparalleled faculty will make sure you have your game face on. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.



With that low score on the standardized test, you’ll want to lower the bar for yourself. Tests, essays, applications – you’ll feel like you can’t take it anymore. Sleep deprived, you’d want that flat bed more than anything. You’ll go through the overwhelming college admission statistics available on the internet. You’ll calculate the odds. You’ll try to match those numbers with your own. More often than not, you’ll feel uncomfortable. To put things in context, Wharton has an acceptance rate of around 6 percent. Had I relied on statistics, the dream would have been over even before it began.



Lesson # 2: Don’t read statistics. Don’t dilute your dreams with numbers and figures. Believe in yourself and take advice/help from those that believe in you. NOCC will have faith in your abilities. Make use of it.

​

In the late hours of the night, with your counselor trying to give your Early Decision essay a last look, you know you’re not in it alone. You develop a bond structured upon the foundation of your dream that, with time, becomes as theirs as it is yours. Despite the distance you feel from your goal, there is an overwhelming sense of belief that, perhaps, you’ll make it. And make it, you will!



Lesson # 3: If you’re someone who fails to find meaning in clichés like ‘believe in yourself’, the college admissions process is an appropriate time to start paying more heed to them. Otherwise, you’ve lost half the battle already.

College admissions teach you another important lesson and NOCC, in particular, has helped me make more sense of it. It is important to acknowledge, in all honesty, that there will always be a few specs of dust upon the doorstep to what you perceive as your ultimate goal; there will always be, once in a while, a momentary rejection, a temporary refusal, a fleeting, yet powerful failure. There will always be the tear that you’ll try to stop from falling; there will always be the sinking of your heart in the deepest cores of your existence; there will always be a moment when you’ll feel the shorelines of your dreams eroding right through your veins.



Lesson # 4: For every such time, there will be an instant full of hope,  when you will spot the thinnest ray of light shining from behind what was once an eternal eclipse. There will be pockets of happiness on the way. There will be glory; there will be joy, relief and all those big words we’re always after. On a nervy night, when the world will be fast asleep, you will log into that admission decision portal. In an amalgam of the power of your dreams, the fruit of your hard work and the miraculous will of God, you’ll allow yourself to let go. And that singular, unquantifiable moment in the multitude of moments through your journey, will be worth it all. Don’t search for that moment. Create it.”



Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility. – Oprah Winfrey