Harvard: Dear 17-year-old-Emily

A full circle moment

Dear 17-year-old-Emily,

I’m writing to you 27 years in the future and right across from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. I know you just contacted Harvard and asked for an undergraduate application packet to be sent to you through the mail. (Just wait for applications to be fully ‘online’!) Our hometown is tiny (but lovely) in the far southeastern corner of New Mexico, and you don’t know anyone who applied to Ivy Leagues, and definitely don’t know of women going to one. But, something inside you made you want to dream about it possibly being you. You would go on to never fill out that application because of, well, imposter syndrome and would never tell anyone about even wanting to apply until years later. I’m here to tell you that we would indeed make it though. But, in a different way.