Many people have a set idea of what they want to do in the future. They know what they want to do, where they want to be, what they want to become. However, sometimes plans change. This is a common experience for many high school seniors. One such case is that of Amelia Niziolek during the college admissions process.
Niziolek is an intelligent and accomplished senior at Verona High School who aspires to major in biochemistry before going to med school to become a surgeon. Her impressive resume includes that she has taken many Advanced Placement classes, is a member of the Verona Rescue Squad, and is trilingual, speaking English, Spanish, and Polish. By all means, she would be an ideal candidate for most universities.
When applying for college, she cast a wide net in terms of numbers, applying to over 30 colleges. Primarily focusing on northeastern liberal arts schools, Niziolek had a good idea of the type of institution she wanted to attend but not which specific one. However, when the time came for admissions, Niziolek, like many of her peers, found that she was waitlisted by many of the places she had applied to. It should be noted that this is almost certainly no fault of her own. Statistically speaking, college attendance throughout the United States is down while in the Northeast the opposite is true, meaning that schools have to be more selective with their decisions due to the wide range of candidates. As a result, even someone who is as highly qualified as Niziolek could be sidelined. This phenomenon affected many VHS students this year.
Searching for other options, she began looking into the University of Miami, a college she applied to but had not focused on. It would quickly grow to be her favorite choice out of all of her options due to various factors. By far the largest one is its well developed program for STEM majors, which will allow her to take required classes for her major which she hopes will give her a better knowledge base for her MCAT.
Additionally, whereas she previously saw the unfamiliarity and crowded nature of the school as a drawback, she has come to see it as an opportunity to get out of her comfort zone and broaden her horizons. “It’ll help expose me to different parts of the world. There’s obviously a lot of culture down there and I’ll be able to practice my Spanish. It’s just a different environment and experience because we live in Verona and it’s such a small town. In Miami, there’s so much going on down there and I’ll get to meet so many different people and see a whole new way of life.”
Another notable benefit of her attendance at the University of Miami is that all of the credits that she earned in high school will immediately transfer, allowing her to begin college as a sophomore.
And traveling so far for college is opening Niziolek’s thinking to more travel. Asked what her plans are for after college, she replies, “I want to travel across the country and visit different parts of the world so I don’t want to stay in one place for too long. I’ll probably go somewhere else for residency or med school.”
Thus, in this case at least, what one would traditionally view as an unpleasant occurrence has resulted in a clearly positive outcome that will bring opportunities to come.
“What’s Next” is a series of profiles about what members of each Verona High School class do after graduation. MyVeronaNJ has been publishing the series since 2010 and you can read all of them here.
