Dear Admitted Student,
Congratulations! You are coming to Princeton. It has been pre-ordained. Not by the stars (we control those) but by our media stranglehold. You’ll spend a few weeks pretending to juggle your “options”, but everything has already been set in motion. Your parents are already in love with the name (we know they make all of your important decisions. How else could you have done well enough to get into Princeton?). Failing that, they’re in love with the aid package. We suggest you get used to the idea: you’re going to be here for four years.
You might feel tempted to spend the next few months gloating. Surrender to that temptation. Gloat. Gloat like you’ve won six gold medals (this is how we sustain our image). Gloat like you’ve beaten Lance Armstrong’s course record without sticking a dirty needle in your ass. High school isn’t a game, but you still won. Once you get here, we’ll make sure that the metastasizing cancer that is your ego keeps on growing.
You’re joining a long line of history-shaping overachievers: God, James Madison, Jesus (legacy admit), F. Scott Fitzgerald… the only names you’re expected to remember are Woodrow Wilson and Michelle Obama. They are, respectively, a dead man who wore a brown three-piece suit and a woman with longstanding and legitimate disdain for the University. It’s best not to spend too long dwelling on the implications.
Your introduction to campus will be a course-free period colloquially known as “frosh week.” We suggest bringing the following supplies: one flask, two handles of Jack Daniels, three crisply pressed polo shirts, and four compelling alibis. We also suggest proper preparation to inoculate you against your first semi-legal “beast”-fueled drinking binge. (Beast is a concoction consisting of 5% alcohol and 94% deer urine. The original formula used 98% boar urine, but that changed when the FDA set the standards at 95% animal urine and banned boar urine outright.)
While recovering from your hangover, you will see a student play called Sex on a Saturday Night. Suggesting that this is pornography will not make you clever. Sex on a Saturday Night is a cautionary tale about, among other things, date rape. This has the unfortunate side effect of turning a viewing into an unacknowledged game of “guess the rapist.” Really, no one wins.
Meeting people may seem imposing at first, but you have a wealth of options to do so. Join student groups and connect through superficially similar interests like an appreciation of Chinese horticulture. Or, cling to your hallmates like driftwood in Lake Carnegie. Whatever you choose, you’ll definitely wear through your RCA’s patience or vice-versa within the first month.
You will more than likely become an alumnus, assuming you don’t get sent to prison (we have our own police force to circumvent this). At that point, we will expect money. This machine doesn’t fuel itself. Tuition is only the beginning of what is actually a lifetime commitment. And then your kids will come here… We will own your legacy! In time, you will thank us for the privilege.
Welcome to the family! But for now, know that if you choose Williams we will send men with crowbars to your home.
See you soon,
The Admissions Office
– DD ’13. Illustrated by JJW ’16.