The opening scene of the semi-historically accurate motion picture The Social Network features Mark Zuckerberg sitting with his girlfriend in a bar discussing “final clubs,” social clubs for undergrads at Harvard. Throughout the scene, he cannot stop talking about final clubs, despite many attempts by his girlfriend. He is desperate to get into a final club at any cost, and he doesn’t care about the fact that he might be slightly annoying because he’s in love with everything that has to do with finals clubs.
While I agree that Zuckerberg was portrayed as slightly obnoxious in this scene, I completely sympathize with his passion. I know what it feels like to want nothing more than to be a part of something at this very moment, to be somewhere that you’ve been dreaming of, to make time fast-forward to get where you want to be. Where is this place that I speak of with such ardor and zeal? Why, it's Tufts of course.
I attribute most of my desire to get to Tufts towards one thing: the Tufts Class of 2017 Facebook group (wait, is a Facebook group a thing? What defines a thing? Does it have to be tangible? Boom: metaphysics!).
From the minute I logged into the admitted students site and learned that there was a Facebook group for all of the accepted students to talk with each other, I unknowingly gave up hours and hours of time that could have been used for relatively-more productive tasks (like catching up on season eight of How I Met Your Mother) and immediately became a member of the group. Originally, the Facebook group consisted of all the accepted round one Early Decision students (Represent!!). Within hours, we were spewing short introduction posts and discussing what extracurricular activities we were planning on joining once at Tufts. It was amazing to see people so enthused about the same thing I was excited about. One of my favorite memories of the Facebook group was when about fifty students were throwing out Mean Girls quotes continuously for two hours straight. It was around that time that I knew that Tufts was the school for me because the people were the exact type of people that I had been dying to meet for my entire life. Now, the group is up to over one thousand members and the same passion and vibe that the group gave off from the beginning is present today.
The Facebook group has been reinforcement for every predisposition I had about Tufts before I enrolled: quirky, smart, interesting students that all have a passion for something different. A common post that has been recycled throughout the group is “I’m having a hard time choosing between X and Tufts.” By the end of the posts, the torn student usually comes to the realization that they’re more likely to be happier at Tufts. They look through the posts and notice that every single one of the admitted students jumps off the page and has a certain something to them that eventually sways the student towards picking Tufts.
My recommendation for anyone who’s still deciding between Tufts and another school is to just talk to current and future students from the schools. Ask them questions, get to know them. For the most part, that could be the best indication of whether or not you’ll enjoy the university, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters most. You could be attending the most prestigious university in the world but hate your circumstances because it’s just not your fit. If you haven’t done so already, I also recommend to join the Facebook group and talk to us about whatever it is that interests you. The odds are that you’ll find dozens of us that are interested in the same things you are, and you’ll learn that picking Tufts will be a decision that you won’t regret.