Join us in welcoming Bwog's first ever Senior Year Correspondent, St. Louis native Cindy Gao, CC'12, who says she has wanted to major in history "since the day I first laid eyes on Eric Foner." Here, Cindy recalls finding out she was accepted Early Decision.

I am a fraud.

The test scores, the transcript, the essay — yes, it's true, these are all my own. I didn't bribe anyone, didn't fake a recommendation, didn't lie about anything on my resume. I didn't have inside connections with Columbia, my parents aren't alumni, and I'm not a sports recruit. But I had an unfair advantage over all of the other 2000 or so early decision applicants.

Turtles.

One, to be specific. The number is important. I know a kid who had to set free four frogs to get into Stanford. It varies.

It all happened rather quickly. There we were, sitting at dinner with this old man I'd never met, who didn't speak a word of English but still managed to make me feel bad about taking AP Stat, and he's telling us the truth about how his son got into Yale. A month before the decisions came out, he told us, he went to the stream behind his house and released a live fish into the water. He was confident after that, he said. It was a done deal. He said it required a phone call to a fortune teller back home in China, to determine what kind of animal necessary. Before I had a chance to put down my fork, my parents had already written down my information (birthday, gender, address) on a napkin to give to this potbellied man.

A week later we heard back. A turtle, he said. PETCO had them for twenty dollars. We left immediately. After telling the pimple-faced clerk at the counter that no, we didn't need an aquarium for our water turtle, we ended up standing in front of the pond behind my house, my mother coaxing the turtle into the water before it finally straggled in and swam away.

Ten days later I viewed my acceptance letter online. The first person we called was the man I now call "turtle guy," who accepted our offer to buy him dinner, and made it a point to tell me that I was not allowed to eat turtle for the rest of my life.

So to answer your question, what was it like for me to find out that I had been accepted? To tell you the truth, I was relieved. Imagine how embarrassing it would have been otherwise. Turtle guy would have never let me live it down.