Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 11 text:

The Jr. year begins and another 150 students are allowed the pleasure of calling themselves upperclassmen. One is halfway finished; yet the worst is yet to come. In the lower classman years the student ' s vision does not seem to extend past 4 years of college. With the outset of the Jr. year, graduation and life after college are now visible on the horizon. Once again, the vocabulary changes. The new vocabulary has a distressing propensity for initials i.e. GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, DAT and the dreaded, hated E.T.S. The word percentile also takes an ominous meaning. Sometime during the Jr. year and early in the Sr. year, the ma- jority of Yeshiva students will begin a course at Kaplan ' s and look at those plastics with the owls on them with hatred and depression. In addition to keeping his grades up in school (knowing the Jr. year counts the most with an admissions board,) the student must now fully contend with the pressure that the graduate school entrance system puts on him. In the first two years, the student placed the pressure on himself. Now he feels it from outside, every time he grades himself at Kaplan ' s or reads a graduate school brochure. For the most fortunate, this pressure will only continue for another 6 to 8 months until the early winter of the session; for others, the pressure of the race will con- tinue into the spring and summer. Unfor- tunately, for some the pressure will be only alleviated with failure. Such is the rules, rewards and punishments of the climb to graduate school. Some time between April and October, Kaplan ' s will become a second home as one feels that they are perpetually wearing headphones. Some students will even learn to drive to Hacken- sack in their sleep. With the change in routine comes a parallel change in at- titude. The majority of students have decided on a chosen career. On desks in the dorm, the reading material changes. Along with the Sports Illustrated and People are now found the Wall St. Journal and Barron ' s Guide to Medical Schools. In- stead of Camp or Israel, plans change to taking sciences over the summer or finding a career related internship.