The Cut is the Craft

Why I went to Cornell is a story for another time. Here’s how I did it once I made up my mind.

Back when they were warm neighborhood spaces and not wannabe hotspots for Lululemons, I’d go to a Starbucks off 635 and MacArthur. 4 to 6 pm, every day, for about five weeks. A single brown sofa with its own round pine coffee table was empty every time I got there. Americano, bad then and worse now, and I was off to the races.

The GMAT. I went through high school math and prose fast. The rest couldn’t be refreshed - it had to be built, and the building was the act of testing itself. A week of learning. A week of practice questions. Then the real stuff: mock tests. Three the first week, six the next, two the last. With GMAT, the exam is the test, not the knowledge. My mock scores were good enough. I’d bombed one early in the second week, but by test day it was a distant memory.

Test day. Arrived with a banana. By the end, my brain was screaming for rum and I was confident I’d pissed away a good chance. The screen flashed: do you want to see your score or cancel the test? I saw the number. Good enough for the only school I wanted to go to. I sent it to A, a childhood friend who’d studied at Cornell, bought a bottle of rum on the way home, and sat in silence in my backyard the rest of the evening. I had to apply.

When I thought my application was ready, I sent A a three-page essay that, thankfully, no longer exists. If it did, I’d call it word vomit. He called me when he read it.

“Prithvi. Listen to me very carefully. If you cannot write something half decent, you should stay back in Irving for the rest of your life. You’ll eat kodi vepudu and biryani from Swadeshi Plaza and grow old, fat, and useless.” Then he hung up.

I felt nothing. He was right.

If I had to rank the top five acts of love I’ve received, this is on that list. I read what I’d written out loud to myself and felt the cringe he’d felt. It smelled of performance and trying. It allowed for nothing. Deleted.

Another evening alone in the backyard gave me this: you don’t tell someone a meal is worthy. You serve them the meal and let them say it.

The next day was 200 miles of driving and thinking. After a wild wander, my brain settled on this: A meal has to be rounded - nutrition, flavor, and how it’s set down in front of you. One color is boring. Similar colors are boring. One flavor is boring. The art is in the mix, and in what one takes with them once the plate is cleared.

“If I put myself on the page as a complete meal. What goes on it? What flavors from childhood. What from adolescence. What from now. What aftertaste?”

Five days later I had it, and sent it to A. Heart on the message.

My application was one line - a URL. It took you to a single-page website. No scroll.

All of me on one page, and then whatever happened, happened. A faint NYC skyline in the background. Sixteen sentences laid out like my grandmom laid a table, no ceremony. All of it for one school.

I was accepted.

Here’s a screenshot, F/W 2015 :)