When asked on Sunday night how she felt about receiving her admissions decision from Brown, Cassie Taylor, a senior at Brighton High School in Rochester, N.Y., laughed and said, "It's what, 22 hours to go?"
But at 5 p.m. this evening, when Brown and the rest of the Ivy League releases decisions online, Taylor will be at crew practice.
Unlike Taylor, Nathaniel Marshall, a senior at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago, plans to be at his computer at 5 p.m. to find out if he's been accepted to Brown.
"I'll probably just get home from school early, set my alarm clock for 5 p.m., and just take a nap until then," Marshall said.
Marshall, who also applied to the University of Wisconsin, Morehouse College, and Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt and New York universities, is one of about 20,000 students waiting to hear from Brown.
Marshall said he was anxious to know whether or not he had been accepted. The length of the college application process contributed to his anxiety, he said.
"It's been forever since I did the applications and even longer since I began the process," said Marshall, who said he started thinking about college applications after his freshman year and began visiting schools the summer after his sophomore year.
"Tomorrow, I'm getting the last round of all my decisions," said Marshall, who has been rejected from NYU and accepted to Vanderbilt, Morehouse and Wisconsin so far.
"For me, it's the end of something and the beginning of something as well," he said.
Catherine Cheng, a senior at Cheshire High School in Cheshire, Conn., agreed that receiving the decisions marks a "milestone" in her life.
Cheng said she was anxious but excited. "Close to the actual time, I'm not going to be able to relax or sleep or anything," she said.
Cheng, who applied early to Yale and was deferred, said Brown remained one of her top five choices.
"I think it was definitely the quirkiest place when I went to visit," she said.
"What really struck me were the tour guides," Cheng said. She said they were "enthusiastic" and "more energetic" than the ones at other colleges she had visited.
But, she added, "I'm not really expecting anything, not getting my hopes up, because I know if I do, it'll be a really big disappointment."
Unlike Marshall, Cheng debated whether she would check her decision online or wait for the letter to arrive in the mail.
Cheng said she dislikes how quickly students can check their decisions online. "You type in your password, you click a button and you find out," she said. "You can't take your time."
But Cheng said she will probably check her decision from Brown online, though she will do it a few hours after 5 p.m. to avoid the busy servers.
The Office of Admission, anticipating calls from anxious applicants, will close its phone lines today and tomorrow. It will resume taking calls at 10 a.m. on April 2.
The admission office's automated answering system directs applicants with difficulties accessing their online decisions to the Computing and Information Services Help Desk, where a separate extension has been set up for about a week to assist Brown applicants, said Chris Grossi '92, manager of the help desk.
"Applicants have been calling all month," Grossi said. He said that generally applicants call because they have lost the username and password they need to access the decision online.
Grossi estimated that so far the help desk has sent about 1,000 usernames and passwords to applicants. He said he expects about 500 more applicants to call today.
Grossi said the help desk's staff will work from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. to assist applicants in other time zones.
