Of Letters and Papers (The Days Before Departure Vol. III)

No contrary to what the subject may indicate I have not received my package yet, and yes this post is limited in it’s appeal, mostly because it deals with my experiences and questions, other universities may be following different procedures and may have different names for their things. Oh yes now coming back to my post, for those who are unaware of this fact, the Indian Postal Services are a beast of a system, manned mostly by chimps, and are perhaps the most unpredictable of services ever to come into existence, which is why first class airmails from the United States can take anything between 3 days and a month to arrive. That is what makes things rather interesting for those going off to college outside of India, umm well at least that’s what makes things extremely tense and interesting for me. Oh and this is broken into parts.

The Acceptance
If you’re lucky, and you usually are, the acceptances would arrive by courier, there’s nothing as nice and warm as seeing your acceptance a day after you saw it online (Brown doesn’t send likely letters, why I do not know), but if by some chance acceptances from your particular colleges are sent by regular airmail, God help you as you wait for your goodies. Oh and since these come in in early April, the postal service is usually reliable and pretty efficient, which means that on an average you should be able to receive the packet within 7 days, oh and time between postage and delivery is directly proportional to the size of the packet, so it’s not exactly fun. Oh and Brown did courier my accept, TNT as I remember.

The Early Mailers
These are those interesting pieces of information you receive throughout April, information which is supposed to convince you to join a particular university (why, well because they accepted you, and they aren’t averse to getting $$s from the richer ones amongst you) and most of which is pretty interesting. These come in little envelopes which can obviously contain li’l more than a letter and hence pass through pretty quickly. These you’d receive in 5 days at most, often earlier, and these lull you into a false sense of hope that the Indian postal service has reformed its ways. Don’t believe everything that you feel, the worse is yet to come….

The Summer Mailers
So you have selected your college, sent in your acceptance (and deposit if your college has one, Brown didn’t yahoo) and are now eagerly anticipating course selection. Don’t ‘coz the course selection material is going to be delayed beyond belief, it’s natural for it to be delayed because chimps can guess the importance of that particular package. Besides it’s summer, it’s too hot to work, and while the postman may continue working, the sorters need frequent breaks. Fewer mails get sorted and you can have anything up to a months worth of wait. Crazy period of time, keep that cellphone and all of that money right next to you, that’s what helps, oh and the e-mail addy too. These are basically going to be the last of them mails you receive before arriving at college, unfortunately there are far too many of these and quite a few of them have deadlines (you’d think they dispensed off with those and essays after accepting you, but acceptance is only the beginning). The most exciting and interesting mails, by far, are sent at this point of time, receiving them is unfortunately a pain (oh and universities are pretty versatile, and usually ready to help you out with problems such as mail delivery).....

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