Cheap laptop

I've had multiple Lenovo Thinkpad laptops before. Whenever I touch the touchpad, including the clickable touchpads, there has always been a solid thump, absolutely no rattle.
However I just received a new 2024 Legion 7i, and the first time I touched the touchpad I noticed there is a tingy rattle sound and feeling. Then when I click the touchpad, the same weird loose(ish) rattle sound is there. I noticed the top of the touchpad is fairly solid, it's only when I touch the center and bottom. (video here).
Definitely nothing I've ever experienced with Lenovo, but I'm curious if this is a defect, or if the Legion touchpads are simply like this. I'd be surprised if it's supposed to be like this, it just feels really cheap, like an aluminum can.
Also I noticed the touchpad is a bit crooked inside the cutout, like it's shifted counter clockwise.. so maybe this is the reason? Does anyone else see this in their Legion 7i Gen 9?
https://preview.redd.it/h0co56b3ym0d1.jpg?width=1168&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=026faee9a90250846968509f0b73dad15fbfc86b

https://preview.redd.it/zsot6014gm0d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=3748ea014b8de390bf4ad6efc66d13beb5932a20
Long post below, but you do not have to read 😊. There’s more to the story than the final cycle results. I put a lot of data on the Sankey and am putting more down here in case it helps another semi-non-trad down the line. I was going to try to make a throwaway account, but it's too hard to farm the karma, so just don't doxx me, lol (jk I trust ya'll)
*all hours were at time of app, not including projected.
I grew up lower middle class to highly educated parents, but not from a social circle that produced doctors, and I honestly almost threw in the towel after my last unsuccessful cycle two years ago.
I was told by several people (very correctly, I think) that the weakest part of my first app was somewhat cringey writing but mostly just severe lack of clinical experience, thanks in part to COVID but also in part to being a lane-changer and working/studying 50-60 hours a week as an MS student. By the end of the 2021-2022 cycle, I still hadn’t been able to get a clinical volunteepaid position that would work with my engineering program obligations, and my MCAT was expiring. I was at least another year out from being competitive and I wasn’t getting any younger, and I would have to retake the MCAT. To pursue the clinical opportunities that would best give me the chance for medical school would mean creating a giant glaring gap in my engineering resume that would tough to explain if medical school didn’t work out. Engineering can be a very unforgiving industry, especially to new graduates with less experience to leverage. If I pursued a clinical experience after my MS instead of an engineering R&D job and then failed to matriculate again, my career would likely never recover. To reapply in 2023-2024 would mean med school or bust.
I decided to hell with it and went for broke with my career. As soon as my research phase wrapped up that tied me geographically to the clinical-opportunity desert I had been in, I left town and found a clinical job as a PCT for a second app while retaking that failed class, studying for an MCAT retake, and trying to write my thesis. The hospital that took me on with no clinical experience and no certs did so because I had worked part time as a barista through college and so I understood the service industry and leveraged that experience when interviewing. You never know what experiences will end up being important in your journey.
With Pitt, I had a particularly strong “why us” due to already living in the city due to my husband’s work, working in an affiliated teaching hospital, and becoming integrated with my local community. Relative to my other “why us” essays, I feel pretty confident I got the Pitt A because I blew the “why us” out of the water.
Altogether, nothing groundbreaking about this Sankey, just an N=1 datapoint, and an N=1 story. Honestly this just goes to show how absolutely critical clinical experience is, as well as writing. My stats and EC hours were very comparable between my first cycle and reattempt except for clinical employment as a PCT. Outside of that, this process is a wash and hilariously unpredictable based on stats or ranks or tiers. You can be rejected/waitlisted at your “targets” while accepted at one of your “reaches”. For me, the end results correlated with essay quality more than anything else, particularly with the “why us”, which can be based on mission-alignment, geography and location ties, or a combination of multiple factors. The schools I was most excited to apply to ended up being my II’s and A’s because that came through in my writing and interviewing.
Misc. tips to upcoming applicants:

• Don’t force yourself to overapply. Secondary burnout is real, and if applying to 40 schools means you’ll be sacrificing quality for the most important submissions, consider applying to fewer. I was really burned out after my priority 10, and in retrospect, I could have enjoyed the same results if I hadn’t punished myself with 17 more applications. I think more than 30 is overkill for most applicants and risks spreading yourself too thin where the quality of your essays takes a significant hit if you are juggling multiple obligations during your gap year.
• If you worked in the service industry, include that in your app.
• Invest in your interviews. This is one of the most important interviews of your life. If using the money to do the following means applying to one or two fewer schools in primary/secondary fees, I still think it’s worth it.
  • Clothing: Bite the bullet and buy the suit (I know, I was on the fence about this, but so glad I made the investment). If you start thrifting now, you can probably find a really nice option at discounted price. Fellow ladies, think about color analysis (trending right now). Do you look best in black or navy, or gray? Do you look best in ivory or white.
  • Background: Set up/clear out a polished zoom backdrop that looks as professional and minimally distracting as possible. It’s a little bit obvious if you’re sitting on your bed with your legs up. Posture is different than if you're sitting on a chair.
  • Lighting: Use soft diffused natural lighting if possible (and test run at same time of day as interview. Morning? Afternoon? Light from windows is coming from different directions, and the sun at different times of the day and ambient artificial lights can cast your face in harsh lighting or even harsher shadows). Southeast or southwest sunlight diffused through light blinds or sheer curtains is your friend, sometimes even better than ring lights.
  • Camera:
    • Most laptop cameras are meh, while modern phone cameras are quite good, especially newer ones. Consider getting the hardware to set up your phone/ipad as a higher-quality webcam, or if you have a hobby camera, using that instead.
    • Elevate the camera to eye level or slightly above. Just use a book or something, or a cheap tripod.
    • Consider minimizing/hiding self-view during the entire interview. Even if you’re only occasionally checking out your visual, your eyes dart around a lot, obvious to the interviewer if there’s only two of you. Keep the interviewer on the screen, and look into the eye of the camera when talking to them.
• Tip to fellow engineering applicants: I know, we tend not to have great cGPAs, especially those junior-year courses, am I right? Put your low-grading engineering classes in the All-Other (AO) GPA, and your high-grading engineering classes into the BCPM GPA if they can reasonably qualify as applied physics, chemistry, bio, or math, (most of them can, but don’t have to). For example, I crushed statics and dynamics, and so counted those as applied physics. I really struggled with EE, so guess what? That was “engineering”, which is AO, not BCPM. My AO GPA was pretty bad (<3.0 in grad, yikes), but my cumulative BCPM GPA was good (>3.8), which is the main GPA that matters. I can confirm, the majority of schools don’t really see it as a red flag if you got a C- in Mechatronics or failed and had to repeat Computational Fluid Dynamics if you blow the med school prereqs out of the water and do well on the MCAT. If you get an A- in Ochem even if you subsequently barely scrape by in your electrical engineering classes, they still can gauge your academic ability and likelihood to succeed in med school, which is NOT electrical engineering heavy. So med school is not off the table because you struggled with certain engineering classes.

Also thank you to this subreddit. You guys kept me sane! Congrats to all accepted applicants, and good luck to those heading into the application cycle!