<p>I'm going to Iowa State, which was a LAST resort and I don't want to go there at all. Half my high school goes there, and it seems remarkably boring and is in a location that offers nothing. I've tried to have a good attitude, but I can't. I'm just dreading it. Is anyone else feeling similar about where they're going?</p>
<p>I see that you got an ACT 33. Did you not get into any other schools? </p>
<p>With an ACT 33, did you get any good scholarship offers? </p>
<p>What is your major going to be?</p>
<p>I know a slew of people going to my state school. Most notably, people in the top 20 are down they have to attend state school (without any BIG scholarships) with many people who just coasted all of high school and are paying the same price. You are definetly not alone. Admissions was a blood bad this year</p>
<p>I have been to Ames and did not think it was all that bad at all. Seemed comparable to Lawrence KS and other nice smaller college towns. And it’s a good school for engineering and tech subjects.</p>
<p>Funny, my two degrees are from Iowa State and the University of Kansas. I was from such I dinky town in Iowa that Ames seemed like the big city. Even though you may not be thrilled, here are some things that I think you will find…</p>
<p>You will not see people from your high school very often–perhaps walking across campus on occasion. You will be able to take classes that interest you and the more you put in to them, the more you will get out of them. Even though ISU doesn’t generally have a great team, football games are fun. You will get a good education. There are many activities available; get involved and meet people who share your interests.</p>
<p>Also know that many, many young people are not going to be attending the school they thought was their dream school. It just doesn’t always work out that way.</p>
<p>100 years ago when I picked ISU, only the very religious or the very rich went anywhere other than Iowa or Iowa State and choice was based on major. Oh, and if someone wanted a smaller school, they went to puny UNI. Lots of things have changed.</p>
<p>Good luck. I hope that your experience will be better than you are expecting!</p>
<p>Oh well. There is always the option of transferring after your first semester (if you are bold enough). </p>
<p>Iowa State doesn’t seem that bad. Half my high school class went to state schools, too, with most of them going to the state flagship, UMass Amherst. Some of them were certainly grumbling in May/June, but many of them actually ended up loving UMass when we had our little high school reunions a few weeks ago.</p>
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I will be attending The University of Iowa and couldn’t be more excited. During my college search process I did review Iowa State University and personally it wasn’t really a great match for me but nevertheless a really good school. I know of multiple students who will/ had attended there last resort; most turnded out just as happy/ successful as they dreamed at their original choice.</p>
<p>BC - Earlier you posted that your acceptances include the University of Iowa, University of Illinois, Michigan State, University of Michigan, Purdue, and Indiana University in addition to Iowa State. I can understand if you’re from Iowa and finances limit your choices to in-state schools, but in that case your options were never more than Iowa State and Iowa, and you got into both. And if finances aren’t a barrier, you’ve got some great choices there. Why are you stuck with a choice that you dislike so much?</p>
<p>26,000 Harvard applicants are probably not the happiest campers:) Most end up enjoying the college they attend.</p>
<p>Actually BC, all the schools to which you applied were large midwestern public universities that each have a wide range of students and variety of campus experiences. It’s not as if you’d be missing out on the quintessential IU or Michigan State or Wisconsin experience because there really isn’t a single culture on campuses that large and diverse. They (and ISU) all have some outstanding students as well as a lot of more average in-state students due to their missions to provide access to in-state residents. If you’d applied to, say, Grinnell and Wash U. in St. Louis and then felt badly about going to ISU, it would be accurate to say that you might be missing out on a special campus vibe or a set of peers that you wouldn’t find at ISU, but I don’t think that’s the case here.</p>
<p>As an analogy, imagine that after college you work for a national corporation and you say “I’m so disappointed - they transferred me to the Minneapolis office and I had my heart set on Chicago.” Well Chicago’s a great town, but so is Minneapolis, and frankly, they have a lot more in common with one another than they have differences. You can have the same quality of life in one that you have in the other. Now if you’d had your heart set on a transfer to the Santa Barbara office or the Aspen office, I’d have to agree that there’d be a lifestyle in those places that you couldn’t duplicate in Minneapolis. Everyone in Santa Barbara will eventually hang out around the boardwalk and everyone in Aspen will ski. Minneapolis is an apple and they’re oranges. But Minneapolis and Chicago would be more like two varieties of apples, just as ISU and the public Big Ten schools are.</p>
<p>Unless your high school is within commuting distance of the college, I really doubt that half the school goes to Iowa State.</p>
<p>That said, at large universities, it’s not like high school. You might have some former classmates in classes for upper division classes in your major, but usually there are soooo many sections for lower division classes, you won’t be tripping over old classmates in every room.</p>