I am looking at either taking a gap year and reapplying or transferring to NU.
If I took a gap year, I would be able to work on a $1 billion commercial real estate project that I helped to get approved. I would also continue to volunteer at a nonprofit railroad and improve my SAT 2s. I would then reapply RD to NU again next year.
If I transferred, I would go to a midwestern state school’s honors college next year. Then I would try transferring to NU.
About Me: Top 5% of class. 35 Super Score ACT, 3 very good rec letters and 1 bad, lots of demonstrated leadership, etc
Plan on pursuing econ. at NU.
Which option would you recommend? any other comments?
Reapplying to a university normally doesn’t work. They’re not going to say “oops, we made a mistake, we should have admitted you” unless you bring in something significantly different.
For you, it’d be working on that huge project and getting a letter of recommendation from a supervisor to replace the bad rec. AND applying to a different list in addition to NU. High risk, because odds are overwhelming you will NOT get into NU.
Your second option depends on how good the honors college is and whether you can see yourself there for 4 years.
In both cases, imagine you don’t get into NU and spend 4 years elsewhere. Would you rather attend another university than the one(s) you got into this year or attend the Honors college you were admitted to?
@MYOS1634
I’m not psyched with going to the state honors college. In all honesty, I don’t want to attend any of the schools that I ended up being accepted to.But I can graduate in 3 years if I go to the state honors college(KU Honors).
That’s what got me thinking about taking a gap year to work on the project. My thinking was that I could take a year to work on the project. Then reapply to some schools, apply to some new schools, and if that fails the state honors college will still take me and Id graduate “on time”
@Publisher
Oklahoma and Kansas. The yearly cost of attendance for me at Kansas is about the same as at Northwestern. Oklahoma is about half that price.
Oklahoma’s is well known because it enrolls so many NMF’s. Kansas U’s Honors College also has a good reputation.
There’s no such thing as “on time”, beside “in 8 semesters”. It doesn’t matter when you start and whether you’re 21 or 22. You’re not allowed to put your age on your resume and no one in the workplace will care. Seriously, to an adult, anyone between the age of 21 and 25 looks exactly the same (very young).
Don’t try to graduate in 3 years. Those honors colleges will let you take graduate classes and double majors, study abroad, have internships… Use all the resources they offer.
If you don’t like your safeties, they weren’t safeties.
Do realize that if you reapply to the same colleges you’re 99% likely to have the exact same results. So, you’ll need a better list. KU and Oklahoma Honors, Norwestern, and everything else new.