<p>I know that feeling. Also, in my mind I have two lists: academic reaches and financial reaches. A looooot of colleges are ending up on that latter list right now.</p>
<p>Also, according to the AF ROTC scholarship page, nursing isn’t considered a ‘technical’ degree and therefore you’re duking it out with art history and communications majors for a scholarship. Really? My SASI said a nursing student would be a shoo-in. But i’ll try for it anyways.</p>
<p>And of course, now to find colleges with AF ROTC that fit my list. Oh, none…</p>
<p>My safety is UCSB. I actually would LOVE going there so I’m not particularly concerned about the process. I mean, I would be sad if all my hard work didn’t result in a top 25 acceptance, but it wouldn’t be a huge deal. I always have grad school.</p>
<p>@rayna, UTA can’t be a safety unless you’re top 8%. 75% of the class is auto admits…</p>
<p>I want a top school for the experience, not the job prospects. Realistically, I could achieve all of my goals without attending college. But I’m an incredibly curious person, and I think that in the end college will be a boost in the industry anyway.</p>
<p>My school is giving five students tuition waivers for a course at the college we’re partnered with. Hoping I get one, I’ve been shopping through the course catalog all day xD</p>
<p>@Always: My school doesn’t rank, but we also have about an 80% acceptance rate at UT Austin.</p>
<p>I want to go to a school that won’t make me broke during my undergraduate years. Then, for graduate school, I’m aiming for a Fellowship or a very nice scholarship.</p>
<p>I’m kind of jumping in here, but I’m curious…I know it’s smarter to go somewhere free for undergrad, but I visited Princeton’s campus, and I fell in love. I don’t know how I’ll be able to turn it down if I get in.
My parents want me to go to one of the national merit full ride schools for undergrad, then a top school to eventually get my PhD. I haven’t seen a full ride school where I can truly see myself enjoying the experience…anyone else face the same predicament? :/</p>
<p>I am interested in medicine; it seems like the rest of the world is as well.
I’m in IB, which I think is a pretty competitive program. I see everyday scrambling everyday for marks. I don’t want to be stuck in the rat race that is seemingly taking over my life. I don’t just want to “average” because for every kid that makes it into Med school, many, many don’t. I want to be special somehow, I want to make my mark in the world.</p>
<p><em>sigh</em> my dreams…are not very likely to become reality…</p>
<p>my list is on an excel spreadsheet lol…but yea 19 schools, and ~6 are safeties/matches lol…the rest im either on the lower end of the middle range for scores or competitive but its impossible to tell for sure. im only visiting like 8 schools, bc the rest are too far. but i want to go to a top school because i want to be with people who care about learning and are intellectually curious since only about 5% of my entire grade actually cares about school…</p>
<p>no i know that, obviously everywhere will be people that care somewhere but i just hate the climate at my school i really want a different experience</p>
<p>It will be a different experience. It doesn’t have to be a top 25 school to have motivated, interesting people. College isn’t like high school - if you don’t do homework, you flunk out, you don’t continue to be shuffled through the system cause no one wants to deal with it.</p>
<p>Anyway, for people who can’t see themselves at a lower tier school: I have ivy stats (at least ones that make me competitive - so that give me a 6% chance at Harvard, maybe 10 aha), but it’s because I’m a motivated learner, not because of a goal like an ivy. I’m going to do my best to go to college for free because I know I’m going to grad school, where I will actually care about the name. If you truly can’t see yourself “as happy” at a lower tier school, ask yourself WHY you do what you do, and hope it’s for the right reasons. Also remind yourself that if youre at the top of a lower tier school you’ll be able to seize more opportunities and ultimately have a great resume for grad school. If college will be your terminal degree, then it is probably more important to go somewhere with a nice name, unless it’s engineering in which case it only needs to be ABET accredited. </p>
<p>Btw I’m not trying to discount your feelings, I went through the same thing about a year ago when I realized that an ivy will most likely be unaffordable for my family. After a couple months I came to this conclusion. Take it or leave it aha.</p>
<p>you make a very good point, i suppose i came off a bit narrow minded, and i as well am not going for just a name of a ivy or whatever, i am looking for schools with top notch research facilities and major opportunities for internships ect in labs, which, i guess you could do research anywhere but i have always dreamed of working in state of the art facilities with professors and mentors who are at the top of their field. money is not a super important issue, but at the same time if i do get some financial aid, which is unlikely ( but my brother is in college too) so maybe if i do get a little that is not merit based, i will probably get it from somewhere with a big name, since i have heard that the ivies are very generous in that respect. but then again, this is going off of word of mouth information on the financial aid part so forgive me if it is inaccurate lol</p>
<p>Ivies are very generous with financial aid. But it really depends on your income and how much your parents are willing to contribute. </p>
<p>Yes, state of the art research facilities/research are awesome, but they are available at more than Ivies. The university of Minnesota has AMAZING research facilities, as do most state flagships (and it’s only 30k OOS). As a top student there, you would stand out and be more likely to be selected to do cutting edge research and get published. There are tons of universities that will not only let you go for free, but also provide amazing opportunities. Go look at the “Bama Brags” thread. Anyone with ivy stats can get a full ride there, and the things the kids in the honors college do there are AMAZING. They are getting into top grad programs. Look at curmudgeon’s daughter, she got into Yale but went to Rhodes College on a full ride. She’s now at Yale med school. </p>
<p>You can be very happy anywhere, it’s what you make of it.</p>
<p>I want to get a free ride, or a very generous scholarship, for my undergraduate years. It doesn’t matter where, as long as they have my majors of choice. It’s graduate school that matters (USC, UCLA, or the America Film Institute Conservatory). AFI costs $70k per year for 2 years, while the others are much more reasonable (around $40k). If undergraduate doesn’t put me in debt, graduate school probably will. :P</p>
<p>I have so many OOS schools, I don’t know if I can visit them all, but I will try… I’ll at least do my due diligence in seeing what other students think of the school, but living in Georgia and having schools as far away as Indiana, NY, and Oklahoma… Geez, it’s gonna be tough.</p>
<p>Same here, Future. I live in Texas and the schools I’m looking at are in New York, Massachusetts, California, etc. The only one in Texas I’m considering is UT Austin. :P</p>