<p>Glad to be of help.</p>
<p>Congrats on directly contacting Rice. If you can get in, you should go there. Great school. Wish you well on that effort.</p>
<p>A couple of opposite options (yes, that is word play)…</p>
<p>ECKERD COLLEGE in St. Petersburg, Florida is a really excellent small school. Will not require SAT or ACT scores, since you have completed more than a year of college. It is literally located on the beach, with about a mile of oceanfront. Most students live on campus. Only about 20% of students are from Florida, so most are out of state like you. The school has a fleet of “community bicycles” for riding around campus. Like a lot of colleges now, Eckerd has a robust “study abroad” program where you can earn credit studying in a foreign country. Academically, it has a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa – which is the most prestigious honor society in the country. How about a great way to show how far you have come, if you could gain admission to PBK?</p>
<p>If you really have the urge to attend a college up in the northeast, then you should consider BOSTON UNIVERSITY (this is not Boston College!). A very excellent school which tends to get overshadowed by nearby Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Amherst, Tufts, Brandeis, etc… In many states BU would be the best college available, public or private. It is private, but is bigger than most state universities. BU has almost any major that you can think of and I bet you can get in. The biggest downside is that it lacks a lovely campus. Being so big, and being in a crowded city, BU just has very little “green space.” One thing for sure, this would provide a very interesting experience to someone from South Carolina (I am from Alabama, by the way). I believe anybody would learn a lot by spending extended time in any of our most prominent cities – Boston, NYC, Chicago, LA, or San Francisco. This is a good option, IF you are up for adventure.</p>