<p>Personal and financial reasons. Death in family. MAJOR academic error/violation on my part in 2nd semester. Huge money problems.</p>
<p>All rectified now, especially after I secured several scholarships last fall, a great paying internship this fall and my company posted a tidy profit last term.</p>
<p>Also, I was pretty hung up on not getting into Harvard. Don't ask why. I just was.</p>
<p>oh ok. see, I dont want to shoot for school in the ivys and really, northwestern I don't know much about and I don't believe I have good chances there because of factors like my H.S GPA. that haunting 2.3 is a main reason why I won't transfer until 2008 though.
I just don't know if I should "cut" schools like NU and WUSTL because of my highschool grades (though I really dont think I could get into WUSTL at all but I dont know enough). I need to figure out the best way to factor in all these past issues and how I've completly changed them for the better.</p>
<p>Well, I DID have a pretty pathetic HS GPA. Not as bad as yours, but still, pretty bad. So did another CC poster, nspeds and he ended up at Georgetown, where he's preparing for graduation. I am of the strong belief that test scores REALLY do help. I was a straight up test taker. </p>
<p>You seem like a nice turn around story. Get close with a prof. Good recs will help validate that turn around.</p>
<p>I think I can form connections with professors because I am very extroverted and I think a good judge of character. I get along with professors with senses of humor well and I think it might be a stronger point for me. thanks for more info.</p>
<p>Good stuff, good stuff. Back to chemistry for me. My coach will kill me for the no sleeping tonight.</p>
<p>Time to expect some slllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllow 600s.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Transfer requirements (*cough cornell AEM), how many classes do they suggest before transfer, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Rankings, job placement, prestige, networking, and the tuition relative to the financial benefits of these attributes</p></li>
<li><p>Transfer chances - can I actually get admitted into _____ college ?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Okay, I don't think this repeats what's already been said. Apologies if it does. These are not to replace the criteria already mentioned (such as transferability of units, etc.). But this is how I would start:</p>
<ol>
<li> Location: do you have a geographic area of preference or geographic limits? (North/East/West/South? x miles from home? easy access to airport? close to skiing/ etc. etc.)</li>
<li> Location type: urban/rural/suburban. You've been in the restaurant business. Do you want to be near a vibrant food scene?</li>
<li> School size: huge, big, medium, small?</li>
<li> School atmosphere: do you want a great rah-rah sports scene (big time football, basketball etc.?) do you want (or want to avoid) heavy Greek scene? do you care about the political atmosphere of the student body (conservative/liberal...)? preppy fashion scene vs. tee shirts and cutoffs?</li>
<li> Special interests: do you want to play a sport? be involved with a school radio station? jam with other kids in a band?</li>
<li> Housing: do you want to live on campus all 4 years? not live on campus at all?</li>
<li> Academics: do you know what you want to major in? do you need a school with strengths in lots of fields so you can explore? do you like a school with hardly any requirements or loosely structured requirements (ie, take 2 hum/2 soc sci/2 quant courses) or a rigid core that all freshmen/sophs must take? do you like the idea of being at the top of the heap academically? or do you want to be around higher-achievers academically who will spur you on? what about class size - like to listen and learn in a large lecture? or intensive small seminar discussion groups?</li>
</ol>
<p>THEN address: how will finances work? Do you need financial aid? Identify schools whose financial aid policies fit your need. If they rarely give aid to transfers, meet only a small % of need and that doesn't work for you, eliminate them. </p>
<p>Once you've identified your preferences on these dimensions and schools you are likely to be able to afford, find 1-2 schools at each level of selectivity for you. A couple whose SAT range puts you in the top 25% or better, a couple where you are solidly in the mid-range and (if reach schools appeal to you) one or two where you are a bit lower down.</p>
<p>You shouldn't be overwhelmed with two many at this point. You can use the online search functions like Counselor-O-Matic to sort schools along these dimensions if you haven't already.</p>
<p>IMO, once you've found schools you like in this manner, THEN you can look at how they'll handle transfer credits.</p>
<p>I think you are on the right track that your un-pretty hs GPA needn't hold you back at the right schools. Good for you for coming so far in regard to that. Well-selected schools and good essays will help. Focus on those recommendations - by getting to know 1-2 profs well enough that you will get good ones.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>I've also decided, I am not going to limit myself to not trying for schools with low acceptance rates. 1 out of 5000 is obviously unmeasurably a better chance than 0 out of 5000 but I am going to have a wide range of admission chances, and NOT with the heaviest emphasis on SAT scores.
I think city/suburban/rural is the one thing scaring me but after more research, alot of the schools I've been thinking about have fairly decent cities close to them. I love a beautiful campus but I need a city, at least fairly close, incase I need to escape for a day or so.</p>
<p>Location- I wanted to stay on the West coast/South West- This helped me eliminate schools like University of Iowa, University of New Mexico, and Ohio University.
Cost- this eliminated all private schools. I was considering University of Colorado @ Boulder until I found out that it costs almost $25,000 for out of state tuition.
Size- I know I didn't want to go to a small college anymore (my current school), so I was looking for a state college with a minimum of 13,000 students. I also wasn?t sure about what I considered to be too large of a school. After visiting ASU, I decided that any school with more than 30,000 undergrads was too big for me.
Could I really imagine myself going there- why apply to a school if I didn't really want to go there. Just because it was better than my current college didn?t mean that I actually wanted to go there. This helped me eliminate University of New Mexico and Colorado State.
If applying out of state- since most of the colleges I applied to were not in California, I wanted a school that had a decent out of state population. In a sense, I wanted a school with some diversity (not necessarily based on race or religion). This helped me eliminate Ohio University, among others.
College town- this was an extremely important factor. Is there a lot to do in the town? Is it dead on the weekend? How's the social life? I eliminated U. of New Mexico after considering all of these factors.
Sports/School spirit- I wanted to go to a school where people were proud to be there. Having a good basketball/football (in that order) was important to me, but not a necessity. I believe that schools that have a lot of school spirit also has a lot of happy students.</p>
<p>Here was my original list of schools that I was interested in applying to:
University of New Mexico
University of Arizona
Arizona State
Texas A & M
University of Washington
University of Iowa
University of Colorado- Boulder
Colorado State
Ohio University
University of Oregon
Chico State
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
University of Tennessee
Bowling Green
Western Washington</p>
<p>The schools that I actually ended up applying to:
Chico State
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
San Diego State (despite being admitted to the school as a freshman)
University of Oregon
University of Arizona</p>
<p>Actually this might help if everyone posts their original list and then their actual list. I'lll keep it going:</p>
<p>Original list (in no order of preference):
Harvard
Northwestern
UChicago
UT (Regular)
Rice
Dartmouth
Cornell
WashU in St. Louis
Georgetown
NYU
Brown
Emory</p>
<p>Final list (with a few recently added):
WashU in St. Louis [accepted]
Cornell [already applied]
UT (Plan II) [pretty much guarantee regular acceptance]
Chicago [pending for regular]
Northwestern [to be applied]</p>
<p>original:
virginia
michigan
cornell
chicago
stanford
brown
cal
ucla
usc</p>
<p>final list:
cal
brown
stanford</p>