<p>Hi!
You have a really great attitude (something I need to work on) I live in Ann Arbor, and the U of M name carries a lot of "weight" around the midwest and on the east coast, at least in my experience. You'll have a ton of fun here, and it's an excellent school. Some kids who get rejected from the Ivies or other schools feel bummed about going to UMich, but it's the number 2 public university in the nation, so they have nothing to worry about! Congrats! (I'm applying next year, so maybe I'll see you there! :D)</p>
<p>Despite the Huh? Harvey who? from friends/family nationally and internationally, Harvey Mudd was our sons and our first choice until he was rejected. Since he is not good enough for Mudd, he has to narrow his choices down to CalTech and MIT.</p>
<p>Before applying to Mudd we had good conversations with several professors there, and knew that undergrads wouldnt have to compete with graduate students for the professors time. We still think highly of the professors, but our impression about Mudd otherwise is now muddy at best.</p>
<p>Just like so many here who are/were not going to their original first choice college, we are convinced that a happier ending is in store.</p>
<p>StillProudMom,
As a current Mudd student, I am sorry to hear of your family's experience. I think the important thing is your son's intent- to pick up a really great education. Sometimes it doesn't matter where people go to college; if your son ends up at MIT or Caltech and is not there for the brand, I say that this is a happy ending.</p>
<p>Congrats on getting into two great schools. I'm sure your son knows he can make great things of the situation.</p>
<p>I am many years out of Michigan. Class of 74. I was visiting this site because I have a son applying to college. I went as an in state student. Tuition was about 1000.00 per year and the dorm was another 1000.00. I was able to go to school, play for a month and work for three months and just about cover it! That is not how it goes any longer unfortunately. I was very well served at UM. I majored in history of ideas. Did a neat senior thesis that I recently posted to the web at <a href="http://208.8.185.150/backtotheland/%5B/url%5D">http://208.8.185.150/backtotheland/</a></p>
<p>Went to Michigan State Med School and moved to Seattle where I practice medicine and started a business. I worked hard in school, was in the Residential College which I highly recommend, and took lots of humanities courses beyond the pre-med load. </p>
<p>Bottom line is that while Michigan was not perfect, I was happy there and it helped transform my life. </p>
<p>But remember that the biggest factors in your future is who you are as a person, how hard you want to work, and very importantly, your peer group. If there is any reason to be careful in picking a college, it is the nature and qualities of the peer group there. What are their values, intellect and aspirations. There is no one right group, but I advise any student to pick people for friends and peers who have integrity, who challenge you intellectually and who have aspirations that go beyond the norm. </p>
<p>And take advantage of the schools course catalogue and professors to find areas you did not know about. Take art history, study another language or perfect the one you have studied, go to concerts, join clubs, do sports and stretch yourself. It only goes downhill in terms of freedom to take risk once you get out and have to support yourself.</p>
<p>rocketDA,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. In his research for potential college, my son put overriding weight on having the maximum opportunity to work closely with people proven to be motivated to succeed, which include both peers and professors, and in an environment that fully embraces such working relationship. He did not apply to many big names due to the alleged relative lack of undergrad access to professors. We had also since extended significant effort to find out as much as we could about his few top choices, and advised him to show his preference accordingly in his applications. While he certainly did not discount Mudd for not being a well known brand then, he will not discount MIT/CalTech now just because they are popular brands.</p>
<p>After visiting MITs Campus Preview Weekend and CalTechs PreFrosh Weekend, along with our previous findings, my son believes both places truly match his desire. Since both have also displayed their desire to have him as a student. It will be a difficult thing for him to have to say no to one of them.</p>
<p>Well never know whether Mudd would have emerged as his eventual final choice. However, basing on the simple principle that a match must mean both parties desiring the other, we are more than happy to not have to think or talk about Mudd again any time soon.</p>
<p>I was devastated when I was rejected from Princeton, but after attending Dartmouth's "Dimensions" program, I feel so lucky to have been. :) Dartmouth was obviously a reach as well, but I'd idealized Princeton so much that I might have overlooked it if I'd been accepted to both. I can honestly say that if Princeton were to call me today and tell me that they'd made a mistake and actually meant to accept me, I would have to decline their offer. :D</p>
<p>I wanted to go to Duke since I visited campus for the first time in 9th grade. Then one day I got a likely letter from UNC Chapel Hill, which I assumed would be a definite rejection. After deciding between UNC, Vanderbilt, and Davidson, I happily chose UNC, which is much more laidback and less competitive than Duke. I was pretty content with checking the "Please take me off your waitlist" and sending it back to Duke.</p>
<p>I'll admit it, i cried when I got rejected by 4 Ivies, especially Yale which was pretty much the only school I ever wanted to go to (yes, i applied to harvard but it was not Yale). I felt horrible b.]/c after spending so much time thinking about the schools that was 'perfect' for me I was back to square one.
I ended up with some pretty cool choices, among them Cornell, Northwestern and Notre Dame. I had no idea what to do, b/c i truly had never given these schools a chance. I do feel like gettinbg rejected was a blessing in disguise, I got really excited with the college that had accepted me and in the end fell in love w/ northwestern (a school i would have never given a chance to had i gotten in to yale).
The thursday that Yale rejected me seems like so long ago (even if it was less than a month ago) and although i still feel kinda sad that i didnt get in to my school, Im over it, and thinking of the many things i'll do at northwestern that I couldn't have done at Yale.
And yes, I've stopped hating all the Ivies that rejected me, b/c I still might end up wanting to go there for med school.</p>
<p>lucky you. I'm from Ohio, but I could care less about the footbll rivalry. I'm thinking about going there but I feel jipped out of the in-state tuit. Anyway, personally, it seems a little too big and busy and urban for me. bout got killed ten crossing the street when I visited.</p>
<p>i will sound like a spoiled brat, but hear me out on this one:</p>
<p>since i was knee-high, i was convinced that harvard was the best school ever, bar none. perhaps it is, but i was deferred and then waitlisted there. luckily, i got in everywhere else i applied - axline at caltech, brown, stanford, mit, northwestern, case - but i was still very upset that i didn't make it.</p>
<p>obviously, this forced me to consider my choices in a way that i never bothered to do earlier, which ended up being incredibly important because i instantly fell in love with mit. i found that i liked the mit culture way more than harvard's atmosphere, and that objectively speaking, mit was probably better in the fields i was interested in pursuing than harvard. when i compared mit to the other schools i was admitted to, i found that i liked many of those schools more than harvard as well. being rejected therefore both improved my future in an objective sense, and probably will make me happier in the long run.</p>
<p>perhaps i'm subconsciously rationalizing my failure, but i am happy nonetheless.</p>
<p>On some apps (Columbia, for example) you simply write down what years you did stuff, no space for hours. theres also only 8 lines. For my columbia app, im benifiting from the loophole that im starting volunteering at the end of 11 grade so i can say i did it in 11th grade and they wont know that i only did it for a month. is this cheap? feedback appreciated</p>
<p>i applied to brown EDI, having spent 2 summers there, having a strong alumni association, and great connections. I thought it was the school i would die for. I ended up being deferred from brown, but i had a very great chance of being accepted regular decision.
The next weekend after i was deferred, my parents told me i should visit vassar. I was like "vassar!?!? eww no im gonna go to brown." well...i acquiesced and visited and i FELL IN LOVEEEEEEEEE HEAD OVER HEELS. I KNEW RIGHT AWAY THATS WHERE I WANTED TO SPEND MY 4 YEARS. i had a week until the EDII deadline to vassar, and decided i would risk my acceptance at brown to apply ED to vassar.
i ended up being accepted to vassar, and now im enrolled in the class of 2011. i could not be happier...and i had to withdraw from brown before finding out anything. best decision of my life. i couldnt not be happier :)</p>
<p>Alright, so UCLA has always been my dream school. I have visited at LA every summer I go out to California since I was maybe seven years of age. I just loved everything about UCLA, especially the location, in the affluent neighborhood of Westwood. I knew that UCLA was a long shot, but I thought with the holistic approach, I had an amazing chance even though I was an out of state applicant. We'll it turns out, I overjudged my "special circumstances" too much. When I checked the admission site online, I wanted to throw my laptop on the ground. For about a few weeks, I barely talked and refused to even eat at times. I was really considering suicide. Then two months later, I was wait listed at my second choice school, the University of Virginia, and I never got off. Now, I was at rock bottom. With only being accepted into mid-tier schools, I told my parents that I wish I had died on my hospital bed while on chemotherapy duirng junior year. But, after sometime and my parents getting irritated with me, I decided that I better just chose a college and like it. So it was either the University of Washington at Seattle, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, or the University of Maryland at College Park. After a few days of researching, I decided on University of Maryland. I visited UMD and fell in love with the campus, but still am angry and not fully satisfied. Hopefully after orientation my attitude will change. I'm hoping to transfer for sophomore year to NYU, Chicago, Penn, or UVA, and I will even reach as far as Stanford. The only thing that still angers me is the reason I was denied from these schools, my SAT scores.</p>
<p>My goal was 1380-1450, but I only got a 1220 and 28 ACT. But, I only had maybe one and half months for preparation, since junior year was a brutal year for me since 2 days before school started, I was diagnosed with cancer and had to withdraw from school, but continued school through a special program designed for students in my situation and I found it really easy because they only offered regular level courses, but I still received all A's. Then I returned to my regular local high school and enrolled in 4 Honors and 2 Regulars(Algebra II, Drama II), since I had to drop my academic elective Advance Placement courses ( AP European History and AP Human). I received a 4.0 GPA unweighted for Junior year and 4.382 GPA weighted. My senior curriculum was all Honors and 2 APs due to certain prereqs. I had to take Chemistry Honors due to the fact that junior year I could not take science due to the amount of labs and me always being withdrawn from school. Here is how my cumulative GPAs run.</p>
<p>FRESHMAN- 3.4 UW, 3.58 W
SOPHOMORE-3.75 UW, 4.08 W
JR.-4.0 UW, 4.382 W
SENIOR- 3.9 UW, 4.8 W</p>
<p>And that averages my GPA to a 3.7 UW, and 4.1 W. But, I think it's safe to say that with the way I performed in my APs, I could've easily had an W GPA cumulative of 4.2-4.3. I've had only one C in an Honors course, which was freshman year, and I missed the cutoff by .002 with a 79.48, i need 79.5, but my teacher was not budging. </p>
<p>So I don't know, I thought with these grades, outstanding college entrance essays, pretty good EC's, and decent SATs, that I had a standing chance at UCLA and UVA.</p>