<p>I'm one of those students who has been rejected from every out-of-state school to which I applied and chose IU as my fallback. All this year I was really hoping on going out of state. Anyone else in a similar situation? Right now, I'm trying to focus myself on looking forward to IU.</p>
<p>One thing that does concern me is the academic experience. I want a rigorous, competitive environment so I can challenge myself. I know the admissions standards for IU aren't as selective as other schools and I'm worried I might end up as "the smart kid" among everyone else with such a huge school size (like I am in high school). I was accepted to the Honors College, though.</p>
<p>It is important to have a proper perspective going into IU. You will meet a lot of bright students and a lot of non-so-bright ones. I don’t know about your intended majors. You may wish that your classmates were not so bright in some classes. If you like challenges, I can recommend a few courses for you to consider. If you really don’t like it after the freshman year, you can always transfer.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response. I plan on majoring in chemistry with a premed track and possible studying a critical foreign language (ie, Arabic or Russian) too.</p>
<p>I’m not really sure why you are worried about being labeled as the “smart kid” in a large university. It’s large enough that few people end up with labels like “smart kid.” </p>
<p>College is different than High School. The academic challenge is what you make it. It’s entirely up to you to find the challenge and rigor. It’s the time to stop depending upon teachers and classmates to challenge you. It’s the time to take control of your own learning.</p>
<p>I have two boys at IU right now. One is a premed. Chem is a challenging major. S117 and S341 have a lot of high power students. I actually believe that IU is a good place for pre-meds. It is not extremely difficult; but, it is challenging enough. You will need to stay very late if you are taking two science honors courses. These are the things you should consider:</p>
<p>1) Do well in AP Calc B/C so that you can skip M211 & 212. If you switch to BioChem major, you are done with Math.
2) Review your foreign language before the orientation placement test. If you place out three semesters of foreign language, you are done.
3) Go to the pre-med forum on CC to learn about the new MCAT and course requirements.
4) Use the two links below to select you courses.</p>
<p>Depending upon your critical reading skill, you need to take some good course to strengthen you reading ability for MCAT. A second language major/minor may not be that important.</p>
<p>Go to IU, make some new friends, keep on track, and you will enjoy.</p>
<p>I have another question (unrelated, but I don’t wanna start another thread). Do your automatic IU scholarships show up on your OneStart account?</p>
<p>Dude you will be challenged if you are a Chem major. Don’t worry. Your first semester will be a breeze but once you start in on Organic Chemistry you will find it challenging. You will find people who are smarter than you in every class, it is too big a university not to. Also you may be sweating that top tier med schools may look down on IU. They don’t I friends starting in 4 of the top 5 med schools all with the degrees from IU, you’ll be fine as long as you do well in grade wise.</p>
<p>If you had your heart set on a certain out of state selective school that’s too bad. Many kids all apply to the same top 10-20 ranked. I.U. Bloomington recruits 7000+ freshman each year.You will find a large # of finalists for National Merit. I like I.U.'s strategy to increase selectivity. They are extremely generous with merit aid. My daughter’s acceptance at a very selective school was met with zero true merit aid. Kids at a high school will see a smart kid choosing I.U. and so they will give it a honest evaluation.One idea for you is to look at pre-med with a L.A.M.P. Liberal Arts Management Program. It mixes some Kelley classes in with other studies. I once heard a comment at Michigan, “You can make a big school small, but you can’t make a small school big.”</p>
<p>About the most naive, dumbest thing you can do is look down on a school for its selectivity and s**t. </p>
<p>What do you think is better? Getting a load of C’s at an Ivy league school or getting a bunch of A’s elsewhere? Guarantee you the latter will be better for you most of the time, especially if you’re trying to get to med/law/grad school.</p>
<p>Trust me, it may be a blessing in disguise for you. I’ve seen plenty of kids who weren’t academically prepared get beaten and tossed around like ragdolls here, and that is not an environment you want to be at. Do well at IU, and you may find that you actually might be ahead of other kids who managed to get into those certain schools after college.</p>
<p>Had same feeling as OP and found that IU is thoroughly rigorous to get A’s in. I work very hard to get good grades and so do the other kids at my school. Kids who got above 4.0 and above 30 ACT and 2000 SAT have had a struggle on some of the classes. But this is within the Kelley School and I can’t give you info for a science major.</p>
<p>Anyway, there are some students that are IVY league level and find it challenging at IU. I’ve only come across Kelley majors though. There are a large amount of less-motivated students, but trust me, plenty of smart students.</p>
<p>^It’s the same for science, well once you hit Junior year anyway. Since the College of Arts and Science direct admits everything that moves and even those they don’t have an easy time getting in, at first the competition isn’t that much. By the time you get to your 300 level classes and premed prerequisites a lot of people have been weeded out. Its a nice difficulty curve that gets you set for college. If that isn’t enough, take honors chem and bio classes as much as you can. Live in the HRC and make friends who are smart and driven like yourself. College is what you make of it.</p>