<p>This is a long post. Sorry, all.</p>
<p>Long story short: I am a 16-year-old white female senior in S.C. with a VERY VERY dysfunctional family. My father was in prison for 8 years, my sister's boyfriend is in prison for murder, my sister is in prison for drug dealing, one of my sisters was in an insane asylum, and the other got married at 15 to an abusive psycho who almost killed her. (I am the youngest sister.) The drug-dealing sister was QUITE abusive to me and as a result during my middle school years I was... "troubled", to say the least.</p>
<p>My mother had a head injury and was very neglectful, to the point where I, at 6, had nothing but filthy clothes and sometimes threw fits because I was so hungry. Then my mother got married to an alcoholic (who in comparison to my psycho father seemed wonderful) WITHOUT TELLING ME SHE WAS GETTING MARRIED. We moved around a A LOT, my mother wound up in bankrupcy. </p>
<p>So the school started making me see a psychologist when I was in 8th grade. This cost a whopping $100 a month and my mother didn't want to pay that, so she withdrew me in January of my 8th-grade year (I had just turned 13). She said she was going to homeschool me but she didn't; basically she left me alone at home all the time without any sort of mental stimulation whatsoever.</p>
<p>Then she bought a house in the middle of nowhere (~1 mile to the nearest house) that had no plumbing, electricity, or insulation, and in some places didn't have floors. She moved out there to live in a tent and crap in a bucket, while I went to Atlanta for 6 months to alternate living with my sister (the one with the abusive husband), my senile homebound grandmother, and my crazy abusive father. It was NOT good. Remember, I still was not doing any sort of schoolwork and I had NO friends. At all. I mean none. </p>
<p>So I came back to live with my mother the Christmas after I turned 14, and the house still had no electricity and she left me alone all the time. It got so cold in the house that the water in the sink would freeze. This was the point where I started teaching myself, but she wouldn't buy my homeschool books (too expensive) so I had to be resourceful. </p>
<p>Around a year ago, I finally put my foot down and said I wanted to go back to public school. So the principal sent me to the alternative school until last January (to make sure I was 'up to snuff') and I spent some time with all the crazy drug addicts that my school system has to offer. To make up for the fact that I wasn't with a homeschool organization while I was homeschooled, we lied and said I was on a XC roadtrip with my dad. </p>
<p>So here I am now. My stats: </p>
<p>-UW GPA 3.75, W 4.3
-SAT 2160 (CR: 800, W: 750, M: 610)
-ACT 30 (Comb. E/W 33, Science 27, Reading 32, Math 26)
-Top 10% class rank (17/197)
Prospective major: ecological biology / conservation biology</p>
<p>The schools I'm considering: </p>
<p>-Furman University
-Agnes Scott College
-Oxford College of Emory University
-Clemson University </p>
<p>People have told me to "aim higher" because of my "compelling life story", and that higher-up college admissions officials would "drool"at my stoy, but the problem is that not even my school guidance counselor knows ANY of the truth about what I've lived through. I feel like if I told this stuff in an essay to a college, it would sound like whining or complete lies.</p>
<p>What do you guys think? (Christ, sorry for the epic-long post...)</p>