In state vs. private, out of state schools

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hello. I'm a sophomore in High School who lives in Oklahoma, and I'm trying to decide whether or not I should go to the University of Oklahoma, or if I should attend an out of state college. My older brother's best friend, who is a sophomore at Harvard, has been giving me advice concerning testing, financial aid, and general college-prep stuff. </p>

<p>I taught myself Swedish, and now speak it fluently, and I plan to study at least two languages at whichever college I go to. OU offers many languages, but it seems as though their main focus is on Native American languages. I understand the significance of Native American culture to Oklahoma, but really? It's ridiculous. </p>

<p>My opinions aside, I'm afraid I won't be pushed enough at OU when learning, for example, Chinese; or anything for that matter. As for my career, I plan on incorporating languages, which is my passion, into a major skill, per se, such as business & economics, education (primarily, teaching English as a second language), or law.</p>

<p>I have a 4.0 GPA, and I'm a homeschooled student (as of my freshman year). I'm going to take the ACT in 2010 before the school year is over. In any case, I'm mainly concerned with a) what college, if I am to attend an out of state one, I should attend and b) how I can afford it?</p>

<p>My friend has told me that private universities are good about paying your need-based finances, depending on how promising of a student you are. Could someone elaborate on this?</p>

<p>About choosing a college, the following things are important to me:</p>

<p>-I'd like for the university to offer Study Abroad programs.
-I'd like for to have good language programs / professors, although I understand that a lot of people won't know this about a university.
-I'd like for the school to have many possibilities education-wise, because I'm still trying to decide what I want to specialize in.
-The university cannot be a religious school, and it has to be gay friendly on at least a minor level.</p>

<p>Thanks a thousand for any advice you give me.</p>

2

<p>Thankfully, nearly all universities offer study-abroad programs across the world, so don’t worry about that! :)</p>

<p>As far as foreign languages…you might look at which schools offer your language choices as majors, minors, or as some kind of certificated program. Some schools might offer many, many languages, but they may only offer any real depth in 3 - 8 languages (French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Greek, Latin)</p>

<p>As for many possibilities education-wise - typically picking a national U will provide a wide selection of majors.</p>

<p>Gay-friendly - there are lists of schools that are considered to be more gay-friendly than others. I would imagine that most schools is the metropolitan areas would be gay friendly.</p>