<p>You still need to broaden your views of other colleges. Happiness really is a choice. </p>
<p>You can have some similar experiences inside Maryland that you can have outside of Maryland.</p>
<p>You don’t have to rely on college mailings to find out about colleges. You can do the research yourself, and even fund your own applications. I know students who did this and who managed to get merit aid to schools that met their criteria. </p>
<p>One student did this even though his prestige-impressed immigrant parents stopped talking to him when he insisted on applying to (and funding the apps) colleges that he felt met his needs.</p>
<p>He ended up getting virtually full financial aid from a college that was excellent in his field of choice. His parents wouldn’t even transport him there. Later, freshman year, however, they were talking to him. By the time he graduated, they hosted a graduatio party for him and his father publicly apologized for trying to keep his son from going to that college.</p>
<p>Son had excellent job offers, and has been a success in his field.</p>
<p>In college, because of the college’s connections, he also had managed to twice meet the president of the U.S., including once in an event that was televised. The S was in a small group of student journalists who were at a press conference.</p>
<p>The college was a second tier college, incidentally, a place where his mom had predicted, “You’ll never meet the movers and shakers of the world.”</p>