<p>@PurpleTitan @mom2collegekids </p>
<p>Here’s a little back story as to what happened to me back in high school…</p>
<p>It’s not my intention to play the blame game here. What’s done is done and I unfortunately cannot take it back. My high school years were actually similar to my college years: I basically had straight As throughout high school. What probably caused my financial-aid downfall was the fact that I had extremely low SAT scores. I took the SAT once my junior year and once my senior year. My junior year, I was actually horribly sick and running late to the testing center that morning. (emphasis on horribly, not just a casual “I felt sick for 5 minutes so that means I’m going to miss the whole day”). My concentration was just absolutely shot throughout the test and I had to skip lots of questions. I ended up with an average score–one that got no merit scholarships anywhere. My junior year though, I didn’t understand how important the SAT was for merit aid. When I took the test again my senior year, it was June just like now and I was in a panic for merit aid since I wasn’t getting any from any of the schools I applied to. I was told by the universities that I applied to that if I could get a higher SAT score despite being so late in the summer, I would qualify for those merit scholarships and thus I would be able to attend those universities. I ended up taking the last SAT available in June until October that same year. I felt absolutely prepared for that exam. When I got to the testing center though, I ran into a little trouble with the test proctors. Before the exam started, one of the exam proctors came around to check our workspaces to make sure everything was in order. He got to my desk and noticed my calculator was totally different from any other calculator he’d ever seen. It was a new type of calculator which I was positive was allowed before I brought it to the testing center. Rather than privately and quietly discuss with me that he couldn’t allow me to use the calculator, he purposefully tried to belittle me in front of everyone in the testing room by yelling at me as loud as he could, saying “Did you even READ the directions for the SAT before you came here? Are you that stupid?” Not only was he incredibly rude about it, I was scared and heavily panicking at this point. All eyes in the testing room were on me and I was trying to tell him that my calculator was, in fact, approved and that he needed to check his list of approved calculators. He just continued to yell at me after that and I was just so frightened and scared, I didn’t know what to do. He then took up my calculator and I didn’t get to use it on the test. For the remainder of the morning, I absolutely could not concentrate during the exam at all. In between breaks, people were just giving me these disgusting looks and whispering in the background, “hah, that cheater got caught!” For the duration of the entire test, I was just sick to my stomach from how embarrassed I was. After the exam, I complained to collegeboard and weeks later, they ruled that I was right and the exam proctor was wrong. And they gave me two options: cancel my scores or release my scores. I didn’t know what to do at that point: fall semester was quickly approaching and I wasn’t any closer to getting any freshmen merit-aid scholarships. If I canceled my scores, I would not be able to take another SAT until October that year, thus forcing me to take a gap year. So I took a risk and decided to release my scores to see what they potentially were. They were worse than the first time I took the SAT. When I found that out, I didn’t know what to do. I reached out to family and friends for help/advice and they kept telling me, “Just go to community college, you’ll save so much money.” I was eventually contacted by my local community college with a full ride offer that summer. I had no other options at the time, so I decided to take it. I was in hopes that proving I can do well in community college would mean I would get even BIGGER scholarships if I could manage to get straight As and do even more extra-curriculars.</p>
<p>Here we are, two years later. I feel like I’m in a worse situation than I was back then. Like I said, I pretty much got straight As throughout high school. I had lots of shining letters of recommendation from my teachers for admissions panels and scholarship committees, and tons of extra-curriculars and prestigious awards. But the problem, in hind-sight, was the fact that if you have a bad SAT score, you’re not getting ANY money no matter how well you did in school.</p>
<p>I pretty much went through the entire college application process alone my senior year of high school. Family couldn’t/didn’t want to help. And it was tough to get an appointment with our college counselor at our school since she was usually booked two weeks in advance, thus you could usually only see her once every two weeks or so. This time around, I tried to make sure I didn’t go the entire college application process alone, asking faculty, friends, family, and advisors all for help. But it just apparently isn’t working out.</p>
<p>You can criticize me for the above story if you want, but there’s almost nothing that can be done now. I’ve tried my best to learn from my mistakes.</p>