<p>I'm currently a senior in high school, and recently got the last of my decision letters. I applied to ten schools overall, in a pretty equal mix of safeties, matches, and reaches. Out of the ten, I got rejected from five separate schools. Most of them were my reach schools, so it's not a huge surprise, but a couple of my matches denied me as well and I'm left with a list of prospective schools for next year that I'm not thrilled about.</p>
<p>I got into UBC, which I toured and realized was far too large. Beautiful campus, but I just couldn't do it. My state school is University of Oregon, which is a great school but somewhere I really only applied in case I wasn't able to go anywhere else based on financial aid. I was accepted to UPS, which unfortunately didn't give me the financial aid I needed. So now I'm left with College of Idaho, a nice but VERY tiny school in the suburbs of Boise, and Western Washington. I've visited both and enjoyed both of them, but I'm having a hard time seeing myself at them.</p>
<p>At this point, I'm not sure what to do. I'd hoped to take a gap year anyways, assuming my future school would allow it and it wouldn't hurt my financial aid. I'm curious as to whether I should suck it up, accept one of these schools, and possibly end up very happy or very miserable, or whether taking a gap year is a better idea for me at this point. I have some tentative plans, nothing concrete yet, but I think I could manage to make it work. During my gap year I'd do some more thorough research on schools and reapply as well (Note: I'm not intending to reapply to the reaches that reject me, as I know most of the time you won't get accepted the second time. I'd apply to new schools that I'd had more time to research.)</p>
<p>Please let me know if you have any thoughts.</p>