<p>Even if you get into no four year schools, you can go to community college, do well there, and transfer to a good four year school. There are many very smart people who start at community college for various reasons and eventually do very well.</p>
<p>[At</a> just 14, UCLA math student Moshe Kai Cavalin has written his first book, ‘We Can Do’ / UCLA Newsroom](<a href=“http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/at-just-14-ucla-math-student-moshe-229359.aspx]At”>Newsroom | UCLA)</p>
<p>Your exam scores and your GPA qualify you for full tuition (and even possibly a true full ride) at some very decent colleges and universities. There are entire threads devoted to that in the Financial Aid Forum. Go there and start reading.</p>
<p>Why you think your grades and scores are so bad is beyond me. They are fine.</p>
<p>Haha OP I feel you, I was in the exact same situation as you last year. Horrible GPA because of slacking but high test scores, good ECs, essays, etc. Received like 8 rejection letters in a row (including WashU). But things worked out in the end, as they will for you. Once fall semester starts in a few months, you’ll be too busy making new friends and getting used to college to worry about where you were accepted/rejected from and what your parents think. </p>
<p>And when it comes to parental pressure, ultimately it is YOUR life, not theirs. They made you apply to THEIR dream schools? Whatever, if you don’t get in then no big deal because your dream schools may be a lot different from what theirs are. I hate it when Asian parents try to live vicariously through their kids</p>
<p>^ great advice. i could not agree more.</p>
<p>Thank you very much guys. and Happymomof1, what colleges would you be referring too?</p>
<p>Klinko, I think that you should check the decision. Who knows, you could be accepted!</p>
<ol>
<li>Have your parents read this thread</li>
<li>So what if you get 16 rejections? Don’t take the rejections personally because this was all based on stuff that they forced you to do anyways. Build a paper house or some other art project with them. You only need 1 acceptance, and you said that 2 were a possibility</li>
<li>Go away to college, move away from your parents, enjoy your freedom, and breathe!! </li>
<li>Then start the process of discovering yourself for yourself</li>
<li>Yes, unfortunately, the “second generation” immigrant always has the most difficulty bridging the two cultures (well, officially you are 1st gen since you were born in India, but you moved to the US at such a young age that your problems are virtually same as a 2nd gen). Just think, when you are at college, you will meet a ton of 2nd gens and you can all commiserate, complain, bond and understand each other!!</li>
</ol>
<p>loooooooooool 2290 SAT score and you are worried about so many things. hehehe.
I have a 3.0 GPA. The only thing I need now is over 1900 SAT score for me to get into university.
May shall be the day of my SAT, pressure?
A lot. heck a lot.
Going to engineering school.
Heck, I am going in an engineering school. One way or another, I am going to university this September.
There is no rejection letter, there is no denial, there ain’t anything that will stop me.
After I am there, I will transfer to my top college.
TAMU.<br>
Life is so simple. Don’t fight the system, use the system. </p>
<p>About your parents, well, show them the letters and say that you love them, and ofc, RUN FOR YOU LIFE! 
Kidding.
You will figure out what to do. The key is confidence.</p>
<p>Re: #25</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-14.html#post15330528[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-14.html#post15330528</a></p>
<p>I can always transfer for graduate school, right?</p>
<p>When going from undergrad to grad school, you’re not “transferring.” </p>
<p>As for breaking your parents’ hearts…all along you should be saying, “mom and dad, I don’t have the GPA for these schools. Do not be surprised if I don’t get accepted to X, Y, and Z.” Start saying these things now, if you haven’t already been doing so. If they stubbornly say that you will get accepted, you just say, “time will tell, but I don’t think so.”</p>
<p>as long as you have some schools that will accept you, you will be fine. I really don’t have much/any sympathy for parents who insist that their kids apply to super-reaches without the right stats. It’s fine to apply since parents are requiring, but let them realize that they were the one who stubbornly insisted on schools that were unlikelies.</p>
<p>Here is my advice as a parent of 2 and one who had an Indian friend. I understand the pressure. Now having said that please listen if you are being serious:</p>
<ol>
<li>You need to go to school where you will be happy.</li>
<li>You need to start separating from your parents expectations. I know this is not easy culturally, but it has to happen sooner or later, yes?</li>
<li>If your results were because you slacked off, then you need to consider how you feel about it. Your life is young, you can recover. Learning to work hard and do your best is a life lesson that, if learned, will then serve you for life. If you try hard from here on out, you can never be disappointed in yourself again.</li>
<li>You cannot predict who will accept you. Maybe you had some ECs or an essay that strikes a chord with one admissions person. Maybe not.</li>
<li>There are many paths to success. Floridadad55 nailed it. </li>
<li>Your SAT scores tell you how intelligent you are. What you do with it is up to you. You can use it or you can squander it.</li>
<li>By not being accepted to all the high powered schools, if so, it is quite possible you have opened the way for your happiness in a less pressured situation. The schools will have made the decision for you. Now pick from the ones you are accepted to, find a major you enjoy, and work hard at it.</li>
<li>Keeping a lid on the news will build up pressure in you that you do not want. If your parents are disappointed, that is their problem not yours. You can only move forward from here with what opportunities exist.</li>
<li>10 or 20 years from now, your parents will not rule your life, so don’t worry so much.</li>
</ol>
<p>OP, outside the CC bubble, an unweighted 3.4 with all the hardest courses is not slacking. Yes, given your obvious intellect you probably could have done better, but at what cost? Those “distractions” you mentioned might be an integral part of who you are, and might contribute to your future happiness in ways you can’t fully know now. We don’t all need to follow the exact same path, down to the exact same group of colleges to be successful.</p>
<p>Your parents probably thought what they did would ensure your success, and that success would lead to your happiness. They were misinformed on both counts, but they certainly meant well. It’s good of you to be concerned about their feelings. I don’t think you were “whining” at all. Be respectful but let them deal with the realities.</p>
<p>I’m not saying you should be selfish, but sometimes the best thing you could do for people who love you is to be good to yourself. I mean to be truly happy and at peace with yourself, and to thrive in your own way. Don’t dwell on what you could have done in the past. Concentrate on how positive and productive you will be in college, any college.</p>
<p>Finally, and this might sound strange on a forum dedicated to college admission, academics is not everything. A high-paying job is not everything. Not even for your parents. When I looked back at the later stage of my parents’ lives, the child who gave them the most joy and satisfaction was the one who had always been considered the least “successful” in both schooling and career.</p>
<p>op, i think that you are getting great and interestingly consistent advice.</p>
<p>when people advise the same thing (from different angles of course), you may want to consider that it is good advice.</p>
<p>i notice on this thread that the parental advice is more global and philosophical, while that current students tend to offer specific resolutions. it does appear to me that you have a specific immediate college decision issue as well as a parent/child independence one.</p>
<p>good luck again:) 
:)</p>
<p>Thank you all very much for your advice. Today, I sat down and talked to my mom.</p>
<p>In the past few days, I’ve realized something very important. Similar to what nohook said: perhaps if I did achieve that 4.0, I would not be as happy as I am today. All the strange, strange events that occured since entering high school each changed me. I could not ask for a more variable, exciting high school career.</p>
<p>But most importantly, I realized that I haven’t grown up yet. Not even close. I do not know what I want, I do not know what I will major in. I cannot even decide on my own writing; if given an essay I wrote a week ago, I would scrap it completely and re-do it. This is a very, very text book example, but I think it is the clearest. I have not found myself yet. I have no idea who I am–much less where I want to go, what I want to do, or how I want to do it. </p>
<p>I told my mom that no matter where I end up, my main focus will be to enlarge my education and find what I want to do. Once I do, I will put my all into what I truly enjoy, and succeed. </p>
<p>“I can always go to an Ivy for grad school, but that isn’t my goal either.” My mom was a little bit upset, but she tried her best to understand. For anyone out there in any situation similar to mine, remember: you probably have been slacking out of boredom, or out of curiosity of “distractions.” Each one of these distractions I have faced defines me today. I am a completely different person from the slacking pseudo-studious recluse that entered high school., and I’m truly happy about that.</p>
<p>Rejection is hard to face, especially when you (arrogantly) believe you are smarter or better than most of the applicants that apply. In the last few days, I started to get over myself, and although I am not content with my performance, I am ambitious and optimistic for the future. NO matter what university you go to, if you have the drive to succeed and stay true to who you want to be, you will succeed.</p>