I am currently 17, and I recently decided to go to a small private college about an hour and a half away from where I live currently. I got a 35 on my ACT, a 1550 on my SAT, and I will be graduating with about a 3.75, having taken all the honors classes my school has to offer. I applied to a few schools like Boston and UChicago and got into all, but I ultimately decided to go to the college that I did because my parents won’t let me go to a college that isn’t Christian, and also the college I am going to recruited me to play tennis there. I don’t really plan on being connected with my parents in the future, but I can’t just ignore their christian college policy and go wherever I want this coming year as I will still be 17 when I leave for college and am not in a financial state where I could qualify for emancipation. Though it wasn’t necessarily my top choice, I have since mentally accepted my decision and am glad about it, especially because I really love tennis, I will be close to a lot of my friends, and I don’t really think I’m in a part of my life where I am mature enough to just move across the country by myself for college. Plus my grades have really been tanking lately because I’ve had a really hard time motivating myself. A lot of my friends, teachers, friends’ parents, and seemingly everyone in the town for some reason seem to have an opinion about my decision, though, and think I am throwing my life away by not going somewhere like an ivy league. Though I’ve been mostly ignoring the criticism, the more I’ve thought about it, I do still really want to be successful and go to a good graduate school. I’ve always hoped to one day to move to California near Silicon Valley and do something important with artificial intelligence/machine learning or something related. From what I have read, the school I am attending is not bad but definitely won’t help me when applying to grad school, especially a prestigious one. After doing a lot of research, I decided that the best course of action for me might be to go to the college I am planning on attending for one or two years, getting good grades and hopefully maturing a bit, and then applying to transfer to a better school like UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, or Columbia. I also did some research on factors used in transfer admissions and saw that things from high school like standardized testing have a lot more weight placed on them if you transfer after freshman year, so I feel like that would probably be my best chance of getting into some of the schools I would like to. I think that it may be more beneficial for me to have two years before I go somewhere far away, though, so if I could still get in then that would be ideal. Basically, this has just been a long-winded way of saying that I have a plan for next year for college but am still very uncertain about what to do after that, and any advice on this would be extremely appreciated. Thank you in advance for anyone who actually takes the time to read this and respond!
How will you be paying for the school you transfer to as a sophomore or junior? Transfers don’t get much aid and you can only borrow ~$5500/year. Your parents would have to file the FAFSA and possibly the CSS Profile for you to get aid and be eligible for the loan. If they disagree with your choice, they may not. I’d ignore the neighbors and teachers and make an effort to find something to love about the school you’ll attend. It’s easy for outsiders to say you should aim for a particular set of colleges, but they’re not paying the bills.
Are your parents suddenly going to allow you to transfer to a nonchristian college? Just because you turn 18 won’t mean you don’t need their support and cooperation, at least financially and for completing the FAFSA.
Is there some reason you can’t just tell the busybodies that your family wants you at a christisn school or that you have been recruited for tennis?
I’m curious if you and your parents talked about this when you were applying.
You can’t emancipate yourself for college financial aid reasons just because you turn 18. Even to get your federal loans of ~5,500/year (a bit more the few years after freshman year), your parents have to fill out the FAFSA. So you probably need to just accept that your parents will only pay for this one school, and plan to graduate in 4 years. Once you graduate, move away and do what you want to do. In retrospect, you probably should have applied to more colleges they would be willing to allow you to attend; there are quite a few Christian colleges.
I didn’t realize that I still couldn’t fill out the FAFSA for myself after I am no longer financially connected to them which is unfortunate, so I guess I probably won’t be able to transfer. They aren’t planning on contributing to the college I am going to as I qualify for enough merit scholarships and outside scholarships (like National Merit) to cover most of the tuition and have a job and savings so I can pay for the rest, but I doubt I would be able to find something like that somewhere else. And we did talk about how I really wanted to go to a farther away school with more academic opportunities, but they were not very accepting of me going very far as a 17-year-old which is understandable, so this was on of the few schools we could compromise on. Thank you for the information and input!
How much are you covering on your own? Will they contribute next year if you fall short? You won’t be able to earn a lot while you’re taking a full course load and playing tennis.