<p>"One new option I found today is the Semester at Sea program. A semester traveling abroad on a boat, while taking college courses for credit. True, it’s expensive, but it sounds amazing. I am seriously considering applying, and then figuring out whether I want to attend in the future. Anyone have any experience with that program in particular? "
I would not recommend this program to ANY student who wishes to be taken seriously by selective colleges. It is viewed as “rich kids vacation at sea with a little education thrown in just for looks”. there are thousands of other endeavors you can do rather than spend 5 months on a floating vacation.</p>
<p>Not much to add except if anxiety is an issue for you, it might not be bad to be close to home. You can certainly stay on waitlists and see what develops from that, but consider, too, that if you enroll at Geneseo you can take advantage of study abroad programs. There’s no need to spend all four (or three) years in residence. Taking another gap year almost sounds like you’re stalling. The school you think you want may never make an offer - how would you feel if you’d stayed out of school two years? If next year’s admissions results aren’t what you want, do you take a third gap year? At some point ‘gap’ turns into ‘life’. There’s also the pesky question of health insurance. Maybe you haven’t reached the age (I think it’s 19) when you go off your parents’ unless you’re a full time student. </p>
<p>When you’re left with one certain option, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have choices, but you really do. Geneseo has some of the best students from our HS - kids who got into more competitive privates but chose Geneseo for price. I’m sure you can find your niche there.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a moment that you won’t be academically challenged at Geneseo. This is a school that accepts only bright kids (and often rejects kids with higher stats than yours). They generally have quite interesting backgrounds and interests as well. I don’t know anyone who went to Geneseo who wasn’t satisfied with their experience there. It may be in your neck of the woods, and that’s why it feels like settling, but I really think you should look deeper. There is a frequent poster on the Geneseo board, Geneseograd, who might give you more insight from a student’s perspective. If Geneseo simply doesn’t have the programs you’re interested in, then a gap year may make sense. You might ask if you can defer your admission to Geneseo for a year, as there is no guarantee that you would be accepted again there or at another school you desire.</p>
<p>I want to put my vote in for Geneseo over a ‘gap year’ - sounds like you are ready to spread your wings and this would be an excellent place to do that - sometimes the next step in life isn’t as glamorous as we think it should be but is the best step nonetheless. There was a wonderful post by a college student giving advice about how to adjust to college but applies to your situation as well. I think their tip on triangulating is wise - <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/857147-college-loneliness-101-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/857147-college-loneliness-101-a.html</a></p>
<p>icefoxrocks-- I really do agree with what all of the above posters have said. The one thing to consider, since you do need financial aid, is whether or not the waitlist schools will even offer you this aid. I believe it is less common to meet full need off of the wait list.</p>
<p>I really believe going to college away from home at a really great but affordable school sounds like the best alternative for you. I’m sorry if it doesn’t meet your fantasy, but it is quite possible, needing financial aid, that you would have had to choose Geneseo, anyway, even had you been accepted elsewhere. This is more common an occurence than you think, and one of the benefits of a state LAC…small classes, state tuition. Really sounds ideal.</p>
<p>Good luck to you.</p>
<p>I think you should just go to SUNY Geneseo–a great school–and dive into the college experience. I am familiar with young people with anxiety problems. Avoiding something that is a longterm goal (such as going to college) can be even more stressful than just doing it. Many, many freshmen find the first year very challenging, even if they are smart and well adjusted. April and May before you go off to college can be really brutal and stressful. But remember, that stress has nothing to do with what the experience of college is actually like. If you can go to SUNY Geneseo for a year or two, you can also transfer–it has a great reputation. Maybe for some people I would say a gap year–but for you, I would go for it.</p>
<p>Yes, go to Geneseo! Great aid package, and after years of homeschooling the college experience will be no less exotic than Tibet for you! You’ll meet lots of other people your age, have a chance to get involved in lots of different things…excel there and you will be able to transfer. But you may not be interested in transferring after you settle in. Have a great year!</p>
<p>Icefox, I posted on your other thread, but wanted to put in another two cents after reading this one. Now make it three cents - you can search CC for comments on Semester at Sea - they seem to run mostly along the theme of a boat full of rich kids drinking and having lots of sex, with a few rebuttals saying it was a fantastic intellectual experience, etc. My own jaundiced and admittedly superficial impression is that it’s a much too sheltered and coddled way to see the world.
Back to the original two cents, whichever decision you make is reasonable and does not cast your next few years into stone. If you go to Geneseo, which will give you more peer companionship than you’ve had, you can always take a gap later, even after freshman year. Or you can finish there if you love it, or transfer, or take time off and then transfer, or take time off and return…And if you take a gap year now, you’ll almost certainly have some valuable experiences and college will still be there later. There isn’t an absolute “right thing”. So many life-changing events are serendipitous anyway, and can be traced back to unpredictable and seemingly trivial encounters. You sound like you have wonderful inner resources, and lots of bravery and sense of adventure in spite of your anxiety. Good luck!</p>
<p>My cousin did that semester at sea program for a semester and said it was life changing and life affirming. Other than that review, I know nothing. :)</p>
<p>icefoxrocks,
you may want to seriously consider going to Geneseo, doing fantastic there, and THEN apply to transfer to more selective colleges.</p>
<p>You know what, I think you really should do the overnight at Geneseo and see how it goes. I think you are ready now for college. Because you are homeschooled I see a Gap year as possibly being more of the same as what you have been doing. Good luck.</p>
<p>Don’t take a year off because you think Geneseo is not good enough for you.</p>
<p>If you want to for other reasons, ok. But don’t think that another school is a reason for taking a year off. Geneseo is either the or one of the two top SUNY schools.</p>
<p>Go there, kick ass, and if you want, transfer. Don’t hold off a year because you are dissappointed.</p>
<p>My wife works at a private school, and a hockey player took a gap year to give himself a shot at an elite school. Didn’t get in anyway the next year, and went to a good school he could have started the year before. Struck my wife and I as an incredibly stupid decision.</p>
<p>Don’t keep your life on hold solely because you are not excited about the school that accepted you. Again, if there are COMPELLING other reasons to take a year off, ok. Otherwise, start the next phase of your life.</p>
<p>As someone who homeschooled two kids I would advise strongly against a gap year. In our experience, some schools were fine with CC courses but a great many others were not.(As in CC courses being a reason for rejection…I remember reading one admissions officer explaining that they wanted to imprint their students and unfortunately kids who took too many CC courses made that difficult)</p>
<p>For others a gap year is a splendid idea, but IMO, for most homeschoolers it’s just another year spent out of the system. Spending time on a boat will do nothing to persuade an admissions officer that you belong on their campus.</p>
<p>I do feel your pain, my first son was rejected by all but 3 schools(out of 15) We learned very fast that being ‘homeschool friendly’ can mean many things. For us, we had to choose between Brown,UChicago and St John’s. The rejections were all from safties and matches. It happens. But yeah, we had schools tell us that they loved homeschoolers…but that they needed grades. And tutors. And AP courses. For my son, a gap year would have only made him odder to the schools that rejected him.</p>
<p>I would argue strongly to go to Geneseo. It’s a great school and you can experience stuff that you’ve been ready to experience for probably quite awhile. </p>
<p>But you could also check out St John’s:[St</a>. John’s College](<a href=“Concrete CMS Is An Open Source Content Management System For Teams”>http://www.sjca.edu/)</p>
<p>My son chose UChicago in the end but St John’s was very, very tempting. They have a rolling admission and I believe you can still apply for either campus.</p>
<p>I personally think you should go to Genesco and be a strong student there and work on your social life and social being (which after all is the work of many freshman in America…most of you do know how to study…and finding your way among your peers is really the task of the late teens and early 20s…you will “do the academic work” anyplace with your work habits.)</p>
<p>I tend to believe the other parents who say you will have to work for good grades at Genesco…getting In and doing Well…those are two different animals and April is about Getting In…but when August comes…a new ball game starts.</p>
<p>I really think that starting college on campus would do more for your self esteem and ability to think clearly than alternatives.</p>
<p>I do admire your willingness to think Gap year and I also commend you for your honest acknowledgment that all colleges you applied to were clear reaches…not really matches. Tough way to find that out though. </p>
<p>If you have a favorite from among the schools where you are in the mid 50%…I would stay very active and forthright with admissions there about your willingness to forfeit your SUNY deposit and to come to Said College at the last minute. However, should you start at Genesco, I would consider compiling a transfer quality record from day one and then search out a transfer option to consider that was congruent with your academic direction. </p>
<p>I didn’t get into my top choice college (and also was in a military family that didn’t realize it was a reach college for any OOS girl) thirty years ago…very ignorant, I could go on but this post isn’t about me. We began my trip driving around a military college with my Father tearful that he didn’t have a son to send there…no women allowed. </p>
<p>MY GC by the way was a Bob Jones graduate! he didn’t know anything either. I had a few disadvantages but I knew I was going to go to college someplace.</p>
<p>So, I went to Furman, a very very fine liberal arts college it turned out. Teachers that put red marks all over my papers and bore down on me to kick my game up every class. Teachers that still know me by name.</p>
<p>I spent a lot of the first year pining for College X and declaring I “would be moving on” and otherwise annoying my peers…it isn’t really that easy to transfer gracefully unless you are extremely tactful. But I ended up giving my all to my school and in return Furman gave me a great foundation and many lifelong friends who have led interesting lives. </p>
<p>I would like to point out that if you had looked at less selective colleges in parts of the USA eager for a boy from your state…and if you had thought about how boys are in fact hot commodities at many LACs (not the ones on your list!)…you could be in a different situation. Although you are WAAAAAY ahead of where I was at your age in good sense of things and good attitude. If you go to the Common Data set of many LACs in America, you will see that the yield of strong male candidates like yourself is actually weak and you are indeed a sought after person.</p>
<p>Again, just a nudge down that USNWR list…is a cluster of schools easier to enter but still hard to make As in with great outcomes in graduate schools --schools like Rhodes, Furman, and others. </p>
<p>If you go with a Gap year…and a do over…I would suggest you consider crossing the lines of geography and culture to consider schools in the south, schools who wish more kids from other regions and subcultures in America would give them a try. Schools that are tired of being regional but have issues pulling in other subsets of kids.</p>
<p>I had lived all over the USA when I got to Furman and felt a bit shocked by the southern vibe but the faculty always was very keen to get to know me and I walked out four years later with fabulous friendships.</p>
<p>So…good luck. In all honesty, you sound very level headed and fair minded and like you are addressing this disappointment with mature and accurate thinking. I have confidence in you and in your ability to have a fabulous college experience once you get out there and move into your dorm room!</p>
<p>Please think forward! Keep the vision of what you are seeking and go for it in life. </p>
<p>good luck! hang in there…your “correction plan” is going to work. One of the best novels in the last 20 years was called The Corrections. Life is full of them…we all make big turns and readjustments…you are in the game of life now.</p>
<p>IceFoxRocks, my niece is a sophomore at Geneseo and just loves it there, both academically and socially. She’s had great classes and advising in her intended major. She’s interested in eventually teaching reading in minority/immigrant communities in the US, and has a study-abroad internship set up for next year through Geneseo in an elementary school in Ghana.</p>
<p>The academic reputation of Semester at Sea has dramatically improved since the University of Virginia took it over a few years ago (at which time it was popularly called “Mattress at Sea”). Quite a few faculty on the boat are from UVA, and even when they’re not, the courses need to be comparable in rigor to UVA courses, in the opinion of the faculty in the departments in which they’re taught. All syllabi, reading/writing assignments, and so on need approval from their departments’ Directors of Undergraduate Studies, who are typically not shy about demanding changes where necessary. Also, the strict UVA honor code applies. A couple of years ago there was a minor fuss in the papers because two kids who’d copied their assignments from Wikipedia were expelled mid-voyage and had to find their way back to the US from, I think, Athens.</p>
<p>Is Geneseo just too close to home? And if MCC is Monroe CC it might be. </p>
<p>Check out previous posts regarding “late decision” and the NACAC.</p>
<p>I’ve known two kids who went on Semester at Sea. Both thought it was fabulous – perhaps life changing. One got into a pretty good LAC in the NE, which (I think) was a reach for him. I don’t think Semester at Sea hurt him. He is from a very well-to-do family. The other is applying this year. I’m not sure where he’s headed. But, he’s by no means well-to-do and had a rocky time in HS and I gather that it really helped him.</p>
<p>realize that much of what you are feeling right now is disappointment and shock that you didn’t get in to schools you thought you would and perhaps were even looking forward to attending. that’s normal. but time to take a deep breath and get past that.</p>
<p>you really need to reevaluate geneseo and give it a fair consideration. my guess is you applied to it as a safety never expecting to have to seriously consider going there. now its time to really look at it. it is a VERY good school. and as a result of the economy, more students are probably going there now who a few years ago would have gone to some of the schools you’d hoped to be admitted to. go – sit in on a class. sit in the dining hall. go to the library. try to get a feel for the students there. arrange to talk to a professor in the department you might be interested in. try to contact student leaders of a club you think you might get involved with. really give yourself a chance to see if you could be happy there. its not for everyone – it may not be for you. but make that decision based on what geneseo actually has to offer.</p>
<p>a few years ago, i knew a kid in a similar situation to you – not homeschooled – top of hs class – applied to really top colleges thinking there’d be a lot of fat envelopes to choose from. ended up only getting into a couple of schools considered “safeties.” chose one. ended up incredibly happy there – just had to get over the idea that the school wasn’t “good enough” when the truth was it was an excellent school – just not one of the super elites that had been on the dream list.</p>
<p>A couple of things about me-- I’m female, wanting to major in biology and move into marine biology during grad school. My family will require a lot of financial aid… my dad lost his job last year. He’s working now but there was a significant drop in the income. MCC is Monroe Community College. It’s a great place, I’ve enjoyed my time there, but I’m past ready to move on.</p>
<p>I just want to thank everyone for taking the time to read what I’ve written and offer heartfelt advice and suggestions. It really means a lot to me that there is this whole community here. It’s so helpful to read everything you guys have posted. So, the general consensus seems to be that I should keep an open mind to Geneseo, and that I may even be better off attending. I’m actually starting to lean in that direction now. I’ve been longing for college for so long, I think that being on my own in a foreign country, for example, might actually make me more unhappy. I just have to get over my bias against Geneseo. Maybe I will overnight there and love it. I find out on Monday. I’m completely open to the possibility. But now I’m also considering what would happen if I don’t love it… meaning transferring. Originally, I was opposed to the idea. I had it in my head that the acceptance rates for transfer students are really low. Now I’m not sure this is true. And I’m just not sure how the process would even work. I would take a year at Geneseo, and then what? Is it just like applying RD? My main concern is the acceptance rates. I’ve very skittish when it comes to being stuck somewhere, meaning I don’t want to have to stay at Geneseo if it’s not the right fit.</p>
<p>So maybe Semester at Sea isn’t the best idea. Now that it’s been mentioned, I can see how it would seem vacation-y to admissions. Plus it’s just so expensive. My family does not have anywhere near that amount of money to spend. Which leaves me with a black drawing board once again… where to go if I did take a year off, what to do. As a homeschooler, it does seem almost a little redundant. My entire school experience has been a gap year to some extent. I implemented a lot of structure by taking courses at MCC, but I still had a lot of unique opportunities. And I’m afraid that if I do decide to go abroad somewhere, i.e. work as an au pair, it will be me alone in a foreign country, which wouldn’t help me with my anxiety or with the loneliness that most of you could tell I’ve been feeling.</p>
<p>The loneliness has snowballed over the years. Being homeschooled, it’s already a very small community. And then add in a friend off to college, three to various highschools, an ex-boyfriend I don’t talk to, and I only have a couple people to hang out with. I went from having a group of maybe 15 or so that was really close-knit, always hanging out and doing projects, to now, where I have two friends I hang out with. I should have made more of an effort at MCC, but starting at 14, it was really hard to connect with college kids. It’s gotten better lately, but I still find it challenging to navigate. I am looking into both therapy and medication for my anxiety, however. I’ve got to take steps if I want to have a better experience in college. So, going back to what I was originally saying, I think that Geneseo might be great for me personally because I would be in a friendly, academic college environment, one that I have longed for for a really long time. The closer it gets, the more I am looking forward to my campus overnight. I will post about how it goes.</p>
<p>Hekau-- I considered St. John’s when I was originally going through this process, but I thought it looked small. Also, I wasn’t sure about such a literature-based core… do you have another perspective to offer? At first, I was quite interested in it, so I will look into their rolling admissions.</p>
<p>unbelievablem-- What you said about my thoughts on Geneseo were completely true. Geneseo was my financial safety school, a place that I could fall back on if I didn’t get enough aid anywhere else. It was mainly my parents idea for me to apply to a SUNY, although I picked Geneseo. I never really considered actually going there. So I’m just kind of having to do a 360 now, and try to actually evaluate it. What I’m hearing is encouraging though. People on this thread seem to really see its value.</p>
<p>“I had it in my head that the acceptance rates for transfer students are really low. Now I’m not sure this is true.”’ It IS true, unfortunately. Top tier colleges only accept as many transfer students as the number of students who decide to leave, and at colleges that graduate 97% of each freshman class, it adds up to very few openings . That is the reality that you need to know. Hopefully it will help you learn to accept the opportunity you have at Genesco, and not think of transferring out from the first minute you get there. That would be self defeating, I think.
I’ll tell you what happened to my son. He was accepted at many top 20 U’s, including a few Ivy’s when he applied 4 years ago, but for various reasons, including financial, he decided to go to his “safety”, where, in all honesty, I could NOT picture him being happy. During his Freshman year, he did have a tough time initially finding his intellectual peers, so he made the decision to reapply to one of the top U’s that had accepted him, and he was accepted again as a transfer student. Did this lead to a happy ending? Yes, AFTER he transferred out of his “safety”, found he was miserable at the new college, and then transferred back to his 'safety"! He has not had any regrets about returning, has been challenged by lots of hard courses, has had great research opportunities handed to him, and has found a slew of equally smart friends , many of whom who are also on scholarships.
So don’t look at Genesco with a suspicious eye. You could be very happy there, if you give it a chance.</p>