<p>My dd wrote off one school because they have a salt-water system pool!</p>
<p>I applied to just one college. (makes me cringe now to think about it). My dad and mom had gone there and my dad mentioned how neat it was to study Shakespeare on the beach, which was a few hundred yards from the dorms. That sounded like paradise to me. Luckily I got in!</p>
<p>lucky parents. back in your day it was all easy and carefree. life was a dream....</p>
<p>My dad's love of UCLA rubbed off on me and my 3 younger siblings. I was on the doorstep of the UCLA admissions office to hand in my application on the first day they would accept it (Nov 1?). That was 1972. I insisted that my dad and I drive the 6 hours to campus to personally deliver it. I don't remember why I was so worried though. I tossed in Fresno State as my safety at the last minute, sight unseen. I was very happy at UCLA and never imagined myself anywhere else. I guess that was easy since I hadn't visited, nor considered, anywhere else. I'm so very glad my children had a wider field of vision.</p>
<p>I wanted to go to SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. ( I love all things outside and in the woods -- and I still do) but at that time really no girls went to schools like that (of course no one encouraged me to). So I applied to all 4 of the SUNY univeristy centers and went to the most selective one (ha!) and lived to regret it. I tell you, I still wish I had gone to the Forestry school! (And I can't believe some of you had guidance counselors! wow!)</p>
<p>I did the opposite of SpringfieldMom. Lived in area flat as a pancake so chose a campus on the side of a mountain, plus I liked the architecture the best of my choices.</p>
<p>Was hot as heck travelling back uphill after class the first few weeks. But I never tired of the scenery....</p>
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<blockquote> <p>lucky parents. back in your day it was all easy and carefree. life was a dream....<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Apply for college may have been easier, but life was sure no dream. Constantly hanging over my college days were race riots, getting drafted, and a never-ending meat grinder called Viet Nam.</p>
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I passed on the two well known Cambridge schools because I was afraid my fiscally conservative parents would make me live at home and commute.
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That's not an uncommon fear - I found out sometime in March this year that my daughter was thinking that if she opted for Berkeley, I would expect her to live at home and commute. I told her no way! -- but that since we live so close, I would want her to explore other, cheaper housing options than the Cal dorms (which are extremely expensive). </p>
<p>But it would probably be a good idea for this generation of parents to make their position very clear, especially if they happen to live near top universities....</p>
<p>My own story - but I don't think it's a ridiculous reason. Just a reason that didn't pan out.</p>
<p>My top priority in choosing a college was to get the h*** out of Texas. (Only someone born and raised in West Texas will understand the urgency of that). However, ever since I was a little girl I thought I wanted to be a vet, and I was very proactive in exploring the question of how one gets into vet school. The deal was that about 20 states had vet school, and if you lived in a state that had one, you had to go there. Which would have meant Texas A&M, which as far as I was concerned was a fate worse than death.</p>
<p>So I figured that I had to establish residency in a state that I liked better than Texas, and the two states that I thought I liked better were California and Colorado. I figured I would go to undergrad at whatever university had the vet school, as I could then both establish residency and insure that I was getting a good pre-vet program. So that meant UC Davis and Colorado State. I did have a sense that UC Davis was a better college academically than Colorado State, so Davis was my top choice. My mom tried to get me interested in Stanford -- which I learned many years later was a college that my mom always regretted not attending; she had followed her sister to Smith and was very unhappy there. Most of the Ivies didn't yet accept women, so that wasn't an option, and I wouldn't have been caught dead going to a woman's college. </p>
<p>Anyway, I actually did visit Davis before applying, so I think I had pretty good reasons and actually a well thought out plan. The only problem is that it took me one quarter of Chemistry to realize that I didn't want to have a pre-vet major after all, so by the winter quarter of my freshman year the rationale for choosing that school had completely evaporated. Except for the getting-out-of-Texas part, which was definitely a mission accomplished.</p>
<p>my parents provided no input other than "they couldn't afford it" (hence my open checkbook policy in force now) and delegated college suggestions to my aunt who was clueless but well intentioned. My cc at hs was drunk most of the time and never visited with any of the students, door usually closed.</p>
<p>accepted at a school never seen until move in day. To apply to a non-Catholic school just wasn't done at my hs--sacrilege.</p>
<p>it's so different now.</p>
<p>I wanted to go to Princeton because I grew up on "Princeton Avenue" in my small town in New Jersey.</p>
<p>lol. I think Princeton Avenue and the '0' zip code are in the running for best story so far.</p>
<p>For me, it was not so much choosing a school for an erroneous reason, but it was eliminating a school for what turned out to be somewhat bogus reasoning. I didn't want to apply to Berkeley in 1971 due to safety concerns - too many rapes on campus. I ended up at Santa Cruz, only to be a freshman the year that several murders took place. (Newsweek's headline was 'Murdersville USA'). I subsequently also found out that Santa Cruz had a significant number of rapes and attacks on women, they just weren't pulicizing them and educating the public as Berkeley had already been doing. This was in Fall '72. </p>
<p>My 'zip code' moment however was when I first took the drive on hiway 17 while traveling from Berkeley to Santa Cruz on my road trip tour of schools with my Mother. The drive through the redwoods took my breath away (I still feel that moment whenever I do the drive today). It was the start of falling in love with my dream school - small, public university, very smart people, beautiful location, creative, no grades, and the all-important far away from my parents who were in So Cal.</p>
<p>I applied to schools that were close to my then boyfriend"s ACC state school. I was not a good student, so there was no way I could attend there OOS! I was accepted to one of the lesser colleges from that state and attended; hey, it was a 50 minute drive from my dorm to his frat house!! As luck would have it, we married and have been married for 25+ years :-)</p>
<p>My daughter grilled my mother last month as to how she could have let her daughter follow a boy to school. While I was surprised my daughter had such strong feelings about this, now 30 years later I do see that this could have been a bad decision on my part. I didn't really care for the school I attended one way or another. The classes were fine, the kids were nice enough, and I got a decent education. Of course, I was only on campus Monday-Friday and then I headed to big state U to visit boyfriend, now husband. I had more friends at his school than mine! My mother's reply was, "What could I do about it?" I am not even sure my parents had any input as to where I was applying; not that they didn't care, but I was very independent! I guess I told them where I was looking, but we did not have the discussions I had with my kids as they investigated colleges.</p>
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Although it seems ridiculous now, I looked at the map of the California schools and choose the one that was the farthest away from my parents and my hometown. It turned out to be a great decision and I never looked back.
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funny to hear this. My dad tells me that when he was 18, he was so fed up with Texas culture and so disenchanted, that he took a look on a map and decided to go to college at the farthest possible spot away from San Antonio. Stanford rejected him, so he went to MIT.</p>
<p>He added later that if it had occurred to him to apply to schools overseas, he probably would've done it. I bet he was glad he hadn't thought of that when doing 36-hour driving marathons back home for christmas.</p>
<p>Then there is our neighbor's daughter, who rejected a fine school because she didn't think she looked good in the school's colors.</p>
<p>my dad picked the school his girlfriend was going to - (and hated the school) instead of the one where his best friend of 12 yrs was going which obviously fit him much better retrospectively</p>
<p>my friend is applying to a school because her neighbor went there</p>
<p>another friend picked a school because she knew her girlfriend wanted to go there (but the girlfriend was a year younger and hadnt applied yet)</p>
<p>haha, mafool defiantely wins...</p>
<p>and another friend who is picking her school for the football team. But, that is a really big thing for her.</p>
<p>1969: Living in upstate NY in an old farmhouse with an unheated upstairs, one part of me had the agenda to go someplace warm. my overachieving val brother was at Dartmouth on his way to Columbia law school, we were not a wealthy family yet not qualified for aid in those days because we owned a farm, sooo parents were quite preoccupied with him. Their only concern about their rebellious underachieving d (me ) was that I wouldn't go to college and get out of their hair....and after I threatened NOT to even go to college since I HATED hs, my parents were like putty in my hands as far as allowing me to go anywhere I chose, and in their typical fashion, worrying about how to pay for it later...
I was on my own to figure the whole thing out, so I got a college guide book and read the descriptions. From the book, I picked and applied to Scripps, Middlebury, and Bennington. parents did take me to visit/interview at Bennington while on a trip to visit my brother. Accepted at 2 and waitlisted at Bennington, I chose Scripps. Reason: warm weather, CA location ....and loved the descriptions of the architecture and dorms in the 3 paragraph description in the guide book!
Ended up loving it there, but after 2 1/2 years transferred to UCSD due to 1) closer to the ocean 2)money (minimal tuition there after I established residency) and 3) I needed grades for vet school, not "comments" which Scripps gave in lieu of grades..
times have sure changed...oh and took the SAT ONCE with NO prep and did just fine 710 verbal and 550 math
never did make it to vet school:(</p>
<p>I'm not usually over-confident, but if I don't win this contest (most unusual) it's been fixed. </p>
<p>I applied to two schools that shared their names with breeds of sheep. Got into one and went for a year and transferred. I could say I feel sheepish, that is was baa-d of me, that I pulled the wool ... you get the idea.</p>
<p>sheeeep, sheeeeeepp....hmmm. :eek: I suppose we all have to tootle off and do an internet search for sheep breeds! None are just springing to mind! :)</p>