<p>I became interested in high school in math/physics, ended up taking classes wanting to become a pharmacist, bailed on that idea when I realized I really hated labs. I went the applied mathematics route and some of it feels like a really horrible, grueling grind to the end (Operations Research). Other parts are quite lovely, such as partial differential equations.</p>
<p>I didn’t come for the “college experience”. I went the most economical route. Going to community college and then going to a good value college where there isn’t enough housing to accommodate most of their student body pretty much ruined it for me. That doesn’t mean I feel disconnected at my college, it’s a great school and the education is great. I just want to get my piece of paper and move on to the next phase of my life, however. I took a gap year before college, but that didn’t help. I’ve been feeling burned out since freshman year!</p>
<ol>
<li>Degrees, jobs, money, yada yada yada.</li>
<li>There’s a lot that I genuinely want to learn about - including outside my aspiring major - that I wouldn’t have the academic resources or discipline to educate myself on otherwise.</li>
<li>There may well be a lot that I enjoy learning in college that I won’t ever find out I like if I don’t go. As a stretchy analogy, I strongly believe this, but I wouldn’t have even thought of it if it hadn’t been for PRiNCESSMAHiNA.</li>
<li>I’m planning to enter the video game development industry, and I’d rather enter the industry with more than the typical for-profit quickie degree, even if the benefits aren’t visible from the get-go.</li>
<li>Barring any international job, college will probably be the best time I’ll ever have for living abroad.</li>
<li>Barring recruitment, college will probably be the best opportunity I’ll ever have to get the heck out of Chicago. Not that I dislike the city; I just don’t want to live here for the rest of my life.</li>
<li>I like being around people who care about learning for its own sake.</li>
</ol>
<p>My interviewers for a few schools asked this question. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a very good question … the reasons are LEARNING, getting a JOB for MONEY later, and HAVING FUN. </p>
<p>I want money. I’ve been conditioned to think that the only way to truly get lots of money in life is to go to college and do good in there. I honestly don’t have any other reason. If I could get money and not go to college I would. This whole “education” crud doesn’t matter to me because the way our system is now the number is the only think that matters, not how much you learn or know.</p>
<p>1/ Meet new people who are like me and have the same interests
2/ To learn to become more independent
3/ I want to become a doctor… This is a necessary step</p>
<p>For the most part, the motivation-factor that is driving me into college is to study abroad in Japan. I don’t have any other way of going there unless it’s through a college. It has been a childhood dream to go visit that country, and to go there while having the ‘college-experience’ and ability to roam around and see the country up-close and personal? Sounds almost too good to be true, but I’m all for it.</p>
<p>Secondly comes my career. Honestly, I don’t care about the kind of career I get. I just want one. Nursing seems like a career-field I could get into and stay into, so that is why I’m going to pursue that. Part of me wants the experience, part of me wants to pretend I’m on a Scrubs episode (though that’ll probably only work for the first few days of actually working there), and part of me wants the money. One thing I learned from my parents is that I actually want to go to, and finish out, college so I can have a career that pays out well. I believe nurses would make… $60k starting out? Heck, even if I ended up with $40k starting out, that’s way better than my family’s yearly income of $20k-something-another.</p>
<p>So yeah. I want to go to college to see my childhood country and I equally want to go to college because I’m not going to get very far in life if I don’t.</p>
<p>most of the answers here are either really optimistic or really cynical. Being a HS senior, I want what the other HS students say: opens doors, learning, change in environment, freedom, etc. Do I absolutely need it? No, but I don’t want to waste 4 years of my life only focused on getting a diploma. Then again, I can’t judge since I have the luxury of factoring in such a thing for my future college choice while many others don’t.</p>
<p>Mainly because most, if not all, professions require a college degree. Now I’m not saying that i’m only going to college to get a degree; i’m also going to get an experience and education that I can afford only once in my life.</p>
<p>I want to understand everything about anything as much as is physically possible. I want to research. I want to sit in a room with a cup of water and stare at a board, down at some notes, back at the board, repeatedly for hours on end and if later I have dug the aggregate of human knowledge even a little deeper I will be extremely pleased with myself. No other place can offer this luxury. It isn’t even some fantasy, science is really all I want to do. I want to live amongst passionate people, curious people, people who don’t think something is “gay” or that poetry is “useless”, people who drink deeply from the well of life and share it with others. That’s all I really want. I want to be useful, I want to be happy, and I want to do it all with some awesome people. There’s nothing for me in the grinding cogs of what you could call the traditional adult world; cubicles are demeaning, social politicking is frivolous, and hardly anyone seems to care about useless things.</p>
<p>Undergraduate classes form the basic foundation you’ll need for graduate classes, which are supposed to give you with enough background knowledge to get yourself up to speed to the state of the art. Only then are you really able to see ground-breaking stuff and make your own contributions.</p>
<p>Usually, the further along you get the more you realize how little you know. If you truly find your classes too easy or boring, then maybe you need to reconsider your major or find ways to challenge yourself (such as through research opportunities). </p>
<p>Like many people, I had little idea of what I wanted to do. I simply enjoyed what I was learning, and eventually decided to continue on with grad school to become a scientist. </p>
<p>Also,
</p>
<p>I don’t know where you got this belief, but studies show that those with college degrees earn considerably more than those without. There are quite a few college graduates who do poorly, and similarly there are many without a degree who are financially successful. However, on average a college degree gets you about an extra $1M in today’s dollars over a lifetime. Of course, more power to you if you can beat the odds.</p>
<p>To the poster who said financial aid packages wouldn’t be as good after a few years,that isn’t true. Once you are not a dependent (23 or over 23, I forget which) financial aid is based on your income, not your parents’.</p>
<p>I am in my 60’s and got a great package this year. I’m pretty far out of high school…</p>
<p>For me, college is a “must”, not a “can” or “maybe”. Sometimes you have to think more than your own thoughts. If you drop out of college and go to a job interview, saying that “I didn’t go to college. I self-learn everything during the four years.” Who would hire you?</p>
<p>College makes a young adult’s four-year life be well spent.</p>
<p>I’m going to college for study & learning latest technology because I’m doing Robotics Engineering from Gulzar Group of Institutes which is one of the best engineering college in india…</p>