College enrollment

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SSCBen
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College enrollment

Post by SSCBen » Sat Apr 07, 2007 12:16 pm

Around this time of year college-bound students should have received their acceptance letters and are deciding which colleges to choose. Because several of us are college-bound, I thought a thread like this would be helpful.

It took me a while to think about everything myself. In the end, I went with which college I felt was the best deal overall in terms of cost, quality of education, how close the college is to home, and how much I'd enjoy being there. I'm enrolling at the University of Maryland, College Park, for the Fall 2007 semester.

College-bound (or even college-attending) members, which college are you to attend or are attending? I'm hoping this might get some members here organized for future water wars. ;)

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DX
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Post by DX » Sat Apr 07, 2007 9:36 pm

Applied Early Decision I to Connecticut College, got accepted in December. CC is unique in that it is a really good school that doesn't consider your paper stats higher than your personality. I didn't submit the SAT I or ACT and my class rank isn't that great. Then again, RHS is a ridiculous high school - a student with a 4.0 GPA isn't even in the top 10% of the class.
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SSCBen
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Post by SSCBen » Sun Apr 08, 2007 1:16 am

I think more colleges are putting less weight on "numbers" in recent years. My class rank is good, but not the greatest. I did pretty good on the SATs, especially the subject tests. In fact, I got an 800 on the supposedly impossibly hard to take Math Level II test. With that being said, on the two colleges I sent the score to, I got one rejection and one waiting list. So much for testing. I might as well have not taken it.

I think situations like your high school also are one of the reasons why things such as class rank receive less weight. My school is smaller, and achieving a higher class rank is much easier. I think there might be only 5 to 10 students in my class with 4.0 GPA. I recall reading an article in the Washington Post about this same effect and how some very large schools in Texas stopped reporting class rank because achieving a good one was so difficult.

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MilkMan
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Post by MilkMan » Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:31 am

I hope they don't look at numbers too much considering I'm a sophomore with a 3.3 and I take about half honors classes. And the best I can say about my class rank is I'm in the top ¼.

However, I have done extra-curricular activities such as Cross-Country and Marching Band and have accomplished certain things like making District Band so I hope they look at some of that when I start applying...
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DX
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Post by DX » Mon Apr 09, 2007 5:52 pm

My school stopped calculating a decile rank because good students would still get really bad numbers. We still have a class rank for statistical reasons.

I had a 3.8 weighted GPA when I got my acceptance letter. That's good enough to remain in the top 1/4, but barely. Most of the top 1/10 have a weighted GPA of at least 4.4 [we use the A in AP = 5.0 scale].

Colleges don't really need to see that many extra-curriculars. The key is dedication. My only two normal extra-curriculars are Track and TV Production, but I've participated in them consistently year-in and year-out.

Certain colleges have a more "progressive" attitude than others in admissions. There are still plenty of schools that want your SAT, class rank, and grades above all else. There are others which put your interests, character, etc. first. My trump card was not grades, tests, or awards, it was simple interests. I have a billion interests and pursue them all with great depth and passion. Colleges like those who can specialize at something, but they also like those who can specialize at almost anything they show interest in. It's a rare ability - I'll be shutting doors to future careers not because I can't do them, but because I don't have time for them.

Also, don't worry about college in sophomore year. Just enjoy the amount of work you get, because that will double in junior year and triple the first semester of senior year. :p
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Silence
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Post by Silence » Tue Apr 10, 2007 12:04 am

Nice thread, Ben! Hope you guys will be able to check in from time to time, maybe more often if you plan on starting a store and all. :)
Duxburian wrote:Also, don't worry about college in sophomore year.
College is a long way off, but it's looming on the horizon. It's a race here for GPA. CHS is weird - because of the demographics, half the school trashes the place and doesn't care about grades. The other half takes part in extracurricular and academic, competitive activities, like band/orchestra, Pop Quiz, or debate/forensics, and sweeps state and international events. And yet we struggle to pass the No Child Left Behind requirements...

[off-topic rant]No Child Left Behind is actually a decent idea, perhaps except for the 100% passing. People who say "No Child Gets Ahead" are ignoring the purpose of the program, and I don't think saying "No Child Gets Ahead" is morally acceptable. However, Bush's lack of promised funding to help the schools that are branded weak is disappointing. It's caused a few politicians to change their stance, and they're promptly branded "flip-floppers."[/off-topic rant]

Anyway, yeah, we're competitive here. Not as bad as NoVa (Northern Virginia), where tutors and competitive class are in overdrive. We're an isolated school in central Virginia - 80% Democratic, fairly rich.

So I'm going to be under a ton of pressure next year - I'll probably have to reprioritize my life. My class rank was in the top 5 last year, GPA of over 4.3 (no specifics, I want some privacy), but it's about to get a lot harder. I want a break...
Duxburian wrote:My trump card was not grades, tests, or awards, it was simple interests. I have a billion interests and pursue them all with great depth and passion. Colleges like those who can specialize at something, but they also like those who can specialize at almost anything they show interest in. It's a rare ability - I'll be shutting doors to future careers not because I can't do them, but because I don't have time for them.
My dad sometimes says to choose something and do really well in it to show dedication. Then he turns around and proclaims you need to be successful in many different areas. I've never paired the two together though, just realized it. :p

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DX
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Post by DX » Tue Apr 10, 2007 1:48 am

I've never paired the two together though, just realized it.

Then I'm doing my job. :rolleyes: The idea of one career is overly conventional and overly boring [sounds a bit like Fatal Conventionality]. You shouldn't have to follow that system of life [sounds a bit like Decisive Unconventionality]. When you can do all the things you love well, within time constraints [sounds a bit like natural limits], you make yourself much more marketable in today's world [sounds a bit like Decisive Versatility]. As I told my parents at a dinner table discussion, I've made a theory for water fighting that can also apply frighteningly well to real life.

Right now, I could become a historian, documentary filmmaker, lawyer, political analyst, geologist, pianist, oceanographer, webmaster, inventor, business owner, and a lot of other things. Of course you know my "choice" will be all of it. Somehow. Unemployment seems kind of laughable honestly.
Also, don't worry about college in sophomore year.

You can do well in school without worrying about college. During my junior year, I was way too busy trying not to drown in homework to worry about college. And then the first half of senior year is junior year on steriods. As much as people play down the work, I'll be blunt: there's A LOT of work. If you remember last Fall, there were weeks where I completely ignored the community in order to finish stuff by 3 in the morning. There was a day when I had a college interview and slept for longer in the car [hour and change ride] than the previous night. And don't forget the week where I slept longer on Saturday than Monday-Friday combined. Yeah, it gets bad, but if you get good grades and do good stuff, you'll get into a good college.

The process can be fun, you get to travel around and see really cool places. I looked from Maine to Delaware. Also, I was freaked out about writing my college essay until one day it kind of flowed. Just wrote down ideas in sentence form and they took shape [Knowing me, do you think my essay was strange and unique or of the usual variety?].

[Satire]
Don't even ask me what I think of "Every Jersey School Left Behind". Not only does the money for failing districts fail to show up [not talking about individual schools, I mean entire districts], but the good schools don't get any real rewards either. Though some schools performing on Ridgewood High's level seem to get some special funding, with an unusual concentration going to those in solid red states. Isn't that interesting. It's not like well-performing schools in well-off states need funding to keep performing well? Nah...couldn't be...let's shave off, say, 4 million dollars and see if they can keep the bar up. That can buy a pair of missiles [which can be wasted by firing at an empty tent and hitting a camel in the ass], or it can buy us proper sports equipment [so we can stop stealing Sparta's starting blocks and Bergen Tech's batons] and maybe some new textbooks [without maps featuring French West Africa, Indochina, and a pair of Germany's]. It could even replace our aging TV Studio cameras [which might as well have been around during French West Africa] and maybe even help fund/save some classes [so seniors can have gym for 4 quarters and juniors can still learn how to drive since Jersey drivers already suck]. But no, let's drill those camels and let Ivy League feeder schools starve. I mean, who needs education anyway? Them Crawford folk deliver education at the barrel of a 12 gauge shotgun. So how about letting the Northeast revert to its own thing? Since we don't get federal money for our schools, you know where the money comes from? They bleed it out us in some of the highest property taxes in the nation. My family has an average middle class house, yet our property taxes are in excess of $14,000. A better house in like Montana would have property taxes of like $3,000. Heck, a better house across the New York border might approach half of our tax. So we get crap funding, but when we try to fix it we get screwed, so when the quality of education goes down, we get screwed, and when we succeed and our best and brightest hit 18, they vote, get outvoted, and then get screwed anyway. With the current trend in population, the only thing that can save Ridgewood High is a second Hartford Convention. If you've got enough money to finance US History, you know what the first was for. You can only push people so far. Crash the lifestyle of the cradle of the nation and the cradle will split beyond the ability of superglue to put it back together.
[/satire]

^The above was meant to be a total joke, in case you didn't pick up the tone.
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Mess With the Best, Get Soaked Like the Rest!

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blueoakleyz
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Post by blueoakleyz » Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:51 am

I went to college in my hometown

without a doubt college has been the WORST experience of my life.
Every single semester there would be someway they'd screw me over and I'd literally end up in tears over it. It has been pure misery

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Soakologist
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Post by Soakologist » Mon Apr 16, 2007 12:37 pm

Oh hey guys, guess it's been a while. I thought I'd pop back in and let you know I'm not dead.
I actually graduated from high school this past December (a semester early, not a semester late) and started at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago the following January. I wanted to go to NYU for the fall, but IIT offered me a pretty big scholarship, so I thought "what the hell" and decided to start early. But despite getting a 770 on both the SAT's Math portion and the Math Level Two subject test, I have yet to get my mind around Calculus and will probably have to retake it this fall. But besides that, college is going pretty well. It is superior to high school in virtually all aspects. And I am very glad I chose to go early.

You guys can hit me up on Facebook if you want. You Know My Name (Look Up the Number).
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