college acceptances

Pernicious

so this week and next all the seniors in my high school are finding out whether they have been accepted or deferred from their early decision colleges.

naturally, this has caused some elation and some resentment -- there's definitely an urban culture of effusive congratulations for those who have been accepted that inevitably make those who have been deferred feel like shit

if anyone under 18's experienced either of these, post about the experience, maybe you'll make someone who's been deferred feel better? stories of transfers are welcome as well.

also, do you think it's valid to feel like one has wasted 4 years of theirlife if they don't get accepted to the school of their choice? this mostly applies to people in more rigorous academic environments with less time for personal entertainment.

edit: i should probably mention that 70% of my graduating class is going to ivy league universities to put my post in context. also i wasn't deferred. also my parents can pay for college so scholarships aren't an issue. also i'm probably not going to grad school as i'll likely do something un-lucrative and arty. also, i'm not a senior, so i thank you, but t wasn't me who was deferred =^.^=

i live in america, but please post about international universities as well. also, please don't just post "university of guam 2017, i'm a five star bitch." tell me abt your FEELINGS like was it worth it???
 
Didn't get in to MIT or Caltech early or at all (was deferred), I was pretty bummed at the time, especially about Caltech since I liked it there. I didn't really have a perspective about MIT so after a while it didn't really mean much. I think if I had had my eye on these school from a mic earlier age I would have be super sad.

I don't think it's possible to waste college at any college unless you actively try to. There's always something you can do to make the most out of the experience, unless your dream school was because of a sports team or school pride or something (if you don't play and you want to go to a school for their sports or pride alone, maybe you should reconsider college). You'll meet awesome people anywhere so I don't think a different school can make you feel like you wasted four years.

On the ED note, anyone get into Duke? :))))))
 
went to cc out of hs (planned), grad AAS in math/science, got accepted to st johns but didnt attend (worked instead), applied late to rutgers 2012 got accepted into sports management/accounting (chose SM)

if you get the scholarships or have the money, the big schools sound like a good idea, but if you want to go to that dream school and dont get accepted, there are lots of options (like going to a 2 year and trying again after further proving yourself), or just attending a different school.

also more relevant to op: dont give a shit what people who arent your friends/family say about you. its not worth the trouble and it wont have any positive effects. the worst thing you can do is spend your time worrying about what other people think about you, its just a distraction for yourself.

even my friends joked about CC, but when you look at the big picture, im at a school equal to where most of them are going, and saved roughly 70,000 doing so.

tl;dr dont worry, do your best, always work hard for the things you want to achieve
 
I was in a very similar boat last year when I was applying to colleges. I applied to MIT, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology early action and was deferred at MIT and accepted at the other two. However, at the time I was completely unhappy with that, as I thought MIT would be my dream school. I then applied to Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, Brown, and Cornell.

Come April I was rejected from MIT, Stanford, Brown, and Cornell and waitlisted to all three schools to which I applied at Carnegie-Mellon. I was...not happy. I had looked at U of M as a fallback because I was so cocky and thought that I deserved a place in one of the other schools, and I was down about it for a while. I felt a little better about it after visiting the campus, but I still wasn't happy with the result.

However, over the summer I had my orientation, which drastically changed my opinion of the place. It was actually a lot of fun, and I realized as I made friends there and learned more about the place that I could actually be happy here. Come the start of the semester I was still having issues adjusting and trying to make friends, but after a couple months I made a solid group of friends and now I'm extremely happy here. The education is still great, and I actually enjoy the large nature of the school, even if it makes joining some clubs overly competitive to get into.

So basically long story short, if you don't get into what you think is your dream school now, try not to freak out too much. You can still be happy wherever else you end up if you let yourself. Just be open to meeting new people and join some clubs if you can (I did not look into this aspect enough and I still regret that, though it turned out alright and I'm going to look into it more next semester) - The VAST majority of people in this country DON'T get into MIT or Caltech, but that doesn't mean they can't still have fulfilling college experiences or live satisfying lives.
 
Honestly, your undergrad isn't nearly as important as your grad school when applicable. (I'm only a Junior but have told this by multiple people, including one of my best friends who got accepted to go to Yale but is going somewhere else because he can get more scholarships there.)
 
I like community college. Classes are smaller and more personal, and the professors generally know their shit and have more time to help you out personally. It also feels like we have people from broader walks of life and age groups and there's a small sense of respect here
 
Depends on the community college. At mine, some of the professors are pretty good but for the most part they don't have a clue how to teach. 3 of them are at least 20 minutes late for EVERY class (I just finished my finals, and wouldn't you know it, they were all late for the final exam too) and one class was only for 50 minutes so he would get there, teach for 30 mins, then leave. It was pretty frustrating.

For one class we had powerpoint slides online to summarize what we were supposed to learn from the lectures. The lecture ended up being a guy sitting at his computer for two hours at 8 in the morning reading word for word from each powerpoint slide. Its bad enough he does this, but when its at 8 am and you're struggling to stay awake its a different story. I also had a lab class for that course with a different professor who was just as bad. We'd ask her questions and she just had no clue about anything. She literally told us "just ask google".

And to top it all off I had to take this retarded English class where the professor had a hard on for putting us in groups and making us present. I don't know about you guys but I used to pick courses based on how many presentations they required because I despised them so much. Group work sucks too, its awkward, everyone hates it and only half of the people actually contribute. The others just sit there not saying anything. Without fail, week after week, we had to get into groups for EVERYTHING. She hands out some exercises to do "Oh, you guys should do this in groups, it'll be more fun!" FUCK OFF I JUST WANT TO DO IT BY MYSELF.

So there's my rant, tl;dr college can suck sometimes (most of the time).
 
moonbound said:
Honestly, your undergrad isn't nearly as important as your grad school when applicable.
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Pretty much this, not being accepted to some AAA Ivy League school isn't the end of the world. Most of the people in my hs (in CA) were stoked about Stanford or UCLA for instance, and while some of them did get in, they are wasting them as literature majors or not making the best use of their resources. Just concentrate on doing well as an undergrad and consider what career path you want to take and whether or not you want to go to grad school....it's what you do with your years that counts, not where you go.

Hell, from personal experience, my mother did go to UCLA, but she makes more and has a better position than her Harvard medical school graduate colleague. I know of a few workplaces that won't look at apps from certain "big" schools because of assumptions made about the people going there (cocky, rude, incompetent, etc). It may not be true as a whole, but that's what I've seen around me.

tl;dr: see pookar's tl;dr
 
San_Pellegrino said:
kalphiteman, Michigan is probably one of the top 3 best public unis out there. behind UC Berkeley and maybe UVA
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Some would put UCLA up there, but this is still true. I'm actually seriously considering UVA, but it's pretty selective for out-of-state admissions. If I decide to go there, I'll be sort of banking on my double-legacy status (and my parents donations) to help my application stand out.
 
I applied to Baylor early action, and got accepted with a $50,000 scholarship. I mean, from what I can tell, $50k is pretty huge considering Baylor is a private school. I haven't decided for sure where I'm going though. Staying in California would definitely be cheaper (as much as I don't like it here), though I'm unsure how that would work out since the major I want (mechanical engineering) is an impacted major in most California schools. I didn't even attempt to apply to schools like MIT because I know for sure my grades/test scores aren't good enough to get in (I have a 3.71 average from 10-12, got a 1900 on the SAT, and a 28 on the ACT). I also applied to Texas Tech, though I'm still on the fence about it since it's in Lubbock (aka the middle of nowhere)

As for California schools, I applied to Cal Poly (both Pomona and SLO), UCLA, UC Riverside, and UCSD. I've heard Cal Poly is a good school, though I also heard the engineering majors are pretty impacted there (welcome to California). I know for a fact that mechanical engineering is an impacted major at UCSD, and UCLA... man, Los Angeles sucks.

Anyway, anyone here who currently attends or has attended Baylor? I toured the campus this summer and liked it, but that doesn't really tell me what the classes are like.
 
I got waitlisted by about 5 different schools out of 11 when I was applying to college, but then I decided to apply last-minute to the University of Washington (literally the day before the deadline rofl) and I ended up attending there. To be completely honest, where you do your undergrad doesn't really matter to an extent. As long as you can do well wherever you're at, you'll excel in later academic endeavors. Sure, a name like Stanford attached to your undergraduate degree may help, but if you scrape by with a 2.5 average, nobody cares that you went to Stanford, it's still a 2.5.
 
where you do your undergrad doesn't really matter to an extent.
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this is the most important part. get into a reasonable undergrad, invest effort and do a good job. big name institutions like MIT and stanford are notable primarily for a strong graduate school program... their undergrads might be well known and the name buys you recognition, but it's not going to matter really

what matters a lot more is whether you take your undergrad seriously or dick around for four years, in which case the latter is definitely a waste of four years. getting into not-my-dream-school and getting a degree is not a waste of four years
 
Since these types of threads typically address undergraduate education, I was surprised to see so many references to graduate and professional programs. I am actually in the process of applying for graduate school myself, and have currently applied to two schools. Since the deadline in most cases is in January or February, I still have some time to apply for a few more. However I am surprised by some of the comments about "where you go for your undergrad doesn't matter". I generally agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't be judging what your "dream" school is based on name alone. In fact, even at the graduate level, rankings are really subjective and actually can vary considerably by your major. For example, many of the top ranking graduate programs in my field (Atmospheric Science) are not actually Ivy League schoools. In fact, University of Washington, which Omicron just mentioned, is considered by many to be one of the, if not the best program in the field. But I think the general advice here is right. Don't worry too much about things like that, just try to do well no matter where you end up going. In my case, I am making my school decision based primarily on location and whether any of the faculty are conducting research that interests me.
 
the only part of my undergrad that i liked was the culture. yes i would come here again, but not because it's a top x school. the effort you put into college is 95% of the result, brand name is 5%. when i was in high school? wow i thought i had to go to an ivy! don't stress out, and most importantly, keep in mind that getting into college is the beginning of working hard, not a reward for working hard.
 
I can honestly tell you, like others have said, that your graduate school is much more significant of a "brand" on your degree than your undergrad. I'm currently attending Auburn University, it was my dream school, and thankfully I managed to get admitted. Waiting was a real pain in the ass, since I'd received letters from University of Georgia and Tennessee. I sat around for a good two weeks after those, simply waiting to see what Auburn had to say.

Now I'm transferring to University of Florida, since they're the only school around my area with a dedicated astronomy major. Waiting for their response, now, as well. Gonna suck leaving Auburn.

All I can say is, don't be too hard on yourselves for being deferred. It really makes no difference as an undergrad where you complete your education. Work extremely hard so the schools you really want notice you post-graduation.
 
Very long time ago I applied for this stuff.

I looked to be a cs major, so I applied and got into Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. Waitlisted for MIT. I chose CMU because they looked like they had the strongest undergrad and grad programs, both of them tied as best colleges for cs in the country.

And as an ad for my school: I think the statistic was 23% of my graduating class went to Google. That's just Google btw, not including places like Amazon, Facebook, Mozilla, Blizzard, Microsoft (lol), etc.
 
not everyone wants to go to grad school though, so the only brand they have to rely on is the credibility of their undergrad institution
 
Well, I know you'd have to go to graduate school if you wanted to be a lawyer or something, but for someone like me who wants to be an engineer, I'm unsure if grad school would be necessary since from what I can tell, a vast majority of engineering jobs only require a four-year degree. I'm really not entirely sure how I'd benefit from graduate school (probably not the best thing to be unsure of)
 
I remember college apps. to keep things short, I applied EA to stanford, RD to rice, MIT, caltech, Duke, Harvey Mudd, and UT-Austin. straight rejected from stanford and MIT, waitlist-->rejected from caltech, got into the rest. ended up at Duke studying BME with a physics minor (maybe will pursue a double major if my balls are big enough).

At the time I was angry. really REALLY angry. kids far less qualified than I was got into stanford and MIT. I felt cheated by all accounts. After I was rejected from stanford in december, I remember really badly wanting to go to caltech or harvey mudd and didn't really care about the rest of the schools. I actually wrote my Duke application in a day because smogon user: uraga convinced me to do it, yet somehow that's where I ended up. finally decided against mudd even though I got in mostly because I got really scared of the work/hardness/low gpas and wanted (and still want) to get into a good graduate school. I am currently operating under the logic that a 2.8 at mudd is about as hard to get as a 3.8 at Duke, but the 3.8 at duke will take me more places.

what I've found is that once you're actually in college you stop caring about all the application drama, simply because you are too busy having fun at college. furthermore, the people who are truly shining stars in high school will still shine no matter where they go. a good example of this is the aforementioned uraga, who is taking his linear algebra final exam right about now, after which he will have escaped with a 4.0 3.92 at UC berkeley. most of the kids I know who got into MIT on "holistic" reasons are struggling immensely and certainly not getting 3.9's. I can't comment on life in general since I haven't gotten that far yet, but I get the feeling that despite not having an undergrad degree from MIT, he will still do far greater things than those kids. if you go to a decent state school or better for undergrad, then you're probably in good shape.



btdubz if any of you kids are considering Duke class of 2017, pm v0x or myself about visiting. I can't speak for him but I'm down to show you a good time.
 
switching from a 2 year UW school to a full 4 year UW school to get my degree. I'm pretty much guaranteed acceptance but i still hate the wait.
 
LucaroarkZ said:
Well, I know you'd have to go to graduate school if you wanted to be a lawyer or something, but for someone like me who wants to be an engineer, I'm unsure if grad school would be necessary since from what I can tell, a vast majority of engineering jobs only require a four-year degree. I'm really not entirely sure how I'd benefit from graduate school (probably not the best thing to be unsure of)
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There is very little benefit to going to grad school in engineering (as well as computer science for that matter) from a marketability standpoint, unless you plan on going into academia. At best it may improve your starting salary by a bit. If you were considering it anyway, you will likely only need to do a 1-2 year program getting a Masters. My friend is a mechanical engineer who works for Caterpillar and he is going to pursue his Masters, but they are also sponsoring him.
 
Depends what you mean by grad school when it comes to engineering. A masters DEFINITELY boosts your resume; when you apply out, you'll notice an increase in starting salaries from the ~50k range to ~70k range right off the bat.

However, phd? Google claims it also boosts salary, but I haven't seen that among my engineering PHD friends.

If you're engineering, I'd 100% recommend a Masters (it basically ensures you'll have a job regardless of economy, is only 1-2 years, you can do most parttime (though that'll make it 3-4 years)), especially if you can find some schools that do combination Masters in Engineering and Masters in Business programs. I don't mean a dual MS / MBA (though that's a solid choice as well), I mean one "Management Engineering" degree. My undergraduate school has this program: http://engineering.case.edu/mem/

If you can find something similar, I'd highly recommend it.
 
there's always ITT tech :)

but in all seriousness buddy i got into a lot of schools but settled on umb strictly because of the tuition. like others have said undergrad isn't a big deal. state schools are not as bad as they used to be.

good luck though. i hope everything works out for you.
 
Currently a freshman at Indiana University.

Hoping for grad school in the future but FUCK have I been discouraged by my grades. Had straight A's going into Finals week. Now I have 4 B's and 1 A and its super STUDY FOR YOUR FINALS KIDS BECAUSE THEY CAN KICK YOU IN THE DICK

Disclaimer: Yes, I know a B+ average or something will be fine to get me into a pretty decent grad school. Don't get on my ass about this. I'm under achieving with the grades I have now.
 
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