Just be glad you are not going to CTU. I go there mainly because it is the only place in Colorado you can get an ABET accredited EE going to school at night. It is HIGHLY over priced because the enrollment is so low. I fear their engineering programs are going to disappear because everyone else goes there for IT and CS and that stuff.
Oh well. I am graduating in 3 months so its ok.
Well, thank you for your responses, from sympathetic to, “what the hell were you thinking, numnut?”
Everything gets better with a few days of perspective; I found out this week at lunch that most of the people I go to lunch with and so many other bright, cool people were rejected from CU Boulder.
And any derision I made towards CU Boulder in the OP was hyperbole. I really do want to go to CU. It is true that I only applied to two schools, Yale and CU, and Yale was initially largely at the urging of my parents. CU has an amazing Cross Country team (won nationals (co-ed scoring) last year), an amazing Cycling Team (won road nationals last year, women MTB team won nationals), an amazing triathlon team (second place men’s at nationals, first place womens), it is close to RMR, Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, essentially one of the busiest SAR teams in the country, Radio 1190, a student-run radio station that plays the independent music that I love, a cool campus, a cool town, and most importantly an excellent reputation for microbiology/biological sciences/“pre-med” focus majors.
Make no mistake, I want to go to CU. If I had recieved an offer for Yale without a generous aid package, I would have turned it down. I just thought that it would be easier to get financial aid that it has proven. I went through the financial aid offices list of scholarships, and that was what got me the interview for Justice White as well as two $500 community service scholarships. I am still waiting to hear back on the need-based financial aid, which may be significant due to the fact that my parent, whom I live with, was just forced into early retirement.
The PLC apparently has an okay chance of working out anyway. Apparently, budget cuts forced them to go to fifty applicants rather than sixty. Typically, fifteen-twenty applicants turn down PLC, and there are twenty two alternates this year.
I have no idea on the numbers from Norlin.
So there you go.
I suppose that I can appreciate that some of this stuff is hard to make it in, but I can also appreciate the lesson that I have to do all of the work for myself in whatever I do in college. At least this should be a good lesson for med-school. Rest assured, I won’t be applying to only two med-schools.
I’m going to chime in and say keep hope alive. If you don’t get a scholarship your first year, there’s always the second year.
I’m sorry you’re finding it so hard.
But YOU know that you’re worth it, even if THEY don’t.
Personaly I got into my college by luck. I attend Trinity College in Dublin as a med student.
The Irish system works thusly, you take exams (Leaving cert) and receive points. Maximum points awarded are 600. You apply to your colleges in order of preference, and if you have the correct number of points and they have a vancancy you’re accepted. If there is no vacancy or your points are too low you get passed on to the next college on the list. Thus you end up with ONE offer.
There are no letters of recommendation, no outside activities, no CV, no interview.
I am from Northern Ireland, we did 3 A-levels.The Irish system awards each A grade at A-level 190 points, giving me a score of 570…the cut-off for medicine at TCD is…570.
They put all the candidates with 570 into a computer and then the number to fill the available spaces is picked at random.
So my college essentially picked me out of a hat. Which isn’t great for the self-esteem either! But I’m here, and I love it.
(I had two other offers to do medicine in the UK, one with grades of AAB, one with ABB. I had to phone up my first choice in the UK to tell them I wouldn’t be coming, and was asked if I was
a) pregnant
b) ill
c) attending another medical school
d) studying another course!)
Getting into a “great” school is such a crap shoot. I know so many bright and talented people with stellar stats who don’t get into the programs of their choice. There are just so many different factors involved. For example, perhaps one year a certain school is looking for more accomplished basketball players, or at another school, your personal statement rings particularly true with the admissions official into whose pile it lands. Again, there are just so many different factors beyond your control.
I think it’s always a good idea to apply to several schools of similar quality to better your chances. For example, if you really want to go to one of the Ivies, try applying to four or five of them, instead just the one you want. I know a lot people who got into only one of those programs, meaning if they’d not applied to that one, they’d’ve ended up dinged at all the others.
But the bottom line is that school is what you make of it, and it’s important, I think anyway, not to get too hung up on the name of a school; to do so is, in a sense, to rely less on what is inside you and more on what is outside.
Screw CU and any pigfuckers that look like them.
Come to USC, we like overachievers. USC’s incoming classes are so smart, I probably wouldn’t get in if I hadn’t started here back in 98 (took an ahem! financial “sabbatical” from school between then and now).