Last night, I wrote a check for my daughter’s first college app. It’s for her fallback school - the one for her first choice goes out next week. She doesn’t intend to apply to any others.
I applied to five in my senior year. I was accepted to all five. I got partial scholarships to two. I went to my first choice. (And within 2 months, I decided I hated it there, although I did stay till the end of the first year.)
Three years later when I was going to go back as part of a Navy program, my one and only choice was Purdue, which is where I eventually graduated.
So, how many schools did you apply to? Did you get into your first choice school? Did it meet your expectations? Do share.
I applied to three and got in to all of them. Of course I didn’t apply to MIT or anything like that so it was to be expected. I don’t remember what my first choice was any more since I really only wanted to goto school.
I went to Frostburg State in western Maryland. I guess it was what I wanted, small, out of the way. I know I would have been a nut case in a bigger school as I tried that out later on and hated it.
Hope the young one gets in to where she wants. And she’s gonna be a long ways away too!
Three - Bowdoin (not accepted), Colby (accepted) and the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (accepted, safety school).
I had set my sights on one of the first two and didn’t see any reason to apply to a bunch that I didn’t really want. I figured that if I didn’t get into either one, I’d spend a year at UTC, get excellent grades and see if I could transfer somewhere else.
I applied to five and got into two. Sarah Lawrence didn’t offer me enough financial aid so I went to the other school. It was my safety school and I was not too happy about it. But the experiences I had, the people I met and the things I learned were amazing safety school or not.
Well see… I wanted to go to the same school ever since I was about 10… so by the time I got to actually applying… I was more than qualified… so I only applied to 1… Seton Hall
I applied to five – Harvard (dream on), Tufts, Brown, Union, and Dickinson. Accepted at the last two and went to Union.
For grad school, there was just one (which will remain namless).
My daughter just started college this week. She applied to two: American University and Siena College (I work at the latter). AU was her early decision choice; Siena her backup, but she got into AU.
I applied to only two and got accepted at both. Penn State University and Grove City College. Went to GCC because it was a heck of a lot cheaper (I didn’t have a lot of money) and closer to home.
An old buddy of mine from Pitt is now a professor at GCC.
Besides the University of Pittsburgh, I applied to Allegheny College and Washington and Jefferson College. I was accepted at all three, and wound up at Pitt.
I applied to the same two as **meathead[\b] and then decided that I didn’t want to go to either (I applied mostly because there was a guidance counselor handing me things to fill out). In about April of my senior year, panic set in and the same guidance counselor called around and found a few options for me. I then applied to Dusquense, Juniata and West Chester (PA state school). Ended up and Juniata and loved just about every minute of it.
I think that the variable financial aid packages are the real perk to applying to multiple schools (especially for those of us that didn’t have a very strong attachment beforehand).
Like merge, I had my sights set in seventh grade. I applied early decision to Duke alone. I had the GaTech and a few other applications filled out, and if I hadn’t gotten in early to Duke I would have sent them out for regular notification, but I ended up not needing more stamps.
Seven (well, seven applications submitted – all branches of UPR use one single application form and you just tick off which ones in your order of preference, I applied to 2 of them). All accepted. Went to the one of my top 2 prefs (JHU/Princeton) that provided the best FA package (JHU). As things turn out I did not end up graduating there, and many years later finished my degree in an entirely different school from the original 7.
Five: Kenyon, Smith, George Washington, University of Iowa, and Skidmore. Got into all of them, scholarship to GW. Went to Kenyon, which I transferred out of after two years. Finished my BA at Rider University in three semesters.
Five. In rough order of preference, Brown (not accepted), Swarthmore (not accepted), William and Mary (accepted and attended), Mary Washington (accepted), Dickinson (accepted).
As a side note, if I had to do it over again knowing what I know now (the value of a dollar, the fact that I am not a misunderstood genius irresistible to all discerning individuals, and the fact that Swarthmore hires complete jerks as interviewers), I wouldn’t have been interested in private schools at all.
(I might not have had a shot at the fourth school, anyway, who knows, but I did purposely botch my interview, because I did not want to go to that school at all! My parents insisted that I apply there because my brother (13 years my senior) lived in the same town (and would be able to watch over me), and I knew that if I got in there, all of my choices would go down the toilet. Of course, then when I didn’t get in, my mom became convinced that it was because I was (uh, and still am) Black.)
I had decided to go to my first choice, but my parents insisted that I visit all three schools that had accepted me, and I ended up choosing the school I’d originally thought was my “safety”.
Ah - St. Mary’s - we drove through that campas last weekend! I don’t know much about the school, but their campus is lovely! I may wind up going there after I move - I want to get my teaching certification so I can teach after I retire from the govt.
Let’s see. It seems like so long ago. I applied to Amherst (not accepted), Smith (accepted), Mount Holyoke (accepted) and Kalamazoo College (accepted, small theatre merit scholarship). My first choice was Smith, I sooo wanted to go there. A large part of that was due to my at-the-time boyfriend who was at Amherst, but I also loved Smith when I visited.
My father, however, did NOT love Smith and on the trip back to Indiana told me that he refused to give any money to a school that “undermined the family” (by turning women into feminists or something? I think that was his line of reasoning). Later I found out that my mom was totally opposed to me going so far away and told my dad to tell me that I couldn’t go. Well, he felt like he couldn’t flat out forbid me, so instead he told me I’d have to pay for it myself. I knew I couldn’t afford it, so I went to my backup school, Kalamazoo, which was only 3 hours away from home.
My boyfriend ended up breaking up with me over Christmas break, so that helped ease my pain over the whole thing :rolleyes: I had an amazingly wonderful experience at K that I wouldn’t trade for anything. And in the end I still moved farther away from my mom than she wanted me to. But like Jonathan, I also sometimes wonder how things would be different…
I teach at my alma mater so to remain safe I’ll just answer the OP.
Applied to 1, and was accepted.
Gradschool at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Hot as hell coming from a nice cozy New England College. But one grows to love the wide open spaces of the desert southwest.
I agree St. Mary’s has a very nice campus. I applied there whilst in my last year of dissertation. But the offer from my alma mater was much nicer, and put me back in New England.
I applied to MIT and RPI, and was accepted at both. But I was already enrolled at UC Berkeley at the time (had been taking courses during high school), so I pretty much didn’t apply anywhere that I wouldn’t rather go to than Berkeley. I ended up staying there one more year, then transferring to MIT as a sophomore (I couldn’t scrape together enough money the first year).
