Practical advice for an aspiring college student

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, here’s the deal:

I’ve been stuck at home due to snow (icky!) and so I’ve been doing some serious research on applying to schools, for scholarships, all those kinds of things.

And to put it bluntly, I’m a little overwhelmed. Even putting aside the issue that I haven’t yet decided what school I want to attend, there’s all this crap to send in: essays, lists of ‘leadership activities,’ teacher recommendations…

All of this is made more complicated by my ‘non-traditional’ education. Bear with me here for a sec: basically, I left school at the end of 9th grade. Homeschooled for one year. Took my GED just after my 16th birthday, with an above-average score of 68 (equal to 680 now, I think.) Immediately after, I started taking college classes at local community college. This is my third year, and after the winter semester I’ll have my AA degree… so I will probably be entering as a junior (approx~ 90 college credits.) I would have graduated last year if I’d gone through high school. My college GPA is currently 3.9, but I never took my SATs. I’ve signed up to take them Jan. 24th, but I don’t know how that’ll go.

I also don’t really have anyone to ask about these things. No high school guidance conselor or anything, obviously. So if the minds of SDMB would be so good as to help me out, I’d like to ask some questions.

  1. What is the generally accepted procedure for getting a faculty recommendation? One of my teachers has already volunteered in case I need anything, and I’m on good terms with many others, but I don’t know the proper way to go about it. Should I just ask in person or something more formal, i.e. a letter? Are the teachers supposed to send the letters directly to the college or give it to me? Am I allowed to make copies if I’m applying to numerous colleges/scholarships?

  2. I haven’t really done that much in the way of extracurricular activities. I volunteer at the library and I take private guitar lessons… besides pre-high school stuff, that’s honestly about it. I’m not a joiner at all and I always hoped my high grades would make up for it… but now I don’t know. How much will this effect my chances of getting scholarships, etc.?

  3. Any all-purpose advice for me? Not the life advice kinda stuff, but more the ‘getting accepted to college’ kinda stuff. Advice about essays, presenting your activities in the best light, or anything that you learned, really, would be helpful.

I’m not applying to any terribly prestigious schools… just local Oregon ones. But I’m definitely stressing and freaking and generally making myself miserable, so any words of comfort would truly be most welcome. :frowning:

2

Don’t worry about it. You’ll get into one and be fine.

  1. I just asked. If there was a form or whatever that I had to fill out/they had to fill out, I did my part and gave it to them if they said, “Yes.” Some colleges want the envelope to be sealed, so you give the teacher an envelope with the college address/whatever on it. My teachers gave me their letters and carte blanche to make as many copies as I needed, but that’ll depend on your teachers. The application will usually specify if they want a sealed one or not.

  2. As good as your grades are (and your SATs will probably be to), I wouldn’t worry about clubs and stuff. With BSing prowess, anything can be a “leadership activity.”

  3. If there’s one topic that’s fairly common among your essays, you may want to write one generic one, then tweak it to each school. I did.

Good luck.

3

I’m a junior in college so I can sympathize.
First, a word about the SATs. Your general academic record sounds impressive but many colleges, especially the better ones, don’t take GPA at face value. They will attempt to assess the quality of the institution, the rigor of the program, the extent to which you challenged yourself etc etc and view your grades in light of what they find. Considering the unique nature of your course of study this problem is magnified. Standardized testing is a crutch for them; it gives them something they can compare across their entire applicant pool. If you haven’t taken any since the GED then there may be a disproportionate amount of weight put on the SAT. Best prep I could recommend is taking old exams. There is a book called 10 Real SATs that I found useful and probably many others on the same vein. Get used to the format and you’ll probably do more than fine considering your record.
1.) I concur with GMRyujin.

2.) Some colleges are very big on choosing “well rounded” applicants but even they respect a solid record and I doubt they would expect someone on your track to have picked up a lot of club offices on the way (you sound like you’ve been a bit busy J ). If you’ve done any kind of volunteer work or have been heavily involved in your church temple other put it down otherwise don’t worry too much. BS is pretty common here so feel free to, ah, exaggerate your depth of involvement.

3.) My guidance counselor told me that the point of college essays – beyond the obvious writing skill – was to give the admissions office some impression of how I was different from every other applicant. You have a lot of material to work with because you are quite plainly not the average candidate. Proof read whatever you write until you see it in your sleep. Check to see if any of the colleges you’re applying to take the Common Application. Finally, make sure your essay answers the question; much though it sucks to write several essays sometimes you can’t fit the same one to every topic.

4

Give it up. It is not worth it.

Have you looked into the Hunting and Gathering fields?

5

Are you kidding, OP? You have a 3.9 college GPA? I’m surprised you don’t have recruiters camping out on your doorstep!!!

One thing you’ve gotta realize is colleges are all about making money. They want your cash. Unless you are applying to some snooty blueblood private school, they are not going to care too much whether or not you were president of the latin club in high school. They will accept you because they know you will pay X thousands of bucks per semester to go there, you’ll graduate and then (hopefully) become a dedicated alumni and leave part of your estate to them when you die.

You have a 3.9 GPA, and you obtained it at an age where most kids are out running wild, getting pregnant/drunk/stoned and think “the future” is “sometime next month”. The fact that a 16 year old kid went to college and got nearly straight A’s is going to cover a multitude of sins. Any college that turns you down is simply insane, seriously. You are REMARKABLE and any school should be chomping at the bit to get you to hook up with them.
Just be yourself in your essays and I suspect the offers will roll in.

IANACAC (college admissions counselor)

6

One thing to keep in mind is that, with your junior college transcript and AA degree, you are basically transferring from one college into another. That’s a different, and usually easier, process than getting into college from high school. You have already established that you can earn good grades in college courses. That counts for more than, say, marching in the high school band when you were 15. Another thing is that junior colleges want their students to go on to four-year schools. It lets them point to success stories. There is almost certainly a counseling office in your school that can help you with everything you need to know, and your teachers should know where it is. There might even be a streamlined admission process if you are applying to state colleges and universities in the same system as your junior college. And have you asked the admissions offices of the schools where you want to go what they actually need from you, as a transfer student? Depending on how exclusive they are and what you want to study, they might not need much more from you than your transcript and a tuition check.

7

Word of advice on the SATs:

  1. Take the practice tests. If you’re doing well on both math and english, skip to step 4.

  2. If you did well on the math, but not on the english (I mean a serious gap, like an 800 on the math and a 540 on the english), sit down with your flashcards and work on them. Seriously.

  3. If you did well on the english, but not the math (see above), and you can spare the cash, consider enrolling in one of those SAT prep courses. They can teach you tips and techniques that work better than trying to learn all the concepts perfectly.

  4. When taking the SATs, operate on instinct and autopilot. The SAT is not designed as a measurement of how well you think, the answers are designed to trip you up if you do think. Use your gut instinct on the english, and don’t check your answers. Check your answers if you must on the math, but don’t spend your time obsessing over one problem. I can almost promise that if you do, you’ll change it to the wrong answer.

Good luck!

8

I was a nontraditional college student. I dropped out of school at 16, got my GED, and basically dicked around for the next six years until I finally began classes at a community college. It took about four years part time to get my Associates Degree, however, when I decided to continue with a Bachelor’s Degree (which meant transferring to a four year University), it was a breeze (so to speak).

If you have ANY credits which will transfer (and most all of them will if you have an official AA degree), then you’ll be considered a TRANSFER student, which is a whole different ballgame from a Fresh-Out-Of-High-School kid. I never took a SAT in my life (wasn’t required for the community college at the time, and the University never requested it), nor did I have to have references (written or otherwise) from teachers, etc. However, I did create a resume for myself, which took into account all my “extracirricular” experiences (volunteering, jobs, etc.) which I included with my application to the University.

—By the way, I got accepted into both Universities to which I applied, and finally decided on Penn State. I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree.

As far as trying to figure out which college you want to (1) apply and (2) attend, it helps if you think about two major things. One, do you know what your major will be? My younger daughter was pretty set on journalism, so that narrowed down the field considerably. However, my oldest daughter started out undeclaired, decided on a major 1/3 of the way through, then change her major again. She’s finally decided on Secondary Ed, but that may change as well. (I don’t care–she’s paying for it, not me.) Two, would you feel more comfortable in a rural, suburban or city setting? If the idea of living in a “college town” makes you want to climb the walls, then you should discount all the colleges where the town revolves around College Nite at the local Pizza joint. My oldest daughter really wanted to attend school in Philadelphia, so that pretty much guided her decision as to which schools she applied.

My last piece of advice is to dig, dig, DIG for scholarship information. Try obvious websites, such as FastWeb, but also check in with your old high school and the financial aid office of the college you’ll attend. Don’t assume that they’ll have the info waiting for you at the door–you’ll have to ask, beg and threaten. Apply for as many scholarships as you can–you can NEVER have too much money for college. When we did the scholarship trot with my daughters, we had files set up with written recommendations (get the most impressive recommendations you can–not ones from relatives or Bubba John who owns the Fish Shoppe, but someone with a title, if you can), copies–unofficial or otherwise–of your high school transcript, copies of your GED scores (especially if you don’t have a diploma, or your transcript sucks), copies of any certificates or awards of recognition you may have from employers, school, volunteering, etc., copies of your resume, and of course, a kick-ass essay. Most of the scholarship essays are basically the same, so you may be able to adapt your essay you wrote for college admission. Try to stay away from the usual, and use your experiences as a non-traditional student in your essay for a different twist.

Good Luck!

9

Hmm. aren’t transfer students from other colleges exempt from all that ‘essay writing’ ? here in indiana they are (i guess because if you are a transfer student, you’ve already shown you are competent to handle college coursework), being a transfer student is alot easier than applying as a freshman here. Are you looking up info as a transfer or freshman applicant?

10

One last word…
About transferring credits…When I applied at PSU, I got a nice “Welcome to PSU” letter, however, they would only take a certain amount of my credits. (I had done a year at the University of Tulsa, and PSU decided they wouldn’t take ANY of those credits because they would only accept so many.)

Fast forward to the end of my stint at PSU, and trying to figure out how many credits I needed to graduate and get my degree. I was meeting with my advisor, who also happend to have been my professor for two classes. When I casually mentioned that I could graduate if PSU had accepted my classes at TU, he asked, “What classes?” I got him an official transcript from TU, and he credited all my credits from TU towards my degree. I graduated the following semester.

11

Same here. I can get into any college in indiana as far as i know, and i have never taken an SAT or ACT. I think that if you have math and english credits at college then that waves your need to take the ACT or SAT. i never did any extracirricular activity and have no references, but i built a 3.8 GPA at IU east and that was enough to get me access to other places.

12

Thanks so much, everyone, for your responses and reassurances. I really do appreciate it.

Transfer. A lot of the colleges do waive essays/SAT scores for transfer students, but the more selective ones (Reed, for example) require them for everyone. So do honor colleges within colleges, and a lot of scholarship applications.

Mostly I’m just stressing out because of conflicting deadlines and requirements on websites and the like. I really need to actually talk to some admissions counselors, etc., but it’s hard right now since a lot of colleges are closed down due to snow. Hopefully they will be able to reassure me as well.

Everyone’s advice has been really helpful. Thanks again.

13

Are you anywhere near a four year institution (even one you’re not interested in attending)? If so, make an appointment to speak to an admissions counselor or a professor in a subject you may have an interest in. Ask them the same questions you’ve asked here.