Buckeye Bound

Time has passed since I last hit the submit button on my Patch account. I have performed in Children of Eden (the school musical), selected a college (Ohio State), and participated in Mr. Central (variety show competition between the Senior guys at WMC..sort of the male equivalent of Homecoming Queen, but with a show instead of a runway kind of thing). I already wrote an article about Children of Eden…and I plan to write an article about Mr. Central, perhaps next week. Right now, however, I think would be an appropriate time to write about my college selection process.

The college process has been a unique one for me. For the people in my immediate lineage, at least, I have been the first person to have anything of a college process. My grandpa knew that he wanted to go to Ohio State. My other three grandparents never went to college. My dad knew that he wanted to go to Northwest Louisiana. My mom knew that she wanted to go to Rutgers. My brother knew that he wanted to go to CCM. But me? I didn’t have any specific place that I wanted to go. I wanted to have several options.

I really had no idea where to start. Around winter break of my junior year, I saw a Princeton Review book with the top three hundred eighty something colleges at Barnes and Noble. I purchased it, and decided to start my college search. I made a list of any college in the book that I had heard of and would consider attending. I came up with a list of 52. I remember the list being so unspecific that both LSU and Princeton were on it. Kansas State and Yale could also be found together on the list. I thought myself to be extremely realistic because I didn’t include Harvard.

Then I started to learn about acceptance rates, campus types, behaviors of the student population, etc. I narrowed the list down arbitrarily. If I felt one day that Clemson was too far away, I axed it. If I started to believe that Johns Hopkins was too hard to get into, I deleted it.

Eventually, I came down to a list of ten schools. After eliminating a couple schools, I added a couple financial safeties in (schools from whom I thought I could get scholarships from). My grades and scores were solid, but I knew they wouldn’t guarantee me anything.

The colleges I applied to were:

Boston College

Northwestern University

University of North Carolina

University of Virginia

University of Maryland

The Ohio State University

University of Wisconsin

Rutgers University

Indiana University

University of Florida

I applied early to all except my #1 (Northwestern). I was accepted to four colleges before December. I was ecstatic. Then, between then and the end of January, I was rejected by three schools. Then I got back into a groove: I was accepted to the next three schools I heard back from. Then Northwestern rejected me on April 1^st.

I wasn’t too upset though. Every school that rejected me had under a 30% acceptance rate, so I considered them “reach” schools (schools that I was unlikely to get into). I now had six great schools to choose from. Well, I thought I did.

I came to the realization that I wasn’t interested in Florida and Indiana. Those were the financial safeties I mentioned earlier. Neither school offered me enough money to entice me to attend, either.

So I was down to four. I started to take a deeper look into the financial outlook of attending each college. Rutgers, instead of just in-state tuition, offered me a scholarship for about seven or eight thousand a year. Ohio State offered me a scholarship for fifteen thousand per year (that was nice). Wisconsin (maybe two or three thousand) and Maryland (five or six thousand) offered me next to nothing in merit aid (considering that they were both out of state). I had to get rid of both schools.

So I went from fifty two to two: Ohio State and Rutgers. Both had around the same cost (I would go into somewhat significant debt either way…Rutgers would be about $2,500 per year cheaper though).

The deciding factor was the Honors program. I got automatically admitted to Honors at Ohio State (as a side note, I got into either the Honors or Scholars program at every other college I applied to). Every college that is, except for Rutgers. This seemed extremely perplexing. Compared to students at West Morris that had been accepted to Rutgers (which is better than the average NJ high school), I remember my SAT’s being about 300-400 points higher and my GPA being almost 0.5 above the average.

I emailed the Honors College Dean at Rutgers. I received a borderline rude response saying that I had missed the deadline to appeal for missed consideration, but she said that she would “review my record”. Two weeks later, I was informed that my record was “solid”, but not strong enough to be admitted to Honors. I don’t consider myself to be arrogant, but this response seemed to be almost comical to me. I wasn’t bitter though. I still have a lot of respect for Rutgers; however, I decided to choose the institution that valued me more.

I don’t know if Honors is exactly the best thing in the world, but I do get priority registration for classes, exclusive housing, smaller classes, an additional academic advisor, etc. After I visited Ohio State for a second time, I knew where I wanted to go. I can’t wait for college, and I’m happy things worked out the way they did. Ohio State has numerous opportunities that I plan to take advantage of, both inside and out of the Honors program.