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Avoid the one-month-till-HS-graduation "Where am I gonna go?" madnessApr 18 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Everyone told me I could basically have my pick of any school I wanted, Ivy League included. So why on earth did I only apply to one school - one most people from my area had never heard of? ("Fairleigh Dickinson? Where's that?") Actually read everything in that mile-high pile of college recruiting junk you've got in the corner of your bedroom. My parents wanted me to check out the Ivy League schools. But I didn't think I'd like them that much. I analyzed all the SUNY schools - near my home and far away - and thought one or two of them might be the place for me. But then i got this brochure from a college I'd never heard of. "FDU - Do Great Things." Sure, it was a cheesy slogan, but it got me to thumb through the brochure they sent me. "Five year combined BA/MA in Psychology" caught my eye. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't read the brochure carefully. So I decided to investigate. Once you've done your digging... I ordered more brochures from FDU, including info on the Psych Department. They were doing a campus tour at the end of the summer before my senior year of high school, and I went. I got to meet some of the faculty from the Psych Department, and I liked them. They told me that, yes, I really could get my Bachelors and Masters here in five years. I liked what I saw. That was enough to convince me to turn in the early admission application. ...Dazzle them senseless. I told you to read everything carefully, right? Here's how it really paid off for me. When I marched myself over to the Admissions Office, I handed them my application. They politely requested the $15 application fee. I whipped out the piece of paper my parents reminded me to bring where it said, essentially, "If you bring your application for early admission with you on your campus tour before August 15, the $15 application fee will be waived." Well, it was as if I'd pointed out that the world was round and they thought it was flat! No one had ever heard of such a thing, let alone had seen that letter before. The woman went to find her boss, who came out, read over the letter that their office had sent me, and chuckled. "No one's ever done this before," she admitted to me. "I didn't even know we sent this out." So I had told them something they didn't know. I believe I left a pretty good impression on them. And I didn't have to pay them 15 bucks just to hand in my application either. The reward: the waiting won't kill you. I knew before Christmas that I was accepted. Not only that, but by the end of January, I knew I was receiving a scholarship. And by the time most of my friends were in a panic about which school they were going to choose, I learned that my scholarship was not just any scholarship, but full-tuition. So while everyone else in my graduating class was comparing the costs and benefits of their own personal Top 10, I was satisfied knowing that I only needed to come up with money for room & board in the fall. Ahh...peace of mind! Or not? It's wonderful knowing where you're going to be going and what you're going to be doing. But the trade-off is that you may be stuck second-guessing yourself. Did I make the right decision? Sure, you know where you're going to go, but several months have passed since you visited the campus, applied, and were accepted. And now some of your friends start telling you all about the schools they're thinking about going to, and some of them start to sound better to you. But you have to remember, a lot of people don't know what they want until three months into freshman year anyway. You can't possibly know if you've made the right choice until you're actually there. So don't give yourself the headache of wondering whether or not you made the right decision. You'll find out soon enough. And besides, they always tell you to stick with your first choice on quizzes. Why not on colleges?  |
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