I Got Into 23 Colleges!

I was kind of a B, B- high school student. I aced classes like English and history but really struggled with geometry, algebra and chemistry — such a stereotypical girl. We had a college counselor who talked about big vs. small schools, advantages and disadvantages, safeties and reaches. I decided to apply to the following schools:

1) University of Oregon (unconsciously, I wanted to get the hell out of Dodge, I mean Nashville, and far away from my divorcing parents. The conscious reason was because I had become a rabid high school environmentalist and want to go somewhere that had "lots of nature")
2) University of Colorado (kind of random. Big party school. But I went skiing there once in high school and I must have thought, "that wouldn't be so bad").
3) American University (seemed like a good, expensive, international school with a strong journalism program)
4) Emerson College (another expensive school with a great communications program)
5) University of Maine (um…my dad went there.)
6) Antioch college (my number one choice. It had everything — liberal politics, smallness and my best friend from summer camp was there!)

I ended up getting into Antioch, UMO, Emerson and U of O (waitlisted). Ultimately I ended up going to Oregon for a year (it was cheaper than the "privates" and farthest away), and then dropped out to deal with the fallout from the divorce before ultimately ending up at Antioch as a transfer.

Each of these applications was a laborious process of collecting my essays, recommendations, filling everything out on paper (lots of White Out) and getting them in on deadline. The New York Times, reg. required, has a front page story today about how technology and the common application have made it easier for teens to apply to as many as 20 or more schools at a time, while a more competitive admissions environment has made doing this necessary. From the article:

"An annual survey of college freshmen indicates that students bound for all kinds of institutions are filing more applications these days. In 1967, only 1.8 percent of freshman surveyed had applied to seven or more colleges, while in 2005, 17.4 percent had done so, according to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at U.C.L.A., which conducts the survey. The survey began asking recently if the students had applied to 12 or more colleges; that proportion increased by 50 percent from 2001 to 2005."

In other education trend news, Ypulse reader Abbey sent me this link from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to an article about how colleges and universities are using interactive kiosks and DVDs to attract tech-savvy teens. And The Washington Post, reg. required, has a great story on how this over-parented generation's parents just don't know when to back off when it comes to their kids' education.

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