The College Process

I think community college is a great idea. Typically it's cheaper. Get the basics out of the way where it doesn't cost so much. The classes tend to be smaller and the teachers are able to interact with the students more. I wish now I had gone to community college first. I went from a very small HS into a HUGE state university and the culture shock for me was huge. Had I eased into it with a year or two at a community college, I might have been better prepared.

It's interesting the concept of "safety" schools. I had never heard of that before. I applied to 3 colleges and I was accepted at all 3. One I pretty much knew I didn't want to go too and it was a hard choice for the other 2. Ultimately I went to the state university. Looking back, I might have been better off out of state at the small liberal arts college that was my 2nd choice.

Canadian Angel, I hear you about priorities, but in this case, the application was 3 pages and required a half page essay. Basically a few paragraphs. I saw the app. I could have whipped that puppy out in about half an hour. And made $200 for half an hours work. I don't think that would have been that bad. But apparantly this kid looked at the amount as too piddly to care about.

My daughter just finished her first year of college. She was fortunate in many ways as she knew what and where she wanted to study for years. It is a state university so she wasn't worried about being accepted, in fact she applied in about September of her Senior year and knew by October. They also have automatic scholarships based on GPA and ACT/SAT scores and she got a full ride based on those. The cherry on top was a local scholarship that she was awarded. Guidance encouraged all seniors to fill out a general application for all local scholarships (Kiwanis, Lions Club, Memorial scholarship, etc.) and then a committee matches students up with what they qualify for.

My daughter's was in memory of a woman who had graduated from the same high school and gone on to the same college in the same major. She died in her 20's and her parents set it up with those criteria. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that it was for over $3,000!!! Fortunately the way it was worded, it didn't have to go towards just tuition as that was paid for, so she has been using it for textbooks.

Textbooks are extremely expensive and my daughter didn't really get it until she started college. My first piece of advice to parents and highschoolers is to include a visit to the campus bookstore when visiting colleges. Maybe that boy in MRD's town wouldn't have turned his nose up at $200 if he really knew the price of textbooks. My second tip is to locate the off campus bookstores before you need to buy books. Prices there are sometimes much better as they have more used books available. Lastly, take a break before finals and take a list of your textbooks to all the bookstores and see where you can get more money. Again, the off campus ones may offer more money as they operate on a smaller margin. Then when finals are done, you already know where to sell each book.

And as an addendum, textbooks can also be bought and sold on the internet.

I would advise anyone who will be entering college to apply for as many scholarships as you can. FastWeb is a good site that lists tons and tons of scholarships you may not even know existed.

I only applied to Penn State because I knew that's where I wanted to go and my high school guidance counselor told me I wouldn't have any trouble getting in because I was Salutatorian and in a bunch of activities, etc so I didn't need a backup to apply to. I had the best 4 years of my life at Penn State.

I would suggest never buying your textbooks new unless you absolutely have to. I wouldn't even buy them until you go to class and check out the syllabus and see what you will really need. I bought so many worthless books. I really, really like half.com for books as well. You can buy books on there pretty cheap, as well as sell them when you are finished.

If I had a "do over" for the college application process, I would have applied at 1 or 2 other schools that are hard to get into, just to see if I would've gotten in.

I rarely bought used texts, and didn't sell any after the term was over. I also did very little highlighting. Those texts relating to my major form the core of my professional library; the others provide me with a source of obscure knowledge with which I can wow friends and intimidate foes :lol

I remember gagging when I had to pay $42 for a text my senior year :wow Prior to that, they had run $20-$25. Am I old or what?

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Originally Posted by Newfherder;2972569;

I rarely bought used texts, and didn't sell any after the term was over. I also did very little highlighting. Those texts relating to my major form the core of my professional library; the others provide me with a source of obscure knowledge with which I can wow friends and intimidate foes :lol

I remember gagging when I had to pay $42 for a text my senior year :wow Prior to that, they had run $20-$25. Am I old or what?

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:lol

Most of my educational theory and psychology books ran me around $150 or above. It was crazy. Not to mention for every children's literature course I had, we had to buy 20 or so children's books. Granted, I could borrow them from the library, but I bought them so I'd have them for my classroom.

My book bill for each semester was easily $300 bucks or above. It was nuts.

Thanks for the info on fastweb.

Half.com is probably my favorite site to buy books and I noticed not long ago that they do text books n ow.

I saved a few of mine that pertained to history, but my math books went to the used bookstore. I remember having to pay about $60 for a book and thinking it was ridiculous and then selling the SAME book back at the end of the term for $10. Such a ripoff.

But I did buy a LOT of used books when I could. And I had a pretty good set of friends that traded books and loaned books which was good.

I recently found a box of my mother's that had some of her old books and notebooks from college. This was 1952. Want to know how much the books were? I just went and checked. Her English textbook was $7. Which they probably thought was awfully expensive back then.

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Originally Posted by myrosiedog;2972674;

I remember having to pay about $60 for a book and thinking it was ridiculous and then selling the SAME book back at the end of the term for $10. Such a ripoff.

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The worse ripoff is the bookstore then turning around and selling it to someone else for $45!!!

I'm at the hard part of the whole college process... trying to find a job after graduation lol. And I am lucky in that I got away with only having to buy a few text books. Usually, I was in a class with friends, or friends took the class before me, so I could borrow the books. Plus, the school library had the books you can check out for 4 hours at a time. And if I needed a book, and none of my friends had it, I bought my books online. I bought my $80 intro to philosphu book for $30 online.

I wanna know my chances of getting into University of Florida
I have a 5.5 gpa
My SAT is low though 1120
I have a 100 volunteer hours
Im in HOSA club, Key club, NHS
I've played violin for 7 years, I've been in several City Orchestras
I've also played freelance for several years
Senior Year I'm taking AP Calc, AP Art History, AP Physics, AP Psychology
Dual Enrollment College, I'm taking English, Anatomy, Psychology, College Alebra
Im in a health magnet school
I really want to get into college so bad, any suggestions?

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Originally Posted by haejin;2966566;

Anyway, how was your experience with applying to college? Is there anything you wish you had done differently? How do you think the college process has changed since you were in high school (regardless of how long ago that may have been)? What about your experience observing your peers/etc "grappling" with the college process? A lot of questions, but I thought this would be a good way to generate some interesting discussion (especially coming back from my long FORT hiatus :teeth), and I'm sure some of that discussion is relevant to other younger FORT members.

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I really enjoyed touring a bunch of the different schools while trying to make my decision. The only thing I wish I had done differently was go after another major-- right now, I really want to go back for nursing. I'm happy I chose to go to the school I did, however (UCF). It was good to not be so far from home, and with scholarships and prepaid they paid ME to go there. With the other schools I was looking at-- Cornell, UNC Chapel Hill, Transylvania University (yes, that is really the name; it is in Kentucky)-- I would have had to go into real debt, even with scholarship help. I'm also glad I went away though, rather than staying at home near Tampa and going to USF. Only problem with UCF was that, towards the end of when I was there, they started to try to put an emphasis on increasing the # of students w/o increasing facilities and classes as much as they should have. As a result, the place became known as "Under Construction Forever" or "U Can't Finish" (with classes so hard to get at times).

Anyways, a major pitfall I saw other students struggle with was debt. They REALLY push credit cards and stuff, at least on our campus. Also, kids who thought they could get away with the amount of studying they did in high school and still get A's. In certain classes you might get away with it, but in "high risk" courses in college (math and sciences mostly), good luck. Obviously, plenty fell into the partying and substance abuse traps and dropped out. In my case though, I think I adjusted well. The freedom of choosing my own schedule and doing my own thing suited me well, and I am not the type to ever fall into the problems with partying and such. I did put on the Freshman 15 (VERY easy to do) but luckily was able to take it off and then some after graduating and I weigh less now than I did in high school even. But keep in mind that it is way too easy not to eat right.