25; community college, "eclectic" (ridiculous) background, dreams of NYU, in need of encouragement

Chance Me / Match Me
1

So, for the sake of trying to be as brief as possible, I’ll just dive right in:

(Forgive me if this sounds like a Craigslist personal, or a sob story exposé.) I’m a twenty-five-year-old male from a small town in Central Maine. I dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen due to an array of social/personal/familial problems, all of which followed me into my early twenties. I was not the best student grade wise. Countless teachers told me how frustrating it was to teach a kid with “immeasurable potential” who also seemed to encounter every possible hang-up known to man. Despite this, and despite dropping out of high school, I took the accuplacer at my local community college (sans a GED) and was allowed entrance. In the fall of '08, I started to take classes. This is also when I started experiencing cardiological and neurological problems. From 18-24, my life was inundated with and dictated by appointments with family physicians, specialists, and emergency room visits. All the while, I still took classes, piecemeal. And by piecemeal I mean that withdrew/re-enrolled at the community college five separate times. It wasn’t until this previous fall that I was able to work and take classes with stability, as most of the problems described have finally been resolved. Part of this past sporadic academic behavior was due entirely to my physical ailments, the other portion was due to working 40-50 hour weeks to support myself and flailing family members.

What has all of that left me with in terms of a prospective student resumé?

A GED (Hi-Set) which was acquired last October. 32 credits at my community college with a 3.6 GPA (44 credits at the end of this coming summer term, with an even higher GPA, I predict). I also have a number of publication credits from various literary magazines, some of which are highly recognizable and acclaimed, and I was a finalist for a national writing competition for short fiction. I have professors willing to write sterling recommendations (two of whom have asked to use various papers for examples in future classes). I’m confident in my personal essay, though it definitely has an emphasis on personal. For miscellaneous: I have volunteer accounts, employment recommendations, and I also have a stack of coffee-stained medical receipts and documentation that’s as high as my knees. My transcript from the community college, though helter-skelter, has what I feel is a diverse set of core courses:

Econ. I - B+
Econ. II - B
Investment Planning - A
College Comp. - B+
Intro to Lit. - A
College Algebra - B+
Anatomy and Physiology I - A-
Microbiology - A-
Sociology - A
Multi-Culture- A-

My plan now, after saving a hefty amount of cash by going to CC and hopefully proving myself to not appear totally nuts, is to apply for Spring 2017 transfer at NYU, Fordham, BU, BC, and Northeastern. My dream school has always been NYU, considering their English department is tops and I love the city. But we also have some family in the Bay Area of California, and a persistent, supportive aunt is suggesting that I apply to UC Berkeley, though I don’t think most of the UC system accepts spring transfers.

Various alumni or current students or applicants; please tell me all is not lost.

2

You should apply to Columbia’s College of General Studies. Columbia’s hard to beat for English and writing (check out Quarto!)
I don’t know if you’ll get in, but General Studies is specifically designed for returning adults. However if you don’t have housing, costs may well be prohibitive. Still, absolutely worth applying to.

For writing, if your talent is as great as you say, you owe it to yourself to apply to Kenyon. Add Emory, Uiowa, NYU of course, Hamilton, Northwestern, WashU - some may be too expensive and I don’t think the NPCs work for transfersbut those would be your ultimate goal and they have money for talent. Then add Eckerd, Ursinus, New College, and Knox just in case.

Unfortunately, in order to apply to UC Berkeley, you’d need to move to CA soon and work for 12 months without taking classes (or perhaps one per quarter at a community college). If you work there for 12 months (ie, start working by August 2016) by the time you start school there in Aug 2017, you’ll be considered a resident, and since you’re above the age of 24, the fact you live in CA, have a CA address, pay taxes in CA, and work in CA, will mean your being assesses instate rates. Otherwise, UCB is almost 60K a year for non resident students. I don’t know how good UCB is for creative writing and writing in general though.

3

Thanks for all of that! I didn’t even consider an Ivy because I thought, “Well, no chance in hell with that record.”

I should say that I have a meeting at the CC to sort of plead my case; I’m trying to “clean up” my transcript and expunge some of the W’s since my grades have been pretty great and all of them can be justified with proof. The woman I spoke to seemed to be open.

Anyone else got some helpful advice?

4

What do you want to do? Write? Or teach? If you want to write, most creative writing programs will care a lot more about your samples and publications than your GPA or that you got a GED or whatever. Talent is talent. Your publications will help you a lot and in some people’s eyes you may appear to be a good bet because of them, over someone with a 4.0 who knows how to follow the usual course. Plus you are just plain more interesting. So be confident. Add Emerson College in Boston to your list, and UC-Irvine (Berkeley is excellent btw). All is not lost–it’s just beginning!

5

Ideally, the common hybrid of writing/teaching. I’m definitely applying to Emerson as well–just forgot to add it to my original post.

A friend of mine is at Cornell currently (in his last year, Chemical Engineering), and he’s also suggesting I give them an app. As one of the very few members of my entire family pursuing/craving higher education, the prospect of even applying to an Ivy and possibly being given a chance is turning my brain into oatmeal.

6

Bump.