Chances for scholarships

oncearunner
Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:45:49 +0000

okay, where to begin…
last fall i only applied to seven schools, and was rejected by two and waitlisted by one. that left me with dickinson, colby, colgate, and penn state-university park to choose from. penn state was too big for my liking and colgate just gave me the “no” feeling…i walked on campus, and there just was no connection whatsoever. i had only visited colby once before, and that was during the fall prior to my senior year, and i did not have time to go visit again after i was accepted, since i live in nj, and it was hard for me to get up there. anyhow, i did an overnight visit with dickinson, and liked it a lot. in fact, i liked it so much that i checked off the “yes, i will be attending dickinson college” box on the reply form. so, why didn’t i go? well, where i live in nj (very close to a very well known ivy league university) people put a very big emphasis on going to the “best” school that you get into. if you go to a school, it’s assumed that that was the best you could do. thus, for most kids, it’s ivy league or bust. i never applied to an ivy because i was very much against this mentality, or so i thought, until i inexplicably whited out my dickinson reply and decided i would have to go to colby if colgate wouldn’t do. so now to colby…
okay, so i went up to colby this past fall, and i knew from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be right. don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of nice people up there, and some really great professors, but overall, i was not impressed with the academic program and there are quite a few trust fund babies if you know what i mean. there is grade inflation like whoa (if it weren’t for my microeconomics class–econ, by the way, is the strongest and most difficult at colby and one of the best at a liberal arts college in the country–and my ridiculuous professor and is antiguated beliefs, i would have had over a 4.0 last semester. oh, and did i mention that i hardly did any work?), and there is nothing–and i mean nothing–to do in waterville.
if you’re really into skiing and have the funds to support that kind of endeavor, then maine is probably the place for you. if you’re not, however, the winters can get quite lonely (and cold!) as you’re forced to sit around in the middle of nowhere while all your friends go to sugarloaf. there is an unbelievable schism between the town of waterville and the college, and students are not warmly received in town. i was naive enough to think that maine was just some happy, go lucky kind of place, but after being there for a semester i learned about the 70 plus recent registered sex offenders in the town of waterville alone, as well as a campus abduction and murder that went under media radar about two years back.
anyway, carlisle isn’t a hopping place or anything, but at least you’re in close proximity to civilization, even if it is only harrisburg. for the money, you can get an education that is similar in quality to colby (check out the princeton review academic ratings…they’re really close). if you are interested in colby, feel free to pm me and i’ll try my best to answer your questions. don’t get me wrong…colby isn’t a horrible place and it could be the right place for you depending on who you are…i’m just not that type of person.