<p>(Please pardon my grammar, it has been a long day...and also read the whole thing if you have enough patience.)</p>
<p>Let me introduce myself and say that I am a pretty bright but extremely lazy student. I find high school very pointless, other than the fact that it gets us into college. The content, the lack of quality of the majority of the teachers, and the repetitiveness of practically everything all contribute to the fact that arguably you are wasting four years of your life learning nothing. I like to argue that you will not only learn this material in college, but you you learn it far better then in a crappy state-funded room using the cheapest materials possible.</p>
<p>I am not going to say I am a genius like most people would on this forum, but defining someone who got a 2400 and a 4.0 is pretty closed minded and ridiculous. My stats are a above average 2000 SAT and a 3.4 GPA with 6 AP's, which I am I am proud of and not proud of in many ways. My first choice is McGill university in Montreal, Canada, while my second and more realistic choice is University of Connecticut. Seeing that it is not logical to expect the best, I am fully prepared to go to Uconn when the time comes.</p>
<p>Ironically, my father went to Uconn undergrad, NYU Mount Sinai Med school, and then to Yale for residency, and he is fully committed to send me to Uconn, mostly because of the price-to-education ratio, and how it "blows everything else out of the water". My father is probably the smartest man I know, and I am not just saying that because he is my father. His reasoning makes sense, and arguably most private schools are just about the money. My plan is most likely go to Uconn (hopefully McGill), and go to Business school, and then go into doctorate studies with a focus on engineering. </p>
<p>Uconn is probably one of the most well known, if not most recognized school in Connecticut. Everyone in my highschool applies there, even the "geniuses" and idiots, with each thinking that Uconn is either their backup or the best party school you can go too. Its academic rating is rising each year, and the in state cost is exceptional compared to pretty much every other competitive college. Uconn is best described as our flagship state school, and is rated the best public university in New England.</p>
<p>So I know Uconn is the number one public university in New England right now, so let me start off by saying that I know that it's a good school with good advantages. However, I like to look at the bigger picture of things, and I would argue that graduate school is more important than undergraduate. I have also known that I have always wanted to go to some kind of Ivy league university for graduate school. As of now, during my senior year in highschool, this seems like a far fetched dream. Seeing that Uconn is probably going to be the school I go to, my real worry is Uconn itself.</p>
<p>I have recently heard that only about a handful of students who graduated from Uconn receive admission to Ivy League graduate schools. I even heard that only one student was accepted to harvard in the past couple of years, which seems like baloney. However, as right or wrong this my be, the source that told me this does have a point: even though Uconn is considered good by many in Connecticut, what are the chances of getting into an ivy league school after you graduate? Uconn is neither a University of California or University of Michigan, nor could you say it's even a University of Florida. It definitely not a Carnegie Mellon or Tufts University either. My biggest concern is my future, and as of now, Uconn seems to be one of the only choices I have.</p>
<p>In all, I would like to know someone's opinion on this. My question is that do a lot of "Uconn" type graduates get into ivy league schools for graduate studies? In other words, do a lot of kids who graduate from flagship universities get accepted into Ivy league graduate programs?</p>
<p>Please, I beg you to not answer with bull answers like "college is what you make of it" or "if you try hard enough". With my current knowledge and assumptions, my argument would be that to even have a chance, you would not only need to be in the honors program, you would have to graduate with a very good GPA, in addition to a lot of EC's and some awards. Even then, you would probably have to be ranked very very high up in your class. Even with these stats, I would still be skeptical.</p>
<p>I originally posted this on Uconn's forum, so replace Uconn with your flagship state school.</p>
<p>Anyone have any insights, thoughts, perspectives?</p>