<p>GO WITH YOUR PASSION.</p>
<p>I went to Dartmouth undergrad and to Yale for business school. Don’t get caught up in the name of “Yale” or status. USAFA has plenty of status and your education will be just as good as Yale. If you leave the military after your commitment is up, your resume will be as welcome as one with a Yale degree - probably more. You will have served your country and you’ll be given responsibilities that no company would give you at such a young age. Believe me - when you’re 25 or 30, no one will care where you went to college.</p>
<p>You’ve obviously spent time in New Haven - do you really want to spend four years in New Haven with a group of kids who, for the largest part, wouldn’t lift a finger to defend our country. Really, al-Qaeda could be storming the walls of one of the Yale Colleges and most of them would be debating whether or not Bin Laden was really a threat or was it really all our fault that they don’t “like” us.</p>
<p>And don’t get caught up in the idea that you’ll have so much choice (summers, internships, etc) at Yale. You’ll have plenty of choices at USAFA. Real freedom is not about having choice - but making decisions. You can go to the supermarket and pick from one of 200 breakfast cereals - would your freedom be any less if you could only pick from 50?</p>
<p>Tell your father to get over it - this is your life and your education and your PASSION. </p>
<p>Last, and I don’t want to scare you into choosing USAFA, but just think about this - John Kerry went to Yale and Hillary Clinton to Yale Law School. Yeah, I know, George Bush did too but it’s probably the only school he could get into because he was a legacy.</p>
<p>My son, btw, is on the waiting list at West Point and has a four-year Army ROTC scholarship at UCLA which he’s accepted. He steered away from the Ivy League. Choices are his.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>