I am a junior in the Philadelphia area. I should be a senior but I repeated 11th grade because of depression and anxiety making it nearly impossible for me to get to school, and now I attend an online school. I have a 1950 on the SAT and that’s pretty much all I have to offer. No extracurriculars, no ACT, no AP classes. The online school doesn’t offer AP’s so I couldn’t even if I wanted to. With the way cyberschool works - at least in my case - you essentially teach yourself all the material through a laptop with no human interaction and it makes it very difficult to get good grades. Consequently, my overall GPA has plummeted from a 3.8 to a 3.2 or so. I got two credits from my previous real school, only because my grades during the first and second marking periods were high enough to average as passing by the end of the year. Normally an A student, I left the school with a 68 in physics. This didn’t do wonders for the GPA either… sigh. I’m at a loss (multiple losses really) and I have no idea what decent college in my general area would bother accepting me. Sure, the SAT might be good but that’s literally all I have to my name worth the slightest amount of recognition. I know I’m intelligent so it’s devastating that I had to be hindered so severely by things I barely have any control over.
Your SAT is better than most people in the world lol. Don’t compare your numbers to CC, these are the elite of the elite. You don’t have to take the ACT when you already took the SAT. Also, extracurriculars mean absolutely nothing since you won’t be applying to the elite schools like Yale. Your GPA is not bad and you still have time to improve. Aim for the best grades possible from now on and you should be able to go to a great college. Just cause it is not an ivy league doesn’t mean your doomed.
Your stats are well above the community college level. Could you improve your VS grades with a tutor? More importantly are you recovered enough, or do you have your depression/anxiety under control? Could you handle the stressful environment of a competitive college without relapsing?
You don’t need super EC’s or grades at most state colleges. I would speak with your doctor and get better feel about how much stress you can handle and use that as a guide.
No way.
Do you have a budget, geographic & size preferences?
The most important thing is for you to get your depression and anxiety under control. Until that happens, it won’t be smart for you to try to attend a regular college or university anywhere full time.
How much can your family afford to pay for college? Will you need significant financial aid? If you will need a lot of money, then you need to keep your GPA up, and aim for a better score on the SAT (or a high score on the ACT). That will improve your chance of admission at places where your stats can get you some money. If your grades and test scores are high enough, there are even a few places that will flat-out guarantee admissions and significant merit aid: http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
What do you want to major in? Have you done career research? What do you want to do?
If you have a major in mind and have a ballpark idea for a career, this will help guide you.
First, you have to believe in yourself and be your own advocate and not feel like you have to settle for something. As you probably know there are a lot of paths to success. It’s your life. You have a right to happiness.
And, as has already been said, manage your anxiety and depression. This is key. The anxiety/depression can derail any good plan/strategy. So can may other physical conditions.
@EYeager I appreciate your response, I found it pretty reassuring. I’m not shooting for a top school, so I guess the extracurricular thing was a misunderstanding. I figured every college likes to see that kind of stuff, but apparently not?
@TooOld4School My struggle with mental illness has been a painstaking work in progress for a few years now, but I believe I’m starting to get better. Of course these things will never completely go away, but with the guidance of great therapist (and a past therapist) my inventory of tools to fight my anxiety is ever growing. With a year and a half until I start college, I’d like to believe I could handle it by then.
@happymomof1 I am well aware that with my current psychological status college would be a nightmare, but I am nearly 19 and I’m not getting any younger. I have to go to college somehow someway… Otherwise I’d be letting my intelligence go to waste. I still have a lot of time until I’d start my freshman year so I think I may be able to tackle it when the time comes.
My family totally can’t afford tuition so that brings about another huge problem. I tried to do my best on the SAT, but it’s still not enough to grant me any kind of scholarship. This has been eating me up recently. I wish I could take one last old SAT. With the new format I’d basically be taking it for the first time all over again, so I’m not sure what to do.
Financially it may make sense to do a few years of Community College and then transfer. If money is tight then being cognizant of that would be smart. Good CC grades would probably even give you the chance to make it into a university more competitive than one you could get into straight out of high school with your current grades. It would also give you the chance to ease into the college life more which could help the any psychological concerns.
@mreapoe I still have yet to figure out what I’d want to major in, which I’m sure isn’t a very uncommon dilemma but it makes my situation worse nonetheless. Regardless of what I plan to study, though, I’m aware that I won’t have very many options for colleges so I can’t help but find minimal use in the whole “refusing to settle for less” mentality. As much as I wish I could keep my hopes up for that sort of thing, reality is reality…
@Lagging this is a suggestion my therapist has made. I wouldn’t be so hesitant to take that route if I had a better impression of community college. From what I’ve read it seems like it’d be a pretty subpar experience. Though I guess it would be a way for me to ease my way into the social aspect of college. It’d be the best decision financially too like you pointed out…
@joewantstoknow
You’re thinking in the short term rather than the long term and measuring yourself against others.
Don’t compare. Strive to create your own path, be tenacious.
I mean, don’t settle for less than your own happiness and don’t let others define your life.
There are more than a few ways to achieve what you want, if you have the WILL.
You seem to be measuring your achievement by the first step you take. That’s just a beginning.
Patience is the mother of Will.
Try taking some career and aptitude tests. Go online and research different professions. There’s more information than you know what to do with just a click away. Do some leg work.
Like everything, there is some variability across community college, but they are the unsung heroes of the US university system. For somebody who is out of practice going to classes, has very limited funds and doesn’t know what they want to do they are a great option. At most community colleges if you get an AA with a solid GPA you are guaranteed a transfer into your state university- and Penn State is an very strong option in many fields of study. The stronger Community Colleges now have some pretty good advisors (obvious warning: they aren’t all good, so don’t be put off if the first one you talk to is a dud!) to help you plan what courses to take that will fulfill requirements while still letting you try areas of study that you might be interested in.
As a side note, the age range of people at CC’s - and the types of people that you meet there!- is so broad that you will not feel out of place. A lot of people use CCs to get started at university- but many others are there for specific classes.
One last note: you can go off to college thinking that you want to study A, then get there and discover that B or even C (which you had never considered) are what you really want to do. This is incredibly normal. So don’t stress about finding your exact path before you start. Be smart about considering options, but be flexible as well.