<p>I am a National Merit Scholar from 2008. I’m going to the University of South Florida because their scholarship is about $48,000 total (it’s been more than enough money to cover tuition and books and rent to the point where I’ve been able to save a couple thousand dollars since moving to an actually affordable place off campus). They also give you a laptop (up to $1100 and you pay for anything over that) and an additional scholarship to go towards studying abroad. It also happened to be close enough to home that I can visit about once a month.
They also give me $1000 per semester for being valedictorian of my high school, and then there’s also Bright Futures and the Florida pre-paid program.<br>
The only thing I regret about college so far was starting out in chemical engineering instead of chemistry. Being able to get involved in research starting in my sophomore year has been amazing, and I can say that the chemical engineering and chemistry classes most definitely challenge me enough (in the case of one class, more than enough). None of the general education classes I’ve taken have challenged me, but then I wouldn’t expect them to be much of a challenge.</p>