<p>Why I Didn’t Consider Any Ivies:</p>
<p>1.) I wanted merit aid.</p>
<p>2.) I like the Midwest. </p>
<p>3.) I wanted to be at least within 4 or 5 hours of my family.</p>
<p>4.) While the intellectual nature of the Ivy league schools was appealing, I don’t like excessive competition, elitism, excessive ambition, and a “work hard/play hard” attitude. </p>
<p>5.) I wanted natural racial and socioeconomic diversity (I’m going to a state school), not the hand-picked utopian diversity of the Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>6.) I want to go to graduate school, so, as others have said, undergrad doesn’t matter as much. This also creates financial considerations.</p>