<p>adcollegefreak: I’m glad you chose a school that’s going to save you a lot of money in the end. That’s more important than getting into debt by going to a “brand name” school and not being able to pay it back. That’s what I would have done in your situation even if I was accepted into UMass. Rutgers New Brunswick gave me around $17,500 in terms of financial aid, Stafford Loans not included, so again, I’m very happy with what I got and wouldn’t change a thing. I even have a cousin who’s graduating from Rutgers this year, so I have a pretty good connection to the school and a lot of my family lives up in New York and New Jersey, so it’s a win win situation for me.</p>
<p>Some of my friends got rejected or waitlisted from UGA, the big flagship school down in Georgia which I didn’t apply to simply because it wasn’t my kind of school (I know it’s a cheap, affordable good state school, but it just never interested me that much) despite taking lots of AP classes and having 1800+ SAT scores. They received around 19,000 applications this year, making it a record year for them so it’s not just UMass that this has been happening to. It seems to be a lot of really competitive state schools have witnessed the same kinds of problems. I have a friend who got rejected from both Emory and UGA, so I kind of guess he didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to get into schools like that this year.</p>