To gap or not to gap

AnarchistHuda
Wed, 08 Aug 2012 03:33:20 +0000

It’s been ages since last time I came to CC. This is probably gonna b a long boring post, but please bear with me.
I am a middle class girl from the third world (not-so-rich in american standards)
I went to a public high school & am self-taught everything from english to programming… I just graduated this year.
We had no counselor in my school & I got no assistance preparing/ applying to universities in the US, so u can guess, I made a number of stupid decisions…
Anywho, I ended up with two rejections from MIT & uPenn, and two acceptances from Drexel & st.John’s. I wanna go into mechE, so I chose Drexel. The problem however, is that even after a pretty big scholarship from Drexel, I still can’t make it.
& probably, I won’t be going to Drexel this fall without a sort of divine intervention…
now, here’s the thing: where I come from, I could go to college almost for free (got real good grades, strong ECs & such). But if I went to college here, that’d be it for my chances at a better education in the US. Why? For short: colleges here SUCK. They barely take any transfers from here…
So my other option, is taking a gap year, and applying again nxt fall. I am not really in favor of that option, you see, because in the third world, your resources 4 doing something useful outside school/college, is really really limited…And there’s always the concern: what if, I got rejected again. I’d have wasted a year for no apparent reason.
It seems like I’m stuck between a rock & a hard place: taking the risk in a gap year & hoping for better luck when I re-apply, or just forgetting this altogether & moving on.
I’d really appreciate your opinion (if you’re still reading)
& good luck to all of y’all ;)

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