I couldn’t go to SCU because they didn’t meet full need. I made a mistake and should have applied to Occidental, College of the Holy Cross or Colgate instead. Hell, I think I should have applied to Boston College, Notre Dame and Georgetown too, but what’s done is done in this regard.
I chose UCI instead, without ever visiting, since I assumed it would be great because its a higher ranked UC and I thought they had a certain minimum standard they were upheld too. Turns out my expectations were too high for Irvine. (Just for the record, UC’s at full price, including room and board and a meal plan is equivalent to my EFC. In other words, no matter where I go, I’d have to pay around $25,000-$30,000 per year – private or public).
I began as an English major at Community College and so I was busy doing the American and British literature sequence instead of Calc. I just took a stats class to meet IGETC and applied to transfer. And in all honesty, I wasn’t confident that my gpa wouldn’t take a hit if I did take Calc at community college. I had hoped that my school would support me in my ability to take the class after transferring. I didn’t get the memo that UC’s treat their undergrads like trash.
To be fair, I had no mentors through this entire process. I had to figure it all out on my own since my parents were unsupportive and they didn’t know a damned thing about colleges, where was good, how much it costs or what you learn at college. My mom just became successful through networking. All she knows how to do is write well with good grammar. Besides this basic skill she doesn’t really know how to do anything else besides algebra. I mean, that’s what you would expect with a high school diploma thuogh.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty I suppose. My future children will be attending LAC’s, that’s all I can say at this point.