<p>Our daughter attended a very mediocre, rural public h.s. (had ONE AP course!). She had a 4.0 gpa K-12 and was the val of her h.s. class. We knew that the level of college preparedness could vary from one val to another depending on the rigor of their h.s. cirriculum. BUT, we were very reassured in D’s abilities to attend a top school due to the fact that in things that you could compare on a national level, she did quite well. She was a NMF and both ACT and SAT scores were in the 99th% including an 800 on the CR portion of the ACT. D was accepted to Washington University in St. Louis - her stats were in the upper 25%, but the school is really a reach for anyone. She was accepted at our StateU and a private school ranked in the 80s by USN+WR, both with four year free rides. She was also accepted to Notre Dame as Notre Dame Scholar. When trying to decide which school to attend, she suffered what some would call a “crisis of confidence” - can I really hold my own at one of these top schools?? </p>
<p>In the end, she chose WashU and just finished her freshman year. She is a combined science/foreign language major with a music minor, along with taking the premed prereqs. She does have the pressure of keeping her gpa at a certain level incase she wants to apply to medical school, which is her thinking at the present time. She finished the year with a 3.7 gpa, receiving one B each semester (from the dreaded freshman chemistry). As others have mentioned, she encountered students, the likes of which she had never seen before. Phenoms who never attend class, but saunter in on test day and get an A. D’s “social life” basically consisted of studying, study groups, review sessions, professor office hours, professor help sessions, etc. Other than her instrument lesson and group practices and concerts, she studied. And studied. And studied. She said, “Someday I will look back on this year and think it was fun”. Don’t get me wrong, she LOVES WashU. She loved that she sat down in a study cubicle that had “Where is John Galt when you need him” graffiti written on the wall - maybe one other student from her h.s. would have known who that was. She is blown away when watching how her study partners solve a difficult problem. She loves the diversity of the campus. In the end, that is what she wanted. To be surrounded like people who thought like she did, even if some of them take it to an even higher plane!</p>
<p>Although she knew it was hard, I think it ended up being hard in a way she hadn’t anticipated. In the past, when she (rarely) encountered a topic in class that was challenging, she just studied harder. That tactic doesn’t really work in an academic setting like WashU. She says she feels like she is in the process of learning a whole new way to think. The classes she found hard were the large premed prereq science “weed out” courses. Math, no problem. Upper level language classes, loved them. Aced writing. She studied more for Chemistry than all of her other classes combined. If she does go the medical school route, we will know that it is truly her passion. We know this because no one would go through what she has put herself through to succeed if it wasn’t a passion.</p>
<p>Several times when things were rough during the year I would ask her, “Don’t you want to come home and go to “StateU” for free?” Always wanted to give her that window of opportunity in case she wanted to bolt for the door! One e-mail I received on a particularly trying day said at the end - “And despite my exaggerated self-pity, no I don’t want to come home and go to StateU, thank you very much!”</p>