Decision Time

As the calendar begins to turn towards February, many seniors are getting close to making a college decision for the fall of 2013. As for me, I have already made my decision and will plan on making it official in a few days. Once my parents and I complete the FAFSA and other financial aid documents I will officially sign with DePauw University to play golf and study broadcast journalism.

My DePauw acceptance letter

With my future nearly set in stone, I would like to use this post to give advice to underclassmen who are beginning their college search. Here is a list of five suggestions when thinking about your future.

1. Keep all options open: At the beginning of my junior year, I had only really considered large schools like Ohio State, South Carolina, Alabama, and Ohio. My mom suggested that I look at some smaller schools like Hanover College and Butler University. We decided to go on a small trip to Indiana and look at Indiana University and Butler. When scheduling the trip, we decided to squeeze one more visit in and thought it wouldn’t hurt to look at a small liberal arts school called DePauw University. I walked on campus and said, “mom, I’m going here.” It was the ninth school that I visited.

2. Never ignore letters and emails: Always take a glance at everything you get, even if it seems ignorable. Never toss it in the trash without at least skimming it first. Three of the schools I visited I learned about through mail or email.

3. Listen to you parents: Nobody wants to admit it, but they know best. Six of the nine schools I visited were because of my mom and dad.

4. Look in and out of state: In state public schools are great, especially in Ohio, but don’t let that deter you from searching out of state. It is a good idea to have options everywhere, especially if you want to escape the Mariemont bubble.

5. Apply to schools even if you don’t think you can get in: I got accepted to two schools that had very high academic standards and I didn’t believe that I could possibly get in. I even considered not applying to some colleges just to save some time and money. DePauw was one of those schools.

I hope you underclassmen will keep this in mind when considering schools. One important thing to remember is a phrase from a movie I saw recently; “A place is only as good as the people in it.”