So the few friends I have and a lot of my teachers have told me the past few years in high school that they knew I would do great things in college and beyond, that I will go to a great college and learn so much, and that I'll have to come back and visit. Like me, many people dream of being able to finish high school to attend a college/university that they love and/or are really excited to attend. I applied to 8 colleges in my senior year and was only accepted to 3 (because 4 were Ivy/Ivy-like). I applied to the honors programs at each college that had one, and only got into one program. Getting into the honors program was a bit of big deal to me: typically better housing, earlier study abroad possibilities, internships and research within my department was easier to obtain, along with other perks. The honors program I was accepted into was a college I liked, but was WAY too expensive for my family ($68,000 per year). The college I loved denied me from their honors program, but most of my other friends who are attending this college were accepted. Surprisingly, I was rejected from Penn State's Main Campus and subsequently lost +$8,000 in scholarships I won at my science competitions - the scholarships were allowed for main campus only [I say "+$8,000" because the dean from the Arts and Science's college was apparently going to give me a lot of more money after I met with him after interviewing for my scholarship, but I digress]. This left me with the satellite campus close to my home. They essentially gave me a full ride to attend their college for 2 full years before transferring to Main Campus. I'll come back to this later. So my options were narrowed down to the college I loved and the college that gave me all of the money. I visited the college I thought I loved, and ended up falling in love even more with the college, the campus, my major's program, and everything there was at my university. My family paid my deposit within 24 hours of my visit, spent nearly $500 in merchandise, and I became psyched that the college I chose was awesome - and a bonus was that a few of my friends also were accepted there - even though I was only getting about a quarter of tuition paid through financial aid.
In the time between April and today, I went to New Student Orientation, scheduled my courses for the fall term, found out my housing assignment (single, but in a really awesome building with nearly everyone else in a single too - the building is known for everyone being really social with each other). I signed up and successfully auditioned for the marching band at the college, paid around $200 in merchandise and fees, and followed through all the steps needed so I can move in early to my dorm since the band starts a week before everyone else moves in. This now brings us up to the present-time.
So my family is not that well off financially, so we knew getting student loans to cover the $30,000 per year tuition plus books and other large fees (leaving me with around $150,000 in debt by graduation for an undergraduate degree). Well, we tried everything to cover my expenses and came up with private and govt. loan denials and scholarship denials. So as of August 8, 2014, my family became scared that I wouldn't be able to afford college. We set up a meeting with the financial aid office of my university; long story short, if I was an in-stater, they would do everything they could for me to attend. Since I was out of state, all they could do is refer us to one last govt. loan we didn't know about. The issue was that if we were denied this loan, we would only get $4K from it (out of the needed $30K). A big personal issue that I face is anxiety, and I have never had it worse than when we were applying for this final loan. We applied and were - for the last time - denied. I lost all hope and happiness for going to college, sat balled up in my room for nearly 10 hours (minus food and bathroom
), and now had to face trying to get into a college within the next week so I could start college in the fall.I first had to call up the marching band director and inform her - after she had released all the music and most of the drill for all of the different shows and songs - that she will be one mellophone short. This was a really heartbreaking moment. I did marching band in high school for all 4 years, learned to love and hate it at the same time, but became really excited after putting the time (and money) in auditioning and accepting my membership into the band. I also had to contact the local PSU satellite campus and see about if it would be possible to take back up their offer of acceptance. They let me in, but the money I had initially been offered that would cover all of my tuition (and then some more) is questionable. It had a May 1st deadline for acceptance and the financial aid office would need to contact the dean about it since the awards were from them.
The reason why I'm posting this is all just from the influx of emotions I'm having from today (or, well, yesterday now that it's the 17th). On the 16th, I was supposed to move into college today (well, now, yesterday) to start marching band and subsequently, celebration events for the new year and classes the following week. Of course, anger, jealously of other and fellow students, sadness, and hopelessness are all emotions circulating through me, but I don't really express this to anyone, let alone my parents. They are already upset to know that I'm unable to go to a great college because they were both denied loans and we don't like bringing up the topic in conversation because it usually ends up upsetting at least one of us.
I've been staying off all social media as much as possible. I'm part of my initial university's "class of 2018" page, the marching band page, and many other pages for band, housing, and etc. and everyone was posting messages, questions, photos, and all of their hype of going to college. They were excited to start college in 10 days (since they're not in band). I had to drop out of my dream college 3 days before I started. Right now, my friends who are going to my dream college and who are in the band just went through the first day of band camp. I've been sent pictures and other fun things, but though they say they feel bad and know it must be really tough for me, what they're doing to me makes that questionable. It's honestly, not something I would do to someone going through a tough challenge like this. I already have all my dorm stuff packed into my room that stares me down every time I go in there. An older friend of mine (now starting college as senior) says that to be able to go through something like this at such a crucial point in my life, and to go about it so calmly and professionally, is really amazing. I'm surprised, though, since II can suffer from pretty bad anxiety sometimes. I guess it's just because I'm a pretty big introvert. At least now that I'm going to the local campus, I can commute since it's so close (and there are no dorms) and I can build more!
The whole experience - which still isn't over yet - really has opened my eyes up to just how crazy and different the real world can be from what we learn and see from other people's lives while shrouded in the safety and security of public education. If anyone reading this has gotten this far (or managed to skim and pick up on this section) and is in high school or will soon be responsible for their higher educations, if there's one thing I must stress it is that a backup plan(s) is necessary. As I had found, no matter how much you love a university, no matter how smart you are, or how much money you get, life will always find it's way into your plans and will find a way to unravel them. I actually lied, there are two lessons I have learned (maybe three...): if you are in that college search, I cannot stress how important it is, no matter how much you want to go to that school, money matters - unless you / your family can afford to pay for all of your college). I didn't really consider that aspect since I expected to win scholarships from competitions I had been involved in, but I came one place short of getting a nice-sized scholarship. And this is just a bit of what has been going on in my life. though it may seem like there is no hope at times, there's always a way to make a happy ending out of an ugly situation. Though I am going to orientation / class scheduling on Monday for this new college, I'm looking into how I can pay and get back into the college of my dreams.
