What was your second-choice school?

[PopeDirkBenedict]

I only applied to one school. So my contribution to the thread is this:

Looks like University of Illinois!

 

[Songbird]

I only applied to one school. So my contribution to the thread is this:

Looks like University of Illinois!

"Great, I have a trig mid-term tomorrow ... and I'm being chased by Guido the Killer Pimp."

 

[Armchair_QB]

My back-ups were Iowa and TCU.

Looking back, more than 20 years later, I wonder what the **** I was thinking with regards to the latter.

 

[fmrsped]

Being the apparent baby of the group, and because of where I came from, I had a slightly different route when it came to choosing a college ... a.ka. the HOPE scholarship.

Georgia implemented it in 1993 -- others have followed, but the Peach State had it first -- if you maintained a 3.0 GPA throughout high school, and then you maintained a 3.0 GPA in college, then you get essentially a free ride to any public state school (or about $4K/semester to most private state schools.)

Paid for by the lottery; millions have benefitted in the last decade. It is all it's cracked up to be (even if everybody loses it after their first or second years ... funny how hard it is to maintain that B average with a semester-long hangover!) My grades were high enough to know I had no worries about getting accepted to my top choice, my SATs were higher than Pube's(8)), and my No. 1 also had a kick-ass J-school.

Thus, I only applied to one school: UGA.

Knew all along that my parents wouldn't/couldn't afford to send me anywhere else, and I didn't want to get student loans if I didn't have to, so Athens it was. Hoops will agree that my first/only choice was an easy one to make.

(For the purposes of this question, my No. 2 choice was Furman. They likely would have offered me a partial baseball scholarship if I had continued showing interest. But then I flat-out told them I was going to go to UGA with HOPE/a full ride, and they stopped calling. No big loss there.)

Buck--
An ex of mine did the exact same thing, and it sounded like a damn cool program; I wish Ohio had something similar. I had some nice schollies, but still have about $13K in loans left over that wouldn't be there if Ohio had a similar situation.

A good use of the lottery, if you ask me.

 

[Webster]

Much like Ragu -- I had (the same) school as my first choice early on in the process. My family was in a significant financial crunch (single mother with two kids in college) and I was told by this school during my junior year of HS that they would give me a scholarship/financial aid package which meant that I would go to school for free. Pretty much decided then.

I only applied to that school, Penn and SUNY-Binghamton. Didn't get into Penn and got into Binghamton. When I was accepted to Penn Law after college, I sent back my acceptance letter with the rejection letter from college with a note "now we're even". The Dean of Admissions actually called me to tell me that I made his day.

 

[Kritter47]

Got into my first choice school, which didn't have the prestige of my second, third and fourth choices (well, maybe the fourth choice), but it gave me a great scholarship package to keep the potentially sky-high costs to a minimum.

2. UNC (Chapel Hill) - got waitlisted, got in, was freaking gigantic when I went for a visit
3. Duke - got waitlisted, got in, seemed too stuffy when I went down for a visit
4. Tulane - got in, never visited. My dad wouldn't let me live in New Orleans. Though, considering I would have been right in the middle of Katrina last year, it looks like a great decision in retrospect.

 

[Donny in his element]

I was accepted by all three schools in which I expressed interest.
One, Ohio State, was not financially convenient.
The other was University of Florida.

The third, chosen school, doesn't have the national academic recognition of the previous two, but has certain intangibles.

A mutual friend says you went to the Harvard of the South. Though, he said it the other way. Harvard is the XXX of the North. I laugh.

My backup was Florida, then Maryland. Got into my first choice, so it didn't matter.

I think he might have stolen that from me. Ask for verification. Regardless, he's a cat who experienced two of the three on my list and really you can't go wrong with either. Certain intangibles definitely weren't missing from your school, either.

 

[Ralph Waldo Henderson]

Second choice was Syracuse. It was tempting, especially after they offered me $4,000 a year in scholarships, and some girl in the admissions office called a couple times to recruit. But as long as I got into my first choice - close to home, and after moving so much as a kid I wasn't ready to do it again - I was never really going anywhere else.

 

[tyler durden 71351]

I only applied at one school and I got in there...the state's flagship university which, at the time, had less-than-stringent academic requirements for entering freshmen. I guess my second choice would have been the University of Texas or the University of Georgia (I was a huge R.E.M. fan at the time and I figured I would bump into the band). Course, there's no way in hell my family could have afforded out-of-state tuition at either school, so I probably would have joined the Air Force for the scholarship.

 

[buckweaver]

... or the University of Georgia (I was a huge R.E.M. fan at the time and I figured I would bump into the band).

Oh, you would have.

The running joke around Athens when I was there (and this was even truer before I got there) was that you couldn't spend four years in the Classic City without running into Stipe or Mills at least once.

I found this to be as true as they said it was.

 

[TrooperBari]

Made a huge mistake on my first choice -- a female friend I had the hots for talked me into going with her. Only cost me $400/credit hour. : :

Secondary options were Wyoming, Iowa State and Northwest Missouri State.

 

[Cristiano_Ronaldo]

I was set to go to Syracuse or Boston College -- both of which I got into -- but my dad offered to pay for my entire education if I went south and went to Big State University. I did and I'm loving not having to pay back $120K in student loans. The money I saved allowed me to take two study abroad trips (England and Costa Rica) and I've loved every minute of my college experience.

Also got into: McGill, Pitt, Western Ontario.

 

[Ledbetter]

... or the University of Georgia (I was a huge R.E.M. fan at the time and I figured I would bump into the band).

Oh, you would have.

The running joke around Athens when I was there (and this was even truer before I got there) was that you couldn't spend four years in the Classic City without running into Stipe or Mills at least once.

I found this to be as true as they said it was.

True, but you have to pretend like it's no big deal.

Before he moved to Seattle, I used to see Buck all the time at different clubs. Any time a decent band was playing, he was there.

 

[BYH]

Holy Cross was my second choice.  And even though it's not as snooty as the school I went to, I kind of think I'd have enjoyed college more had I gone to HC.  I was put off by the idea of living in Worcester.  ****, I was 17.

It's Worcester. You SHOULD be put off by the idea of living there (hi Sweet Lou!).

Worcester does have two things going for it: More colleges per square mile than any city in America. And it's not Fitchburg!

 

[MU_was_not_so_hard]

The College of Charleston was my second choice and most days I wish I had gone there.

It pays to be on the sailing team.

 

[HoopsMcCann]

my second choice was texas a&m, because that's where my sister went

i was out of state everywhere (yeah, america does love its troops -- until it comes time to pay a bill)

chose the university of georgia. every damn day, i thank myself for making the finest decision i could make

and, yeah, i ran into stipe and mills all the time. although, as freshmen, we all thought it was cool the first time we ran into stipe. after living in athens nine years, well, let's say it happened quite a bit. especially when i lived across the street from the guy for a couple of years.

also as freshmen, we'd always guess which band name was actually r.e.m. doing a 'secret show.' my freshman year was '94 when monster came out, so we were convinced they'd do a 'secret' show. they didn't, at least that we found out about.

stipe and mills went to my bar all the time, too. so one day, stipe, mills and fred schneider walk into my bar -- schneider walks next to me and orders three beers and it sounds exactly like a bad comedian doing a joke about what fred schneider would sound like ordering three beers

 

[OkayPlayer]

I went to my second choice. My first choice, Northwestern, I didn't even bother applying to because there was no way in hell I could afford it. I had a state school or loans option from mi familia and wasn't about to be more than $100,000 in debt to major in journalism.
It worked out well. I'm now the boss of kids from more elite schools, which proved to me it's not the school you go to but what you put in.
You can go to the Cuse but if you're not putting in the work you'll still be lucky to end up at a 10,000-circ daily in some small Midwestern town. I interned at the nearest metro and strung for many local papers, which helped considerably when it came time for my job search.

 

[sportschick]

Ohio was my first choice and I wouldn't have applied elsewhere if my mother hadn't made me. Texas was my second choice, although my father, a major Aggie booster, would have disowned me if I'd gone there.

I have no regrets about my college. Ohio ****ing rocked!

 

[HoopsMcCann]

Texas was my second choice, although my father, a major Aggie booster, would have disowned me if I'd gone there.

t.u. would have made a lot more sense for me, and would have thought about it, but my sister - an ag -- would have disowned me as well.

she's already told her daughter, 5, she'll pay for her to go to college anywhere she wants except texas

my niece was cheering for the longhorns in january and it made my sister nuts

 

[Ledbetter]

Georgia was my second school, though I didn't want to stay home for college. I was recruited by a few coaches about playing tennis, but I chose to drink beer and skip classes at the Harvard of the South.