The college of my dreams wasn't the college of my dreams back then. In fact, I didn't even want to apply at first! Growing up, I was all about the University of Illinois. Everyone in my family, and I do mean EVERYONE, went there. I would have been the first member of the third generation to go. When the time came to start looking at schools, I was going to a private college counselor who introduced me to several schools I wouldn't have looked at otherwise, mostly private schools. My dad then said if I was going to apply to out-of-state private schools, I should apply to out-of-state public schools too. Anyhow, I ended up applying to 8 schools: Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, American (in DC), Tulane, Oberlin, Washington University (in St. Louis), and University of Pennsylvania. (That was my reach, just-to-see-if-I-could-get-into-the-Ivy-League school) I applied enthusiastically to six of them and only applied to Indiana and Wisconsin because my dad wanted me to apply to public schools out of state. I had no intention of going to either one.
IU was the first place I got accepted to. I remember I got the envelope and thought "Okay, cool, at least I got in somewhere." That was it. No big deal, I wasn't going. I was more excited to hear from the other schools. My first choice was Tulane, followed by American and Illinois. I visited Tulane and loved it, but they decided I was too rich to qualify for financial aid. (yeah, right!) So there went that. American did offer me a pretty nice scholarship, but even with that it would have been fairly expensive.
My dad is a high school golf coach, and every year he went to the Indiana Invitational women's golf tournament because several of his former golfers played in it. That year, the tournament just happened to coincide with IU's Red Carpet Days for admitted students...therefore, I went down to IU with him for that, not entirely happily. Well. As soon as I got down to campus, I immediately knew I was where I belonged. I was on the tour planning where I was going to live, how I'd get from place to place, etc. TOTALLY took me by surprise. The rest is history.
All in all, I got into all the schools I applied to except for University of Pennsylvania. But that was the last school I heard from so I wasn't too disappointed.
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