The College Road Trip
- Describe what your experience was like this week. I think that the college road trip was a great way to get to know colleges outside of the area that I live in. Sharing a hotel room also was an interesting experience, but not an entirely new one due to the number of overnight trips I have been on in middle school and such. Even though the bus rides were extremely long and grueling, it was all worth going to the colleges in the end because I gained more insight and knowledge as to what I want from a university, whether that is within California or otherwise.
- What differences did you notice between the different schools you visited? The most obvious differences between the universities I visited were the campus size, the school culture, the emphasis placed on certain subjects or things that made the schools stand out.
- How has this experience changed/influenced your ideas around college? For example:
- Being away from home/parents I’ve always thought that living on campus would be a great way to foster independence and experience living on my own for the first time. Managing my time, money and other resources would help me be more prepared for life outside of college when I have a job and a place of my own. So therefore, that aspect of my thinking hasn’t changed too much.
- Driving long distances to get home I wouldn’t mind being a distance away from home as long as I’m getting the level of education that will help me pursue a career I want to enter into. Being a long distance away from home would help me appreciate the differences between my hometown and the town/city of the college that I would go to as well as how much I really depend on my parents.
- Being immersed in a different city/culture It is always interesting to experience new things in a different city, especially the one in which the college I would be going to would be located. Learning about lifestyles and social culture that is different from what I grew up with would be an experience I would gladly take when given the chance.
- Being responsible for taking care of yourself This trip made me realize that above all responsibilities in college classes, social life and everything else, the most important thing I would still need to do would be to responsibly take care of myself. Having depended on my parents for so long, I would probably forget many of the very basic things that I need to do, like doing laundry or getting enough sleep.
- Being away from home/parents I’ve always thought that living on campus would be a great way to foster independence and experience living on my own for the first time. Managing my time, money and other resources would help me be more prepared for life outside of college when I have a job and a place of my own. So therefore, that aspect of my thinking hasn’t changed too much.
- What are you looking forward to the most in college? I am mostly looking forward to living on my own for the first time and gaining more experience in matters such as time and money management as well as experiencing the social culture within a university. Taking new classes, making new friends and finding my own niche will be the greatest part of going to college for me.
- What are you most concerned about for college? I am most concerned about the classes themselves and all the workload despite whatever I’ve heard from college tour guides. More than that, it’s the process of applying to universities that I’m more worried about, especially the importance of grade point average, SAT/ACT scores, extracurriculars, and internships leading up to those applications.
- Are you interested in Study Abroad? Study Abroad seems like a program that I would definitely be interested in pursuing maybe in my sophomore or junior year of college. I think it would be a good experience for me to study in another country and gain some perspective on how different it is from the one I grew up in.
- Did you hear about any clubs or organizations you would be interested in joining? I didn’t get to know about that many specific clubs, only that there is a huge variety that I can choose from and that if I don’t like any of them, I can start my own. As of right now I think I would join something Harry Potter or Dungeons and Dragons related, along with a club that does some community service of some sort.
- What type of college (or trade school) are you interested in attending? I’m interested in attending a public university with a high student population that is relatively selective when it comes to SAT/ACT scores, GPA and other admissions requirements. I’d prefer to stay in-state because the overall tuition is less for California residents in the colleges I want to attend. UCSD, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine are some of my top choices in college because of their larger variety of majors and minors which pertain more to my area of interest, which happens to be psychology and neuroscience.
- Do you think you will stay in-state, or go to another state/country? For the most part, I’m more inclined to stay in state because of the considerably less amount of tuition cost for California residents as I mentioned above, but I will apply to out of state colleges that I think will be helpful in helping me pursue a career in my chosen field.