College Recommendations?

New College of Florida - lots of scholarships, really liberal, lots of research opportunities, NO GRADES! There's a formerly active INFJs user, also from Miami, also went to a magnet school, also lgbt, at NCF. Not known much for sciences, but I think you can cross-register with a nearby large university.

Brown - Ivy League for hipsters =P

I go to Rutgers, which is diverse, by which, I mean full of Asians. Especially on Busch Campus, where most science programs are located.

Georgia Tech? Virginia Tech? I dunno much about them, except they're good public universities with the word "tech" in their names.

University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign (or however you spell it) - my dad got his PhD in chemistry there. The chem department is pretty well respected.

You might want to take the TOEFL now, to prevent further annoyances =/ Judging by your forum posts I would not have guessed English is your third (!) language, but large universities don't have the time to look deeply into applications.
 
I'm sorry but a college that doesn't give out grades is the most idiotic idea I have ever heard of, and it shouldn't even be legal.
 
IndigoSensor said:
I'm sorry but a college that doesn't give out grades is the most idiotic idea I have ever heard of, and it shouldn't even be legal.
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They have one of the highest rates of undergrads going on to grad school:

Top 19 Producers of Ph.D Recipients in the Social Sciences and Humanities (per 1000 undergrad students)

Drawn from NSF data covering 1997-2006

1 Swarthmore Coll (26.3)
2 Oberlin Coll (23.3)
3 Haverford Coll (18.8)
4 New Coll of Florida (17.4)
5 Bryn Mawr Coll (16.7)
6 Grinnell Coll (16.4)
7 Yale Univ (15.8)
8 Harvard Univ (15.3)
8 Barnard Coll (15.3)
10 Reed Coll (14.9)
10 Pomona Coll (14.9)
12 Princeton Univ (14.4)
13 Smith Coll (14.0)
13 Amherst Coll (14.0)
15 Wesleyan Univ (13.2)
16 Carleton Coll (13.1)
17 Williams Coll (12.5)
18 Vassar Coll (12.4)
19 Brown Univ (12.2)

granted, this is the social sciences and humanities, hence my caveat that NCF isn't known for chemistry (I'm not sure they even have a Computer Science program, which would have been a problem for me)
 
I'd give strong consideration to U of Florida. Gainesville is a very open-minded community, and there's some pretty strong science programs here. I don't know where in Fla you live, but this (I live here) is definitely an open-minded place that's not about golf, money, and fundamenalism.

Otherwise, I'd recommend, especially for sciences, a large state university. Maryland's my alma mater, I'd recommend it very highly. The atmosphere is northern but the weather is relatively mild, and it's a 12 hour ride from Florida.

If you're going to grad school, that's the place where people will care where your degree is, so you might want to go in state and bank the cash for out-of-state grad school if it's in your future. That's where you'd likely end up working afterwards anyway.
 
If money is an issue and you really want to go to a high dollar college, I suggest the community college at first route as well. The first 2 years are usually gen ed requirements anyway--or basically a bit of this and that from all areas. You will take Eng 1, Eng 2, some history, some science... You get the picture. Make sure the community college you pick is accredidated and you should be good to transfer to another once you finish your AA or AS portion and go on to you BA. I would not suggest transferring from more than one place to another--because you will lose credits in the process after you do it more than once. Many major universities are a couple hundred or so a credit hour (3 credit hour classes) while community colleges tend to be a lot less. You need to be diligent about the courses you take to make sure they transfer and they are appropriate for the degree you eventually want to persue. Additionally they are smaller and allow you to get into the ebb and flow of college classes. My Psych class had 800 students in it--you were even less of a number. Of course this doesnt' fit the grand ideal of "going away" to college for most students but tends to be a good fit if you want to get out without being oodles and oodles of dollars in debt. I work at a University. The best advice I can give you is to remember that College IS NOT job training. It is education. The purpose is to give you a broad educational background the first 2 years and after that your courses began to focus (narrow) into your chosen field. You should seek out opportunities to volunteer or do internships in your chosen field to broaden your resume before you leave college to make yourself more marketable.
 
IndigoSensor said:
I'm sorry but a college that doesn't give out grades is the most idiotic idea I have ever heard of, and it shouldn't even be legal.
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Look at Reed.


Basically, everyone who comes in is a genuis and has to work their ass off anyway. They do have grades at Reed (which is the main one I know of that doesn't give out grades), but they are kept secret and you're not allowed to see them unless you request at a later date, which most students ironically don't.
 
Reed is one of the best at sending students to PhD programs, better than all the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford. If it didn't cost so damn much I would've considered it.

(although, Ivies send a lot more to med school, law school, and MBA programs)
 
tronpaul said:
Reed is one of the best at sending students to PhD programs, better than all the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford. If it didn't cost so damn much I would've considered it.

(although, Ivies send a lot more to med school, law school, and MBA programs)
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Thank you so much guys for all of your suggestions!! I greatly appreciate it :)

Reed looks very nice tronpaul, but sadly my unweighted GPA is not very close to a 3.9(if unweighted is what they are looking at)

My SAT scores are also not in that range though I am retaking it...

Got my class rank today..82%(in part because my school has IB and I am not in it) their GPA's tend to be weighted a lot.
 
*facepalm* for the last time most schools (I'm talking like 95%) don't look at unweighted GPA. JUST APPLY. THE WORST THEY CAN DO IS SAY NO.
 
[MENTION=501]tronpaul[/MENTION]

Yeah, I didn't get accepted to Reed. Even if I had, I probably wouldn't have been able to afford it.

Also, I agree with Indigo. Just apply to some places. You're taking a lot of AP classes and stuff, and they should take that into account (ideally, anyway).
 
IndigoSensor said:
*facepalm* for the last time most schools (I'm talking like 95%) don't look at unweighted GPA. JUST APPLY. THE WORST THEY CAN DO IS SAY NO.
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I echo Indy here
You are rejected from 100% of the colleges you don't apply to.
 
Where you go matters much less these days than if you simply have a degree in general. Hell I read a recent article in the news that many places of employment prefer students who simply go to a basic "state college" than some private ivy league school because it makes you a more responsable well rounded person, instead of one who's ego is so far up their backside that they are impossible to employ.

If you really want to get out of the state and "live a little" by studying "abroad" (even if it's still in country) then by all means do so- it can be a great learning experience that is more valuble than anything you'll learn in your first few years of college.

If you are pretty set with what you want to do and don't mind sticking around and really want to graduate with minimum debt, than simply going to your local community college for the first two or so years to get an associates, then transferring to a 4-year university is a good route to take that will save you a LOT of money. I'm on my 2nd-ish year of school (technically third year but I'm just taking classes at the moment I need to grad with an associates that are CONVIENTLY only offered one time during the year), and I've yet to take out a student loan cause all my classes have been generally affordable (about $550 per quarter full time student). Of course I'm at a community college at the moment, and I had a two-year scholorship for my first two years that covered the majority of expenses.

I'm kinda lucky though, my dad works at the local university which is where I plan to go once I graduate with my associates. This gives me an 80% tuition discount which basically lets me take classes there at about the same rate at my community college. It'll be nice to graduate with no debt at all and not having to ask my parents for money :) Easily possible as long as you can handle working part time on top of school full time (which is only 12-14 credit hours a week). Pizza delivery tends to produce enough change to live reasonably comfortable even though I can't really save up for too much, but that's expected being a college student.6
 
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