One of the things that has been taking over my life lately is the college decision process. Right now, I am choosing between 5 very different schools all in very different locations that cost different amounts and offer me different opportunities. Basically, I love some things about all of the schools and I hate other things. I am sort of at a standstill but oddly enough one thing that has really been helping me lately is facebook. I talked before about how facebook is not as bad as myspace because it really works to keep you from "friending" people that you have never met. The other side to this is that it IS possible to meet new people over facebook. I have been spending a lot of time getting to know people who are going to each of my prospective universities next year. It's been very helpful to just talk to people because I have been able to look at the kind of people I would be surrounded by next year if I were to choose that university.
The only thing about that is it give you only a very select portion of the people who will be attending. The only people that I am meeting are the ones who 1) have facebook 2) took the time to actually search for the "accepted into class of 2011 at ___ university" group on facebook 3) want to meet new people they don't know or 4) haven't made their final decision yet either... that's why they're there. I guess in the end it is sort of a waste of time to be looking for strangers on an internet website instead of actually looking up the information that I need to know to make my decision. But really, how does one even decide where to go to college. I'm all about environment. I feel like in order to actually make the decision about what would be best for me I would have to spend at least a week actually living in a dorm on the campus and experiencing what my life would be like.
So maybe that does mean these facebook groups are good for me. I'm just a social person and when it comes down to it how happy I am going to be next year really has a lot to do with what kind of person I am surrounded with. I can learn in pretty much any kind of environment and I'm not really too concerned about academics. Not that I am not going to college to learn, I just think that all of the places I have been accepted are pretty much nearly equal in prestige. I just think that a lot of times people forget how important your social life is. I wish that colleges made more of an effort to let you see what kinds of kids choose their school. I don't want to end up somewhere with just frat boys and sorority girls who party every single night and don't do their work... but at the same time I don't want to be surrounded by white catholic girls who stay in and do their homework on saturday nights and wear turtle necks. It's so hard to judge what kinds of people I will be encountering just by the statistics colleges give you on their websites or by taking a campus tour. I'm just hoping that facebook will allow me to get a little beyond this information and help me to make a decision that is a little bit closer to the best choice for me.
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