Making the Decision to go to College is Hard

Ayesha Reese, International Studies Academy, Wat it do, ISA? (Fall 2006):

When you are in high school getting ready to go out in the world you have to make a lot of hard decisions that you will have to live with for the rest of your life. One of the hard decisions that you will have to make is if you want to go to college and if so, what college do you want to go to.

There are a lot of great colleges that you can choose from. You can go to either a University or State college. State college courses are more career-oriented and have easier requirements for admission whereas university courses are less practical, requiring more critical thinking and have stricter admission requirements.

Some colleges provide scholarships and some you just have to pay for. I know a couple of ways for you to find out about scholarships. You can ask your counselor at school or you can go to a Web site such as www.fafsa.ed.gov, where you can fill out a free application for student aid. You can even write to the college that you feel would give you the best education that you need. Some of the colleges that you can apply to are: New York University, USC, UCLA, Louisiana State University, and San Diego State. Some of the colleges that I would personally look at are: USC, UCLA, and colleges in Atlanta.

While applying for college you should do some research, like I have been doing research on New York University. I have been doing my research by looking on the Internet. I went to google.com and looked up New York University. Here are some things that I have found out: NYU has been open since 1831. There are 16,414 males and 23,590 females that are attending NYU this fall semester. There are a lot of ethnicities enrolled at this college and the ethnicities are as follows: International, Black, Non-Hispanic, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic, White, and Race/Ethnicity Unknown.

As some people know there are different ways for you to complete college. You can go to a community or city college for two years and then go to a state or university for the other two years. You can also go straight into a 4-year college, or you can go to a trade or tech school. For those that do not know what a tech school is, it’s a school that teaches how to do one specific subject. Like if you wanted to go to school that teaches how to do hair or medical stuff you go to school that teaches those things only. When you go to school for two years you get your AA which is your Associate in Arts Degree and when you go to school for four years you go for your BA which is your Bachelors Degree.

Some students go to work part-time and go to school part-time and others go to school full-time and do not work at all, but that depends on how you are paying for college. You or your guardian can pay, you can pay by scholarship or you can apply for financial aid. You can get more information about college by asking your counselor or the principal(s) at your school.