Struggling With College Decision

[Hunter's Moon]

I'm so frustrated!

 

I attended the CC in the Spring and then decided in the middle of July to transfer to a private LAC. I was set on attending, but then the monthly payment kept going up and up. No one could give me a straight answer as to what we would be paying and in one case, no one could even tell me where a new $140 charge was coming from. I decided about a week before classes began to defer my enrollment.

 

The more that I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't like how the financial aid office or my counselor handled things. I really didn't appreciate the beating around the bush. I really didn't appreciate being told, "It's only $140 more dollars you have to come up with in a week" when they knew my father was unemployed and that the monthly payment of about $118 was already going to be tough to do.

 

I decided I will not be attending that school at all. But now I'm struggling between another private LAC which is $7,000 cheaper or just returning to the CC. The CC is about half high school grads/half adults going back to school. Most of the high school grads are immature and still act like they're in high school. The teachers were great at the CC, but I also don't know how much they offer challenge-wise as I didn't take any math/science with them.

 

The CC would obviously be much cheaper and I'd probably be able to cover everything with grants and scholarships like I did in the Spring. However, I don't know that I really want to go back to that immaturity. I can't say that the LAC won't be the same, though.

 

I feel selfish for wanting to attend the LAC and I'm just frustrated. Put on top of that not really liking my job because I constantly feel stupid and I'm just down right struggling with this and just want to hide in a hole for awhile.

 

:nopity::banghead: :banghead:

[Candid]

:grouphug:

 

I think you are making a wise choice with the first school.

 

I don't think you are being selfish wanting to get a good solid education.

 

I think you can do a couple of things that might help. First, know in your heart that you could take another semester of cc to consider your options and give yourself more time to make a decision.

 

But I think if you have the second school lined up and ready to go, you could certainly go to them and find out what the costs would be and if you could go ahead and register and take classes this fall if all seems well.

 

Don't feel like any of this is written in stone, if you decide to change it all next semester, so be it. Go in with your own attitude and hope that this will be a great decision, but don't wrack yourself to make a perfect decision. (There is a saying that you should not let perfect be the enemy of good.)

[Barbara H]

I'm wondering how much of the CC immaturity you can just tune out or avoid. What happens if you sit in the front row and just focus on school? If you need to do projects or work with other people maybe work more with the middle aged people as many of them are probably very serious about their education. While this may be far from an ideal experience, it sounds like from what you've described cc is going to be the most practical and affordable option to get you where you want to go in life.

[Jane in NC]

Students in science classes tend to be more serious. Trying your hand at math and science at the CC may give another perspective (although I suspect that there will be lots of whiners if you take a lower level math class--hopefully you'll place higher).