college update

I'm still visiting MIT and Chicago in April, but it looks like if I don't get the scholarship to University of Chicago, I will probably have to go to BYU. This is because despite my brother and grandfather's help, despite financial aid and potential scholarships, despite my parents selling the house, we just can't afford MIT.

It's kind of hard to let a dream go. Your heart gets so exciting about this one thing that you want with all that you are... it started when I went to the informational meeting. It seemed like, during the meeting, I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted to get into MIT. But alas! Getting in was not enough. Where is the $58,000 a year to turn over with outstretched arms?

I'm not giving up yet, you know. There's still the possibility of a miracle. But the probability leans towards BYU. And because my head has been in the sky for the last two years, now I have to pull myself down to earth and face the probable outcome, which I honestly hadn't seriously considered until today.

I started the struggle to face the idea of BYU this morning. I practiced The Girl with the Flaxen Hair on piano with quite a bit of conviction. I wasn't nostalgically thinking about a blond girl, though, of course. I was trying to imagine going to a school pumped with concentrated Mormon culture, with girls just trying to get married, with 40,000 people and classes of about 200 for every one. I was trying to imagine a roommate from there, and how I could relate, and if I would, and it made me very sad, because all I could think about was all of the dreams that I'd had of Boston and Chicago. Then I got very depressed and went and talked to my counselor, Mrs. Everett. She thinks that I will get the full-ride to Chicago, but I don't think that will happen. They choose 20 people out of 3000 applicants. I'm not that qualified. I'm only on the high end of the ACT median, and I am not overly involved in helping my community or saving the world. Mrs. Everett also thinks I will get the national merit scholarship, which may be slightly more likely, but still will not provide me with enough money to pull through at my dream schools.

I'm still filling out scholarship applications. I'm still imagining the atmosphere at MIT or UC. But in my heart, I am also beginning, just beginning, to imagine the probably, realistic prospects of going to Provo next year. There are a few good things I guess. I'd be closer to home. (I HATE SALT LAKE!) I could take my car. I would never have to worry about money.

It's not just next year, though. It's grad school. Grad schools look just as much at what school you went to as at what grades you got. More, probably. And BYU isn't exactly top of the Ivy League. I don't know if it's enough to get me into Caltech for grad school. And if I don't get into Caltech for grad school after getting in for undergrad... I don't know what I'll do.

How unfair the world is. That's life, I guess. They encouraged me to nurture my dreams, and I nurtured. But in the end the dreams die and there is reality, stark, bitter.

I will find a way to be happy at BYU. I will have to...

I find out about the UC scholarship that determines my future in about a week. Please, please, please pray for me.