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Comment by siegel | Hacker News Reader

A) Apply to more than 3 schools. You sound like you have great credentials, but these things are unpredictable. B) Why only these 3 anyway? You want a great engineering school? What about Caltech? Harvey Mudd? I can name others. C) Not to be a snob, but MIT and Stanford will open up doors that Penn State will not. I can imagine someone choosing Penn State over the other two. D) Other than academics, what do you want from your school experience? -Do you want to be close to home? Far away? In between? -Do you want a very large school? A small school? Something in between? -Do you want to be in a city? Rural area? Suburbs? -What other interests do you have and can you pursue them at the schools you are considering?

Your credentials give you an abundance of choice. Take advantage of that by looking at all the options available and thinking about all the things you want.

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I cannot upvote this enough. I made this mistake when I applied for schools for undergrad, applying only to Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, and Columbia - Columbia was meant to be my backup school as I had a family friend who was a professor in the physics department (who also was a Caltech alum) who wrote a positive letter of recommendation for me (my declared intended major was physics).

Turned out my being overly humble in not listing the plethora of awards I received combined with colleges losing significant money from the Enron scandal resulted in me being waitlisted or rejected from all the schools I originally applied to. My case spread like wildfire in the NYC tristate area as one of the high profile rejections that happen every year or so.

In my case, it turned out that my force of character, will, and intelligence carved out an extremely good career so far without having the kind of connections that people from schools like Harvard and Stanford might have - is that a risk you would like to take though?

The truth is I honestly do not know where to start. I am from outside philly and I truthfully cannot determine if I want to stay close or not. Those 3 schools I only mentioned because they were the first 3 I visited.

Well, if you can't decide, I would venture to say that you might want to stay within driving distance. Stanford is great, but you will not be able to visit home (or be visited by people from home) all that often. But you have great options within a, say, 6 hour driving radius.

What about socially? Are you looking forward to parties, joining a fraternity, anything like that? Sports? A school with a big sports culture (like Penn State)? Or is that not at all what you want?

In what type of environment do you think you would thrive? A large place with infinite options (academically, activities, people)? Or a smaller, more close-knit environment?

Those are good places to start thinking.

And, please, go visit more schools. You will start to see things that seem more comfortable or attractive to you.

C) Not to be a snob, but MIT and Stanford will open up doors that Penn State will not.

With a Bachelor's degree in some STEM field? It most likely won't make an iota of a difference.

"Opening doors" goes beyond getting a job.

Not sure anyone claimed otherwise.

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