Preparing for college is a rocky road. Some students are aiming high with their plans for the future. Senior Susan Hardy will be attending the University of Tulsa, where she has a full-ride scholarship and will only be paying for room and board. The university has a 36 percent acceptance rate — meaning it’s a challenging school to attend. Hardy said she hopes to attend a Top 20 school for grad school, and plans on majoring in Law and Politics and minoring in Anthropology. Colleges provide many students with freedom as well as new opportunities. “[I’m looking forward to] the opportunity to do things I haven’t had as a high schooler … now I have the choice of classes and I’m taking these classes because I’m actually interested,” Hardy said. “I am going to have the chance to work with people due to shared interests — and the history department at Tulsa as well. They take students to Amsterdam and I have that opportunity to be with like-minded people and go on these trips.” Lisa Bain teaches English at Nixa. She attended North Carolina State University, which has a 45 percent acceptance rate, and Duke University, which has an 8 percent acceptance rate. At NCS, Bain majored in chemistry. At Duke, she started to become a pastor, but ultimately became an English teacher. Bain said the college experience was good for her, since the campuses were larger and more diverse than what she was used to. “There were as many people on that campus as there were in my home county growing up and that to me was just amazing because I had grown up with so many small-town people who were very judgemental,” Bain said. “I
wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew me and meet people from all different places. There were people there from other countries, and I remember the first person I met was from Israel.” Senior Marek Davis plans on attending the Air Force Academy, which has an 11 percent acceptance rate. He plans on focusing on systems engineering and eventually getting a doctorate degree. Davis is battalion commander in the JROTC program, and is involved
in the National Honor Society, Math Honor Society and is captain of the Raiders Team. He said the JROTC program helped change his perspective. “When I become the battalion commander, there was a strong shift between me wrestling my freshman and sophomore year while doing ROTC on the side, and when I quit and focused on ROTC, I experienced a big character change and a lot of my views and values transformed,” Davis said.