College acceptances!

I wrote a whole blog for today... and then I checked the mail. Finally, all of my college letters have come! Here are the verdicts:

Smith College: Accepted!
Mount Holyoke College: Accepted!
Wheaton College: Wait-listed?!

I really can't believe I got into Mount Holyoke. I definitely didn't expect to be accepted. I also definitely didn't expect to be wait-listed at Wheaton. I don't understand how I could have possibly gotten accepted at Mount Holyoke but not at Wheaton. Ah, well, I don't care about Wheaton anyway. That was a safety. But now that I've heard from all of my schools, I'm not so sure about my decision now. Simmons is still my first choice, but Smith is starting to really appeal to me. I haven't visited Smith yet, so I will have to soon. Plus, Smith is giving me about $16,500 worth of grants (plus a few loans). With those grants, and with my $10,000 scholarship to Simmons, Smith and Simmons are going to cost about the same amount of money for me to go there - roughly $20,000 per year. This makes my decision so much harder. I think Simmons could have given me more money (the didn't even give me a work study, but Smith and Mount Holyoke did), so I'm probably going to have to meet with Financial Aid and try to get them to give me more money so I can go there. As for Mount Holyoke, I really like that school, plus it's pretty prestigious, but I don't think I would go there. First of all, it's the most expensive, even with the $13k or so in grants that they're giving me. Second, it really intimidates me. That's one of the strongest feelings I got when I visited a few months ago. All of the students are so smart and the teachers are brilliant, it really feels out of my league (so I feel a whole lot smarter now that I've been accepted, haha).

So, now I have to choose from Simmons (my first choice), Smith, Mount Holyoke, and UMass Amherst. This is going to be a lot harder than I expected. My choice is probably going to come down to financial issues. I'm going to have to make some kind of chart of how much each school is going to cost me per year after all of the grants and loans and everything.

Oh, and I also got accepted into the Simmons Honors Program... so that's more good news. Plus as an Honors student, you get $500 a year to spend in the Simmons bookstore on books and things. Pretty cool.

I went to the movies earlier tonight to see Inside Man with Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster. It was easily the best movie I have seen in theaters so far this year. It's a million times better than it appears in the previews. I'm really hoping that Spike Lee will win an award for his role as the director, and Denzel Washington and Clive Owen for their performances as well. It was a really great story with such an intricate, twisting plot that really made you think. One of the best parts was the comic relief - it came at just the right times, and it wasn't lame, it was actually really funny. The camera angles were awesome (and I don't usually notice that type of thing) and really enhanced the movie. That's all I'm going to say because I don't want to reveal anything, but everyone has to go see this movie. Don't even wait until it comes out on video - see it in the movie theater. You won't be disappointed.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Since I had already written a whole blog before writing this brand new one about my college acceptances, I'm just going to post that one in its entirety tomorrow. Adios.