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College Comparison Once seniors graduate, they are taking the next step of their life by going to a college or university. All throughout their senior year is when they go on college visits, talk to their parents, and decide which colleges they would like to apply to. At Hopewell Valley Central High School, there is no question that most seniors decide to stay close to home when they go to school. Since 2005, the schools with the most amounts of students who have enrolled from Hopewell all were in close range of home. Some of the most popular schools include Rutgers University, Mercer County Community College, Rider University, Penn State University, and The College of New Jersey. Is it a simple coincidence that all of these colleges are within close range of home, or is there a deeper reasoning for why students from Hopewell Valley Central High School decided to stay close to home? There are many students here at Hopewell Valley Central High School that have the capability and determination to be able to go to a great school far from home. There are also many factors that are keeping them from doing so. Some students reasoning for staying close were that the schools they were attending were great schools. Rutgers University has a GPA requirement of 90.70 in order to be accepted. Mercer County Community College has a GPA requirement of 80.41, and The College of New Jersey’s is 93.29. From the previous examples we can see that there is a great range throughout all the top five schools from very high GPA’s to very low ones. There have been a few people over the past few years at Hopewell Valley Central High School that have applied to schools on the west coast, which is very far from home. University of Colorado at Boulder, San Diego State University, Pomona College, and Stanford University were some of the popular schools that Hopewell students are attending this year. San Diego State University has a GPA requirement of 87.73, and University of Colorado has a requirement of 88.37. On the other hand, both Pomona and Stanford have extremely high GPA’s in the 99.00 range, so they are both the best schools out of all of the schools Hopewell students are attending. Another factor that is holding back many students is the cost of college. For some colleges, it costs a lot more to attend a college that is out of state, than to stay local and attend one in state. Syracuse University has the same cost for both in state and out of state students. For about $33,000 a year, you can attend this university, not including book and housing costs. Other schools like Lehigh University and New York University have higher costs in the $38,000 range. The univ ersities that are extremely far from home cost about the same as the local ones, but the schools are a lot better. Pomona University, in California, has a yearly cost of about $38,000 which is the same as New York University. Pomona is a better school, academically, than New York University; so essentially, you are getting more for your money, even though the school is on the other side of the country. As the information has presented itself in this article, the cost and quality of universities around the country does not change depending on the location. There are great schools all over that are academically the same, but the cost is greatly different. There are also many schools that cost the same but educationally, are extremely different in the quality of their academics. For any student looking at colleges who wants to go far away, if you look hard enough, you can attend whichever one you want, regardless of where it is.



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