Answered by Kate W
I agree with the advice everyone else gave, but something I wanted to add was that you should probably consider either a larger university or a top-ranked school that is academically competitive. Small liberal arts colleges are still have the same high school drama, and it's really a turn off unless your there for the social scene. I know, because I went to one my freshman year (and yes I did my research, and yes it was supposed to be one of the "best" ones). It's why I transferred to a state university. Schools that are academically competitive (and this isn't just limited to the Ivy League, it could be a school like Duke or University of Chicago) will weed out a lot of the brain dead morons who don't care about academic studies. So, you're more likely to find people who are serious about academics. Not always though. Especially in Ivy League, you still have a crowd of people who are only there because they're rich and their families before them went there (think George W. Bush, a C+ student and Yale graduate). Larger state universities have the population (literally) of a small city, and because they often have a lot of state or private grant money, they can also afford better research and classroom facilities. Thus they will also attract a more academic (especially scientific) crowd. And the advantage of a large school is that there are so many other people that there's really no "popular" group, and you're bound to find a group that you fit in with. Trust me. I went to a small liberal arts college my freshman year thinking I was making a good choice academically, and it was a huge mistake. I got a better education for a fraction of the cost at the state school I ended up graduating from. My university just built a 70 million dollar engineering and science building with ground breaking technology and brand spanking new computers in every classroom. There is no way the small private school I went to could ever, in a million years, afford to pull something like that off. If you like science, believe me, DO NOT go to a liberal arts college! You will get screwed. I was a science major too, FTR. Also, just so you know, I didn't have a lot of people in my graduating high school class who were like that (the high school I went to was more science oriented), but there were a few girls who wanted nothing more than to become actresses and models. One of those girls even dropped out her senior year to pursue modeling. I'm not saying it'll never happen, because obviously it does for some people, but for 99% of all people it's not going to happen. I keep in touch with all of them. The closest anyone of them got was a job as an extra on Law & Order: SVU. I think she played a corpse or something. The girl who dropped out to become a model now works in a hair salon. Another one works at Target and has four kids (I graduated high school less than ten years ago).