Lori Brown

When did you get your first Big Break? How did you get it? How did it go?

My first Big Break was definitely as a senior in High School, when I was comparing all of my college acceptance and financial aid offers. As I remember I had applied to a variety of 7-8 schools, from my basic “back-up” state school to my presitigious “stretch” school MIT [where I didn’t get accepted :-) ]. Since I knew I wanted to study something in a STEM field and planned on starting in engineering, I had several Institute of Tech schools on the list as well as several schools that were more generalized, but had strong engineering programs. In any case, my Big Break for school selection was that I had 3 schools that both accepted my application and offered fairly competitive financial aid packages (combined merit-based and need-based). I was able to sit down and really weigh the pros and cons of each of the schools, and make an acceptance decision based on what was right for me - which to my surprise ended up being the state school only an hour away from where I had gone to high school! Overall I had a great five year stint at OSU and was able to explore some additional classes and extracurricular activities that I may not have been able to enjoy if I had gone further away or to a more expensive private school. This morning I stumbled across this featured article on Vanguard and had to absolutely agree with the recommendations. It may seem daunting to apply to multiple different schools, but it definitely worked in my favor and set me up for a very successful engineering degree. https://investornews.vanguard/6-steps-to-choosing-the-right-college/