Students often regret their first college choice

Mary Gornick, 21, departed for Penn State in State College after graduating from high school. Yet, the Greensburg resident felt lost on the campus of 42,000-plus students.

"I just sort of discovered that it wasn't really for me," Gornick says. "It's a great university, and a lot of people love it, and it's a great experience for them. But for me, it just didn't work."

Gornick, who, after three semesters, transferred to Seton Hill University in Greensburg, where she is studying music, is not alone in her experience. Many high school graduates, when they arrive at what they thought was the school of their dreams, discover that they are in the wrong place. They know they need to change directions and go somewhere else.

And that's okay, says Kim McCarty, director of admissions for Seton Hill.

"Students are not going to be successful anywhere if they are unhappy and uncomfortable," she says.

Maybe it's homesickness when they are at a faraway school, or personal or family issues, McCarty says. Maybe it's a matter of finances, dissatisfaction with the campus social life or the desire to pursue a different academic program. Maybe, like Gornick, they realize that the student body size simply is too big to make them feel comfortable.

Andrew Pujol, 18, had the opposite problem: The student body at St. Vincent College, in Latrobe, was too small, and the atmosphere too quiet. Pujol, who is from New Kensington, is preparing to transfer next semester to Penn State in State College.

Part of the reason he chose St. Vincent, which has about 1,500 students, was the opportunity to get smaller class sizes and more individual attention. He says the school and its academic programs are great; yet, the trade-off was an unstimulating social scene, Pujol says.

"There's absolutely no social life; the whole place is like a ghost town on the weekends, and there's nobody here," says the psychology major. "It was a shock. The first weekend, me and my roommate were sitting in our dorm, staring at the ceiling with nothing to do."

Two people, depending on their lifestyles and tastes, can have very different experiences at the same school, and one person's complaint can be another person's blessing. Frank Altier, now a Harrison City dentist, chose St. Vincent College for its intimate atmosphere after starting at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he felt out of place.

"I hated it," says Altier, 35, who lives in Hempfield. "After the first week, I was ready to leave, but I had to stick it out for the first semester. ... It wasn't really what I thought it was going to be."

He says he liked the academic programs at Carnegie Mellon, but that the place didn't feel like a good fit. At St. Vincent College, Altier says, he got more individualized attention from professors, and he felt more at home.

"The whole atmosphere was like a caring atmosphere. ... Whereas, at Carnegie Mellon, I felt like you were just there," Altier says. He later went to the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine, and says that his Carnegie Mellon experience prepared him for living in Oakland, Pittsburgh, where both colleges are.

Gornick, too, had a happy ending, and says she is glad she transferred. She says it has been easier to make friends with other students who have common interests, and that she feels like she really matters at the campus of fewer than 2,000 students. At Penn State, she says, "You could really do nothing and no one would really notice, whereas if you go to a small university, they take an interest in you."

Gornick's parents were not enthusiastic when she told them she wanted to leave Penn State; they encouraged her to wait it out and get more involved so that she could meet more people.

"When they saw how happy I was, they came around," Gornick says. "When they see how active I am and when they see how much I enjoy being with my friends ... they relax that I made the right decision."

Judy Trosell, associate director of the adult-degree center at Carlow College in Pittsburgh, says that students who feel they made a mistake in their original college choice should not get discouraged. It's hard to be certain of anything in life, let alone at age 18.

"I think, sometimes, kids, particularly high school kids, maybe initially don't even really know what they want," Trosell says.

With the right research and introspection about what went wrong, she says, students will find the right place.

"I think, very often, they're looking for a better fit for them," Trosell says. "I believe that there is a right fit, if you will, for every student."