My grades were rather bad in highschool as well (B minus average). I had great experience with science fairs. (state level science fairs can be a great way to

My grades were rather bad in highschool as well (B minus average). I had great experience with science fairs. (state level science fairs can be a great way to earn money for college) and building robots and such. If your going to not have the best grades, you had better have some pretty amazing results with the free time spent not studying. I (somehow) got into Rensselear Polytechnic (www.rpi.edu) and loved every second of it. I have always been impressed that they looked beyond my grades. I had far more hands on experience as an undergrad than my friends who went to MIT, and met like minded people who also wanted to start a company after graduating college. RPI created the first 'incubator' in the US, and are very involved in getting technology from the labs into growing businesses. When I graduated (1997) I won RPI's $20k business plan contest with a friend of mine, giving RPI a small stake in our company. We then raised more money from small upstate NY VC firms who got their funding from insurance companies who received major tax breaks from New York State to help stimulate the upstate NY economy. While startups were begging to blow their investment money on crazy rents in SF and San Jose we were in Troy, NY surviving by having an incredibly low run rate. And I can safely say that all of this stemmed from the support we got from RPI. Find the school that promotes all the companies started by their alumni. Contact some of these graduates who have started companies. Ask them how their experience was. (i.e. if you were looking to get a job, you would ask alumni who graduated how their career service department was)