I wish someone would have told me about all this starting my freshman year of high school. Being from a poor rural family, I had no idea that these opportunitie

I wish someone would have told me about all this starting my freshman year of high school. Being from a poor rural family, I had no idea that these opportunities existed and the first thing I looked at was price of school over anything else. So, I only applied to one school which to be honest seemed unreasonably expensive at the time. I think a huge part of the problem is not so much the resources, but the mentality that surrounds the poor. Having grown up poor, I was focused on being cheap, not on value. Of course, no one every said, "Hey, with your 3.3 GPA maybe you should apply somewhere else". I also only took the ACT once after having been away at summer camp and only getting 3-4 hours of sleep each night for the past week, and no idea until later that people retook it. The other aspect, is that in small rural towns it has been my experience, that the guidance counselors who do the college admissions have no idea what to do with a student who doesn't want to go to the traditional schools, which in my case were the 3 nearest community colleges, the University of Nebraska, University of Iowa, or Iowa State. Ramit, would tell you that just because the information is out there, that isn't enough. In regard to this, it is absolutely true.