Choosing a college
maggie: I don't have much to say that other people haven't said already.
But: It's unrealistic and silly in my opinion to plan on graduating from college in 3 years. If you really want that atmosphere of smart, driven people you're going to want to be around those people /as long as possible/. I don't advocate 'taking your time' (you know, graduate on time! go on to other things!), but as someone who could conceivably have graduated from college in 3 years and chose not to, I just think you'll get much much more out of college by going there for a full 4 years.Honestly, you're never going to be 'slowed down' by your peers the way you probably were in high school. A lot of learning in college goes on outside of the classroom. I /think/ a lot about all my classes, go talk to all my professors outside of class (even the humanities ones!) and probably get a lot more out of my classes than everyone else taking them. People aren't slowing me down, I'm just getting more out of the same material. Additionally, there're independent studies, doing research, having a job--you'll find that there are plenty of ways to occupy your time. : ]So, with that in mind, I'd consider the overall culture of the school. What do you want to be doing in your spare time? What type of people do you want to be hanging out with? That being said, every school (especially the larger ones) have people of all types.