So I have a minor depression problem (high school senior)?

I am just having this depression recently. Here is the issue, I am a high school senior right now and I had to attend high school in s small racist town in Georgia. As a result, I did not get a lot of opportunities due to the fact that I was an Asian American. The type of school I had to attend was a magnet school, it did not have any sports like basketball or football and it had always been my dream to play at least 1 season of football whether it be high school or college. Well my first 2 years of high school I fell in a uncaring mood and my GPA suffered, I only had a 3.0 (B Average GPA) and my junior year I made all A’s, the GPA skyrocketed. My SAT score is a 1940 but my GPA is not high enough to get me into any Ivy League schools.

All I ever wanted to do was get out of this state for college because this state has given me the toughest 5 years of my life, I am afraid that due to out of state tuition, that won’t even happen. My parents won’t let me take out a loan at all and I don’t think that with my GPA I will qualify for any merit scholarships. I plan on taking the SAT again if that makes a difference.

Here are my issues

1. I never had the opportunity to play high school football because my parents forced me to attend a magnet school, when I did visit a public school (the one I was zoned for), someone threw a stapler in my direction and told me to go back to my own country. The coach at that public school told me that I my type are not going to be Quarterbacks on his team so I have been attending an academically competitive magnet school ever since.

2. I did not do so well my first 2 years of high school so as a result I have an average GPA and I won’t be getting into a top Ivy League school. I have had it rough, my family came to the US when I was 11 and we lived in the beautiful states of Connecticut and moved to more highly educated states like New York and Massachusetts. Now we are in rural Georgia where there is nothing to do and majority of the populace is bigoted. I had to learn English when I was 12 years old and that put me behind some of the other kids.

How can I cope with this depression?

I asked the people on the American football section about will I be able to play football in college without high school experience and most of the top contributors there said no it won’t happen……

Most people on the higher education section told me not to even bother applying to the Ivy Leagues.

My GPA is a 3.4 right now (guidance counselor told me today). I have never even had a girlfriend before……

Move forward. A 3.4 GPA will not get you into any Ivies but it will surely get you into state flagship university and tons of private out of state universities. Also know that is your unweighted GPA, your weighted GPA will probably be a lot higher since you go to a competitive magnet school. A 1940 SAT score can get you into tons of Tier 1 colleges, if you raise that then the future is bright.
If you truly want to do your undergrad out of state then apply to a private university that will offer you a lot of grants and scholarships. Loans are a bad idea for undergrad anyways.

You will get into a good tier 1 university, just hang in there and apply. If you do good at whatever university you get into, you can easily go to a competitive med school like Harvard or Johns Hopkins.

As for Football, you can play football after college in leagues like the IFL and if you go to a d3 college they will more than likely offer you a spot on the team. As for Quarterback, spend some time on the team, play whatever position the coach wants you to play and then if you do good in that position tell the coach you want to be quarterback. It will happen, football is not that tough of a sport to get a position in, top notch couch potatoes get positions on the line, an Asian with a tough life can get a position as a Quarterback.
You can always play football somewhere, whether it is a minor league like the IFL, the AFL or the USFL, some of those guys have not played football before. The CFL is not a bad option either, opportunities will come.

I will give you a nice quote, “it is always darkest before dawn”, if this is the darkest hour in your life then the dawn will come. Living in Georgia myself I learned that the state is full of superficial and bigoted souls (not all but most, I did meet some amiable and benevolent people there). What you are telling from your story is quite common to hear in Georgia (outside of the Atlanta area that is).

Let the Universe unfold, do you, do what you gotta do to get ahead. Apply to colleges, write those essays, let yourself speak and wherever you get in, just go. Be calm and let the Universe unfold, wherever you get thats where you get.

As for the people on yahoo answers. I know from personal experience that getting Top Contributor is easy on a lot of sections. I was a top contributor on the cultures and groups section and all I did was bash people from underprivileged neighborhoods and agree with the answerer. As for the people on the American football section, two of them I know by experience have not seen life outside of their couch yet. The section asks questions based on football knowledge, not experience with football. Most of those people never even tried out for a college team let alone go to college themselves.

As for the higher education section, it is based on numbers. I know 2 people here at Cornell (I only know like 20 undergrads overall out of a thousand) who had so so GPAs but got in based on ECs and SAT scores. I wouldn’t give too much attention to a lot of the people there since most have not been through much of the college admissions process themselves.

Apply to 2 reach schools (make 1 an ivy), 3 matches and 3 safeties.

If you don’t get into those schools as an undergrad then go there for grad school. That is where your education REALLY matters, for undergrad regionally accredited is good.

This is no time to be getting a depression. For this time you should apply to college and let the process play itself out, I can tell you that the process if FULL of surprises and copious amounts of miracles. Enjoy your senior year and I hope you get to go out of state. Your tough life in high school has prepped you for a lot of situations, the top students I know have not lived your type of life and some of them are transferring from Cornell to regular universities because it is tough to be out alone when you grew up in a family that makes over 500k per year. Resilience is something you need to develop, Obama didn’t go to Columbia right out of high school, he did excellent at Occidental and then he transferred. The opportunities are endless, just let the universe unfold.