Lananh La had always dreamed of going to the University of Texas at Austin. She wore Longhorn gear and attended summer camps there, and she was sure that was where she would attend college after high school.
But when the 18-year-old from the suburbs of Dallas got her acceptance letter to UT Austin this year, she did something she hadn’t planned on: she turned it down.
La instead picked Dallas Baptist University (DBU), a small private school with just over 2,800 first-year students. According to her, she turned down her dream school for a university that no one had heard of…