Congrats.
An ex of mine went to Cornerstone for at least a few years.
As far as amps go, I'd take into consideration where you'll be living and playing next year.
Is Cornerstone close to your parents' home?
If you are living in a dorm, a stack isn't going to work out very well as they are quite large and loud. Will you have a car at school or no?
I had a full stack in high school, once I moved away for college-I ended up selling parts of it. The rest of it sits in my Mom's basement. I have no use for a mega-rig up here. I don't have a car. Most of the time I'm playing venues where they take a DI out of my amp or they are small/quiet enough where I'm fine with a combo amp. I ended up buying a SMALLER amp to go to college with. Yeah, when I have to bring my own amp, it's been an SWR WM12. Easy to take on public transit with a luggage cart and enough features to be a great work horse. One of my regular gigs, The Green Mill, provides an amp-SWR WM15.
So moral of my amp rant-if your Crate has a DI on it, I'd wait to upgrade it. If you feel that you could benefit from getting a mega-rig, research what you want thoroughly. There's a ton of options out there for us now. My rack setup is (after selling some stuff): Avatar B212, Carvin DCM2000, SansAmp RBI & RPM. I'd pick the RPM if I only wanted one. That would be over the $1k limit though by a few hundred.
Something that I have enjoyed having a tremendous amount is a Tascam MPBT1 aka MP3 Bass Trainer. They're $200 from MF. Head phone practice amp with slow software, metronome, and tuner. I posted a quick review of it on my
blog .
If you aren't going for music, I'd see if your parents would be willing to put the money towards lessons. Not sure what the rates are like up there, but $1k would be 5 months of lessons for me, 4 lessons a month at $50/each. Yeah, not as cool as gear, but you'll get a lot more out of them in the long run.
all the best.
