End of school and relationships

What's to be done when everyone's going off to college and you don't want to say goodbye to your girlfriend? I see a lot of 17-18 year olds facing this problem right now.

50% of them break up in one way or another
20% of them become increasingly distant and will break up in college
20% of them will try their hardest to maintain a long distance relationship
10% of them planned their colleges to be close to each other or are taking a year off to be with each other for a while or somesuch

As for me, I'm currently with the first girlfriend I can ever say I "loved." For her it's the same. We're very similar, almost to the point of creepiness because we have the same interests, finish each other's sentences, always have the same idea at the same time, and so on. Our friends basically see us as the female/male counterparts of each other. We'll be forced to be many hundred miles apart in about a month. She's going to a prep school for more math/science on the field she wants to go to college for, Architecture. During this time I will be finishing high school and I feel I want to go to college for Engineering/Design.

Anyway, I really don't want to lose her right now, and it seems unfair that things are being abruptly put on hold or cancelled outright all of the sudden. For the next year or so there is nothing I can do. But it's possible we could end up going to colleges near each other, or something. Our fields of interest are pretty closely related.

What do you think you would do? Try to plan so we end up near each other, just leave it be, or maybe something else? Do you think relationships like this can work out in the end?