Seniors Coping with the Application Process

The junior year of high school is considered to be the most intense academic year due to standardized testing, but the beginning of senior year can be just as stressful. The college application process can be talked and  heard about for years leading up to the actual time to submit applications. Throughout a student’s academic career, the prospect of college is constantly brought up and is extremely nerve wracking; high school seniors work diligently for years to ensure that they will get into the school of their choice.

“It’s not just the college applications,” senior Joey Kravetz said. “It’s hard to balance everything as it is with school, and when you throw in college applications it just adds to the stress.”

So much can go into the decision of where to attend college, such as distance from home, climate, school size, sports, Greek life, and more. According to Niche, the top two things students look for in a college is the school’s financial aid options and the availability status of their desired major. Colleges also take into account many things when considering an applicant, such as their grades, involvement in the community, standardized testing scores, extracurriculars and personal essays.

“I’m hoping to major in English, or minor in something artsy, so I would like a small class size, since English is sort of an intimate subject, and just a lot of activity on campus,” senior Zoe Woodbury said.

Woodbury is a finalist for the Posse scholarship, one that offers full tuition to students who are granted the scholarship with the exception of room and board. If she is awarded  the scholarship, she will attend Hamilton College, a private liberal arts college in New York. The Posse scholarship selects a group of 10 students to attend certain schools, calling them a “posse” of students. The program’s goal for each posse is to have a group of diverse students that will achieve great things in their studies and in life. There are many similar scholarships all around the country that assist students in getting into America’s top schools.

“There are three rounds of interviews, and they narrow the search down to 120 students for six schools in total, and then when you get past that they narrow it down to 10 students per school,” Woodbury said.

Amongst college applicants, therein lies a mix of students that have achieved a great deal in their high school -and possibly even middle school- career. However, the college selection process is largely subjective, and any student could get selected for or rejected from any particular school on any particular day. According to The College Solution, while many students hold a personal goal of going to an Ivy League school like Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, only 0.4 percent of all undergraduates will end up attending one. The highly selective process comes as a result of an overall increase of students applying and attending university. According to Statista, there were just under six million college students in the United States in 1965, now there are nearly twenty million college students . That is a difference  of fourteen million students in half a century, just for schools in the United States alone.

High school seniors have begun to complete their applications, as there are many colleges with a Nov. 1 application deadline. Each school lets students know their decision in their own way, but students can expect to wait for some time before finding out what schools they have been accepted to. Students may have a few top choices of schools they want to attend, but there is no guarantee that they will get in. As a result, many students apply to a large number of schools to increase the chances of their acceptance.

“It’s exciting, like that I’m going to find out, maybe in a couple of months… That’s obviously going to have a huge impact on my life, but it’s scarier than it is exciting,” Kravetz said.

Until that time for seniors to transition into the college life comes, they have a few more months of high school. Senior year is the most anticipated year of high school, with fun events such as Grad Bash, prom, senior picnic, and ultimately graduation.

“I still want to be in school, because I know at the end of the year I’m going to have, when I graduate I am going to have missed high school, and all my friends, and I am cherishing my last few months with them,” Kravetz said.