Seniors give advice on college
Austin Jung ('10), who was accepted to Yale, believes that reading about colleges is an important step for rising seniors
Getting accepted into college is perhaps the biggest concern for a high school senior, but is the process of securing a school for the next stage of one’s education really as nerve-wracking and time-consuming as it appears to be?
It depends. You might have heard people say that what you sow is what you reap, meaning that the more prepared you are, the less work you are making for yourself. While preparation might mean getting started early so you are finished early with time to polish, it can also mean simply having a plan. Everyone goes about applying to college differently, and some people might have a more strenuous workload than others.
Perhaps the first question to start out with is which schools you are interested in. As a junior, it seems that all of the colleges are vying for your attention, sending you emails, letters, and brochures. But ultimately, the purpose of their attention is to get you to apply to their school. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they will actually let you in. What you need to do is to decide which schools appeal to you, realistically appraise your chances of getting in, and make sure to add some “safety” schools and some “reach” schools to your list. A safety school is one you feel confident will accept that you would like to attend; a reach school is one you would really like to attend even though you might not be confident the school will accept you.
“Do your research and look at colleges in the summer [before senior year],” William Livingston (’10) advised.
Several other students agreed, stating that there is less time during the actual school year to decide on colleges and work on applications because of one’s academic and athletic workload.
Once you have a list of possible schools that you would like to apply to, you should decide on whether or not you want to apply early or regular decision.
Early decision means that you apply to a college early, and if you are accepted, you are promising to attend that college. If you are rejected, you are free to apply to other colleges. That said, early decision should probably only be for those who are absolutely sure that they want to attend a particular first-choice college. There are several benefits to applying early that regular applicants may not have.
“You’ll be stress-free and worry-free for the rest of the year while everyone else is working on their applications, but even if you don’t get in, you’ll have a wonderful opportunity to review your application to edit it in time to submit to other schools,” Austin Jung (’10) said.
Aside from early decision, some schools also offer restrictive and non-restrictive early action. Jung, for example, applied restrictive early action to Yale University, which meant that he could apply early and receive the school’s decision by mid-December, rather than in April, but he couldn’t apply to any other school early. Non-restrictive early action allows an applicant to apply early without restrictions.
Regular decision applicants usually submit their applications in January and hear from their schools in April. They then have to pick a college by May 1. Regular decision also offers a lot more choices to a more indecisive applicant and gives more time for deliberation.
“If you are not sure, you can visit and examine your options again if you apply regular decision,” Aimee Nguyen (’10) said.
Regular decision might also involve a lot more work, but this depends on which schools you apply to and whether they use their own application or the Common Application. The Common Application makes the application process very efficient. Applicants enter their information just once, online, and then have it sent electronically to all of the colleges they’re applying to.
However, some colleges require applicants to fill out an additional application supplements. Supplement questions might ask for an essay example from junior or senior year or short one-paragraph answers to questions specific to that school. In some instances, the supplements ask for the applicant to write additional longer essays.
Applicants who were able to use the standard Common Application without supplements had an easier time applying to college.
“I thought [the process] was going to be really intense and that I was going to have to write seven essays and [that college application was going to] consume me and that I’ll have no time for school,” Alex Jordan (’10) said.
Jordan ended up writing only one general essay for all of the schools she applied to thanks to the Common Application.
Other applicants, however, had a much heftier workload.
“I felt like applying to college was like another class because some of the supplements were really difficult, and in English class, they’ve always taught you never to use ‘I,’ but college essays are all about writing about yourself,” Bura Mwangi (’10) said.
College essays, as next year’s seniors will find out, are nothing like the analytical essays that English teachers usually have students write. Writing about oneself might seem easy, but in reality, it is a bit more challenging than one might think.
“You have to find a balance between making yourself look good and not sounding conceited,” Bailey Murray (’10) said.
Other important tasks in the application process include getting teacher recommendations and applying for scholarships. When seeking teacher recommendations, seniors are unanimous in offering two suggestions: ask early, and pick the “right” teacher to ask.
“I asked [for a teacher recommendation] at the end of junior year and reminded him this year. Pick someone whose class you are doing well in and pick teachers whose subjects are different like a history teacher and a science teacher,” Ben Mishkin (’10) said.
As for scholarships, seniors also recommend starting early—the summer between junior and senior year—as some scholarship deadlines are actually before college admission deadlines, and they also require a lot of work.
“Start early on everything, and you’ll appreciate it later. If you feel nervous about it and want to put it off, don’t. It isn’t as a big a task as you think. Once you start getting into it, you’ll start getting a feel for it,” Rebecca Bonner (’10) said.
