Fall is beginning, which means college application season is in full swing. During this time of year seniors have to focus on getting their applications to colleges in time. Seniors experience high levels of stress, as they are pressured to finish applications while also having to complete their regular school work.
School counselors have been helping the seniors by providing resources, such as one on one meetings with the students, a document provided to seniors which gives a step-by-step guide on how to apply to college, and a college visit so students can talk to representatives.
“I give them the resources that they need in order to research and investigate it for themselves. Because I don’t want to tell a student that they shouldn’t go to that particular college based off of my perspective or views. So hopefully, I show them the tools that they need in order to figure that out on their own,” counselor Kim Spease said.
Typical problems that seniors face during the application process are stress, lack of knowledge on the application process, and low understanding of which colleges or opportunities they should be applying to.
“I am a big proponent around those first two years of college should be meant to explore and figure out what they want to do because it’s all generalized education that they have to do before they can even get to any sort of major whatsoever. So, I try to have kids pick colleges based on the feel, how far away or close it is to home, and how they feel about that. And sort of the overall atmosphere of the college,” counselor Carrie Vanni said.
On top of balancing application deadlines and making major decisions, students have to keep up a sport and the pace of classes, leaving little time to enjoy the end of their teenage years at home.
“It definitely hasn’t really affected me very well. I think with all of my college applications on top of all of my AP classes, I’ve just been way more stressed out and it feels like I don’t have time to do anything that I want to do,” senior Mary Speicher said.
College application season comes with a lot of anxiety for seniors, and some extra flexibility and new changes in the whole process would be a welcome occurrence.
“I understand that the college applications themselves have specific criteria that they might need to meet for the schools for the school that I’m applying to. But as far as the workload from school, it would be cool if the teachers would give us a little bit of slack especially considering just the amount of workload that we all have to do,” Speicher said.
