As soon as I started my junior year, I was bombarded with questions from family members, friends and even people I’d just met about my future. They’d all ask me the same questions—Where do I want to go to college? What do I want to study? —and each time I found myself responding with the same vague answer because the reality is that I have absolutely no idea.
I have realized that college can no longer be a topic that remains out of sight and out of mind. Despite every part of me that wants to continue to ignore the inevitable, I know it’s time to start considering my options.
Like many others, when asked how she feels about her college search, junior Hazel Donnelly’s answer was simple: “extremely stressed.” In fact, according to a survey by the Education Advisory Board, 48% of students feel that their college search is overwhelmed by “stress and anxiety.”
“There’s a lot of toxicity that surrounds this process,” said Mr. Rankin, the head of Summit’s Future Center which hosts college visits, internship opportunities and college and career information. With so much to consider, one of the biggest issues in planning for college is that no one knows where to start.
“I’ve talked to more crying students sitting in your seat right now than you would possibly imagine, because it is stressful,” said Rankin. “But part of the reason it’s stressful is because they’re listening too much to what’s going on around them, and they’re trying to absorb all of this information.”
We hear about things we should be doing all the time. It feels like teachers and counselors whisper about websites like YouScience, SchooLinks and the Common App but they don’t help us figure out what to do with them.
“I think that they have provided us with resources, but they haven’t provided us the way they get to them,” said Donnelly.
Beginning their freshman year, students receive emails from the Future Center with news about internships, college visits and more, but at the start of high school they are not yet relevant and therefore ignored. Now as a junior, they contain information that we should apparently already know and we should probably be paying the utmost attention to.
“I know they send out a lot of emails about [college], but it’s one of those things that you kind of skip over,” said Donnelly.
While technology can provide incredible resources, many students feel as though they are missing out on in-person instruction related to college. A main way for students to find that support is by going to Summit’s Future Center. However, due to homework, busy schedules and extracurriculars, it can feel impossible to find time to go.
“I am here,” said Rankin. “Sometimes it’s hard, but if you can, do it before [school], if you can do it at lunch, or if you can do it after [school], I’m happy to meet with students at any point.”
Some students find this college help through a college counselor, but to do this they are forced to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars. College as a whole is not an honest system, and the application process reflects that.
“I feel like, honestly, it would be most helpful if there was a class where you learn how to write college applications and stuff,” said junior Ellie Safford.
There needs to be more direct, equitable and in-person information covering the college process. Summit is trying to address this with a new advisory/homeroom class known as “Storm Hour” which will be required next year.
“An advisory period is an opportunity outside of the normal classroom to introduce non-curriculum based initiatives to students,” said Rankin. “The college search is absolutely one of those.”
Counselors and teachers hope that with the addition of this period, they will be able to begin to address this issue.
However, until this class is implemented, Rankin recommends that students begin visiting and researching colleges to see what they like and don’t like. A useful resource to do this is SchooLinks which allows students to filter schools that fit some of the requirements that they have.
So much of college is figuring out what you want to do and who you want to be. The only way to figure out what you want to do is to explore the options. Go and look into the fields that interest you, try to find internships and volunteer opportunities. These opportunities not only look good on an application but they can provide valuable feedback on what you want to do with your life (or, at the very least, what you definitely don’t want to do with your life).
“Just trust your own process and it’ll work out,” said Rankin.
While the college search may feel impossible, we are not the first ones to do it. There are resources all around us. Try talking to seniors who are in the middle of the application process, talk to recent graduates and talk to counselors and teachers. They all want to help us, but we need to reach out and be self advocates. A lot of us have been so paralyzed by not knowing what steps to take that we haven’t done anything at all.
