Applying for College...At Age Sixteen

Personally, I blame my older sister.

Growing up with someone who’s six years my senior didn’t exactly help me contain my youth for long. It was about the time that I was in the beginning of the 6th grade (I was reading my third Hunger Games book), surrounded by what seemed like a million eleven-year-olds on their iPod nanos and giggling about their crushes, that I decided I absolutely could not wait to be done with school.

Fast forward five years later, and here I am, applying for colleges. Having succeeded in honors classes, I now am able to graduate with a sufficient amount of credits, just like any other senior. With initial hopes to ditch high school forever and go straight to college, my plans were sadly terminated by my vigilant parents, due to their fear of my lack of readiness for so much independence (they’re probably right though, considering that I’m basically fresh out of the womb). With this news, I was set on making my gap year memorable and life changing.

After months of brainstorming and researching gap year projects and ideas, I’ve decided that I’m going to graduate and go straight to volunteering around the world. You may see me in Cuba building houses for the homeless one day, and flying straight to New Zealand to take care of sick children the next (don’t worry, I’m updated on my vaccinations). However, just last week, things took a complete turn on me. My plan was always just to start applying for school next fall, since I won’t be attending college for another year anyway. This was an advantage for me because I would be able to put exactly what I did during my gap year on my resume. However, with the help of my family and my guidance counselor, we came to the conclusion of “where the heck am I even going to be next January? Who knows if I’ll have access to a computer?” We also thought that I should apply now and get all the tough parts out of the way; I could always apply again later. There’s just one problem: I have not prepared a single bit whatsoever for applying to college. No SAT’s, ACT’s, recommendation letters, volunteering, nada. Take your average stressed senior and multiply that by 100. That’s how I’m feeling. I have no clue what I’m doing and I’ll be lucky if I somehow survive this madness.