College Advice from Seniors to Juniors 

By Lizzie Schwarze

Now that regular decision deadlines are officially closed on the Common App seniors in high school are moving into a new phase of the process: waiting. Waiting to hear if they’ve gotten admittance to their dream schools, and likewise waiting to see if they have gotten enough financial aid or scholarships to afford them. Many may think that this is the worst part of the process, but it also can be seen as a slight relief. At this point the acceptances are pretty much out of the applicants hands, and now they can just chalk it up to the luck of the system and keep on carrying on.  Students no longer have to spend hours slaving over their essays and applications on top of their regular schoolwork, and can instead focus on fully enjoying their final year of high school. Seems pretty good, doesn’t it? Now that a majority of the seniors are through the most stressful stage of the admission process, the stage where they are actually applying, they can offer advice to the juniors who are starting to think about college applications, looming in the near future. 

One of the main pieces of feedback received was to strive to still keep things entertaining on a daily basis. If you spend the entire fall moving from clubs, to sports, to homework and applications you might go a little crazy. By trying to chisel out time for fun things for you it will help to take away the feeling that you’re entire life relies around school. But let's be real, in many ways our lives do totally revolve around schoolwork, but try to keep some perspective. Things will feel so good when you cross the stage at graduation, full of so much hard-earned knowledge.

Relating to fun things, some more advice would be to choose classes for senior year that genuinely interest you. The perks of this are clear, for one thing, you’ll be happier and more invested at class everyday, and it could help you define some of your strongest interests which makes things easier when you’re trying to figure out what field to study or work in later in life. When talking to different MHS seniors, Elise Nerden ‘19 explained to “start over the summer, get ahead on your essay as soon as you can!”  The perk of this is that you'll also be better equipped to apply early action/decision, which was explained to be something you should definitely try to do if you are applying to college to show you have a strong interest in the school. Nerden also recommended that you should “go with your own voice for supplements don’t worry about other people and what they’re writing.” Cian Murphy ‘19 explained ways to manage the workload, saying to “take advantage of your AP lab and make friends with your guidance counselor.” Make sure you stay on top of meeting with your guidance counselor and take the initiative to meet with them, since they have too many students to be able to check in with you frequently on their own. 

Additionally, Alianna Canlas ‘19 advised to “set your own deadlines” and Lily Pashoian ‘19 encourages students to ask teachers for recommendations early and to remind the teacher with a follow-up email and to make sure you talk to them in person as well. Overall, the general consensus was that you have to be on top of things with your own self-motivation and initiative, and to take advantage of whatever resources the school does provide, such as meetings with your guidance counselors, AP lab, and reaching out to teachers for editing essays and supplements. 

When preparing and applying for college it’s totally okay to be stressed out, but instead of letting the stress get the best of you the most effective thing to do is channel all that stress into getting stuff done efficiently and submitting your best writing. A good mantra to keep in mind is this, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” ― Leonard Bernstein. Try to keep in mind that stress is motivating and we will become stronger from the challenges that have been presented to us throughout high school. We are all destined for great things, bigger and better than the silly pressures of high school!