Like most rising seniors across the country, I have spent at least part of this summer break staring at a blank document, wondering how to capture seventeen years in 650 words.
The moment high school juniors step out the door on the last day of school, our parents and advisors start urging us to get ahead with college admissions. We don’t, after all, want to spend the fall of senior year frantically drafting and redrafting dozens of essays while simultaneously juggling what promises to be an extensive array of schoolwork.
And so, many times over the past two months, I have found myself hunched over my desk, trying to ignore what a beautiful morning it is outside and fight off thoughts of the good old days. I have gritted my teeth at the injustice of the fact that I, not deemed sufficiently mature to vote or drive without supervision or even buy a lottery ticket, am meant to set in motion the entire course of my future.
I have been consoled by the fact that, at the very least, we are all in this together.
My peers and I have spent this summer chipping away at the various steps in the college application process. The Common Application, not-so-affectionately nicknamed the Common App, asks for the basics like grades, courses, family information — and then comes the activities section.
I first thought the activities section sounded simple enough: list what you did in high school.
Ha, ha.
How many hours a week did you spend doing it? How many weeks a year? What exactly did you accomplish? Why did it matter? Can you explain four years of your life in 150 characters?
And you’re only allowed 10 activities max, so it’s time to pick your favorites. A common piece of advice for writers is to “kill your darlings” — get rid of even your favorite parts of a story if they don’t actually help it along. The activities list is pretty much the same. You pick the things that work cohesively to represent your hopes and dreams and accomplishments, but only if they’re significant enough to matter. No pressure.
Then there is the personal essay.
The personal essay is supposed to be, as the name suggests, personal. It’s meant to be authentic and meaningful and unique to your perspective. It is also supposed to tell an admissions officer, in 650 words, something about you that they cannot learn anywhere else in your application. This is the trickiest part, because they ask you not only to describe the most defining moments of your life, but also to share them with admissions officers who, given that they are reading thousands of applications, will likely only spend ten minutes on yours.
For me, the process started with a reasonable degree of confidence. I like to think I’m a pretty interesting person.
Then I was staring at that blank document, and the panic set in. What matters to me? What makes me unique? What, exactly, have I been doing for the last sixteen years?
And the activities list and personal essay are just the beginning. Many colleges also have their own supplemental essays. They want to know why you want to attend, how a community has shaped you, what you would contribute to campus. Basically, it’s a diversity of ways to ask “why us?” and “why you?”
There’s a huge amount of research involved in figuring out whether you like a college, and then convincing them how much you love it. Campus visits are just the beginning. You watch virtual tours, talk to current students, and scroll through countless websites learning about specific programs, professors, clubs, and traditions that could either end up totally irrelevant or define the next four years of your life.
And then comes the unexpected killer of deciding where and how to apply.
Early Action allows students to apply and hear back early without committing to attend. Early Decision, by contrast, is binding. There are regular deadlines, rolling admissions, special programs, and a dozen other options to consider. It’s all part of a strategic game.
Should I apply Early Decision? If so, where? Should I apply Early Action to as many places as possible? Should I wait? What if I change my mind? What if I get into my first choice, and it’s not how I expect? What if I don’t?
The whole process requires an extraordinary amount of planning. Students compare application deadlines, admission policies, financial considerations, and personal preferences, often while receiving contradictory advice from everyone around them.
Apply early! Don’t apply early! Early Decision can increase your chances! Don’t apply somewhere just because you think it will increase your chances!
My favorite: Don’t stress!
So while younger students are enjoying the last weeks of summer, rising seniors may be found inside, mulling over the double-edged sword of growing up. These days, the end of a parentally-mandated bedtime simply means more time to study, and more freedom means heavier responsibilities.
And yet, there is something extraordinarily exciting about all of it. The future is starting to grow tangible. We are the next generation of adults — and I have faith that when the time comes, we’ll be more than suited to the task of making the world a better place than we found it.
So if summer vacation doesn’t feel like it used to, then that’s a price I suppose I’m willing to pay. All of us tired almost-seniors will sit down at our desks. We’ll explain who we are, where we want to go and why, what we’ve accomplished and what we’ll contribute. We’ll decide who we want to be, and what we plan to do with the next four years of our lives.
And we’ll make sure to do it in under 650 words.