3 Things About Applying to College I Wish I Knew as a Highschooler
The college application process is hard. Let me make it easier.
The college application process is hard. If you are anything like me, a sheltered, privileged kid whose only job for most of her life has been to care a bit about friends or family and study really hard, then your college application is one of the first times you get to make a major decision that might potentially alter your future forever.
At least, that’s what I thought last year, when I applied to college myself. During the gap year I’ve taken within the past year, I’ve realized how wrong that was. So here are some things I wished I knew when I applied in the first place:
1. College doesn’t matter
I know you have heard this a thousand times, but it took some serious reasoning to convince me of this. College doesn’t matter. At least, not in the way you think it does. A graduate certificate from an Ivy League doesn’t mean a happy life. It doesn’t even guarantee a conventionally successful one, if all you want is some money and a “good” position in a “good” company.
Some people that I’ve seriously doubted the characters of have ended up in top schools, and some of the most brilliant people I know haven’t. Your parents have probably told you the story of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates whoever else who dropped out of college. My uncle, the kindest person I know, never even went.
Plus, just look at the kids in any 200-level Philosophy Seminar who don’t know how to hold a proper conversation. They can quote Foucault all they want, but life isn’t at all like a seminar. It’s not about knowing or being clever. It’s about the person next to you and everyone else too, and the moments when we realize we can actually mean something to them — and ourselves.
2. Rejection letters are not a personal rejection of you as a person
A lot of college counselors advise applicants to present their whole, truthful selves when applying for college (let’s not even get into “selfhood,” thanks). This leads to a lot of high schoolers thinking, when the waitlist or rejection letters arrive, that schools are carefully evaluating them, thinking about how much good they’ll ever do, then resolutely saying: nope, not that one.
That is not true.
My counselor once told me the average college application will be looked at for 15 seconds. There are thousands of applicants each year to your dream college. That means you’ll be lucky if your Common App gets skimmed twice.
Then there are legacies and recruits and people with deep wallets and better connections who get second looks regardless of how great they are. There’s the school’s yearly profile, which necessitates harmony. That means more or less a gender balance for coed schools, a certain non-embarrassing percentage of students of color and LGBTQ+ kids, if they’re feeling progressive, a somewhat balanced ratio of jock/nerd, theatre kid/local wallflower, and enough wealthy students to keep the endowment flowing.
If you stood out to your reader, then something caught their eye. If you didn’t, it doesn’t mean you didn’t. They might have had a long day. And who can blame them? It’s hard work, controlling the fate of your universe.
3. Being in college isn’t being an adult
I haven’t had my first week of college yet, but if my friends and fellow classmates are to be believed. it’s a mess.
You’re stressed and cold and you may have forgotten your flip flops at home and your professors are alright but you always forget the way to Calc. Plus, you need to do laundry? Clean your room? Socialize? Then, just when you get used to the AC and know your way around campus and make some great friends, midterms happen.
Being in college is like that. Even life is a little like that. So please, for god’s sake, don’t worry about the high school to college transition while worrying about applying for college. You’ve got four whole years to do that.
The time will come when you look back at your former self, experienced and knowledgeable and in some ways still as you are now, and think: Yeah, I’ve done it. And then you’ll move on to the next adventure, the next stressor, because that’s what we do. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
