It’s that time of year again, when parents all across the country remind their high school seniors to start preparing for their higher education, AKA it's college application season.
Dear High School Seniors,
I remember what it was like to be in your shoes. You are on an all time high from all the great memories that you are making during your last year as a high school student. With all the excitement of your last sports games, pep assemblies and last scheduling of classes, you’ve forgotten that the future is approaching much faster than you had expected.
Your parents pulled you back down to reality. They reminded you that applying early was better than waiting until the end of all the deadlines. They advised you to join more extra curricular activities because your community service section was looking slightly bare. Maybe they even encouraged you to start researching a possible major, so that you would be able to put it down on the application. All within the span of a few days, the realness of college started to kick in and you began to go through a stage of panic and undeniable fear of what lies ahead.
Suddenly your leadership roles seemed to match everyone else’s, your GPA ranked you 100th in the class and a sports scholarship to your dream school became out of the question. You were faced with a big fat question mark, a road that seemed to wind nowhere. You had no clue what to do with your life, and as you sat down to fill out countless college applications, all asking the same information just with it worded slightly different. You forgot who you were. As you sat there and tried to remember all the great things that you’d done, you began to feel less special.
College applications have a way of making us feel like that, but I am here to tell you that you are anything but ordinary. Whatever achievements, awards or accomplishments that you have put down on your application matter, regardless of the weight that the college admissions office gives them. All of our activities and experiences make us unique, and though there may not be a blank white space on the college application, they are important, and someone will notice.
Whichever school takes the time to see the real you, through your application, will be the one where you belong. Maybe you’ll get lucky and several will see just how special you are.
The whole idea of college applications is to showcase the kind of person that you have evolved into during these past 12 years of your educational process. Their purpose is to not scare you, intimidate you or make you feel inadequate. They are meant to measure just how unique and just how much hard work you have put into becoming yourself, and it is never too late to decide to try something new or put in an even greater amount of effort into your education.
The colleges that you receive acceptance letters from will become your future endeavors. One of them will stand out among the rest. This place, no matter where it is located, and the people that you meet there, will define your life for many more years to come.
No matter what college applications you decide to fill out, just remember they will carry your future to amazing heights, and they will help you be all that you are capable of.
Love,
A college freshman whose life was changed because of one college application and one acceptance letter.
