"To get into the good college, you at least need an SAT score of 1500 or a 34 on the ACT."

"Take as many APs classes as possible to improve your weighted GPA, and that shows college rigor."

"Do internships and jobs when you have time so that they show your employability skills."

"Start writing your college essays your junior year so you can have a head start in your senior year."

"Make sure you show passion and drive to achieve something."

Isn't this what we usually hear over our high school years? Why must we beat on into our future?

Let's face the facts, guys; high school students now these days feel the stress of getting into a good college more than the previous generations. We spend most of our time thinking about what we will be filling for each school. Thanks to technological advancement improving the application system, we would otherwise take ages to get everything to colleges. But why do students have to work so much to get into a good college? There are so many opportunities to achieve our goals in life one way or another.

Ever heard the saying, "If one door closes, then another will open"?

Why don't we apply such thinking to our post-secondary education? Well, we have a traditional ideal embedded into our psyche that we either work hard or smart. The Millennials (aka our parents and maybe our oldest siblings) were taught to get a college degree to live a good life in the end. This ideal is passed down to us, making us feel that we need to excel more than our parents because they paved the way for us.

You can find high school freshmen discovering different ways to make themselves worthy candidates for colleges these days. To help guide these freshmen, I wrote an article a few weeks back called "8 Tips To Help Incoming High School Freshmen Prepare For College Admissions". It's really important for many students these days to get into a good university because they believe that leads to a well-paying six-figure job and a nice life.

Though that may be the trend, it shouldn't be one of the reasons why kids should go crazy over the Ivy Leagues and top-tier schools. One of the supplemental essays for many schools is why do you pick this specific major at our school, and another version of this is why not choosing certain colleges to pursue your post-secondary education. They don't ask this question because they want to take more of our time but because they want us to be reflective of our choices regarding their university.

Before we move on, stepping ahead of ourselves, I encourage everyone to take a moment to breathe before we dive into our Common App and Coalition. Ask yourself, is this what I want from this world? Am I truly happy with this decision, or is there some other opportunity looking out for me? Reflection is key to our mental processes because it assists us with all the decisions we take in our lives through the rocky roads of reality, so remember to use it to your advantage through the bumps up ahead.