Lawrence Lately

Stressing through the college app process

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The Common College Application, informally known as the College App. That new episode of “American Horror Story.” Teacher Recommendations. Football. Test scores. All topics of conversations I heard walking through the halls of Lawrence High School last week.
Since junior year ended, it’s been like a switch has flipped and every senior has college on the brain. On Sept. 30, Lawrence High hosted a college awareness night where the school’s guidance counselors spoke about the college application process.
Glancing around, I noticed distraught faces — parents and students alike. I think that we were all floating in a little bubble where deadlines and requirements didn’t exist until that night. Now that bubble has burst and it’s go-time.
If college wasn’t the hot topic before, it certainly is now. Free periods are now spent making visits to the guidance department and you can rarely hold a conversation with someone before it takes an inevitable turn toward the one unavoidable subject: college.
Where are you applying? Have you applied yet? Considering early action? How are your standardized test scores? And then, of course, comes the unwanted, unwarranted college advice.

You see, us seniors have all become college experts overnight and really, is it so bad that we want to help each other out? As a matter of fact, everyone has been remarkably helpful to each other. We offer each other comforting advice and escapes from the pressures, as well as genuine tips and ideas.
However, a little bit of healthy competition does exist. It seems that everyone has similar tastes in schools. There will be a lot of applicants to our fabulous SUNYs, like Binghamton and Buffalo, but there is also a lot of variety.
Living in New York for our entire lives, most of us want to explore other avenues, particularly schools in warm weather locales, where the sun is always shining, like UCLA and University of Miami. To top off the college list, we also have our top-notch schools like NYU, Columbia and University of Pennsylvania.   
While some merit scholarships and financial aid will be received, most of us have loans to look forward to. To get through this stress, we rely on a few simple words:  “this will all be worth it when we finally start to hear back from colleges.”
A friend of mine once said that if he got into Harvard, he would frame the acceptance letter and wear it around his neck in a fashion similar to that of rap artist Flavor Flav, who wears a large timepiece as a neck chain.
In all honesty, if I could get a rejection letter from Harvard, I would frame it and hang it over my bed for the sheer fact that I got mail FROM HARVARD. I don’t believe that I’m alone in this. Accepted or rejected, I know that we all look forward to finally knowing the answer to that one unavoidable question come May: “So … where are you going?”