by SHAUGNESSY MILLER
1. Maybe they do tell you this, but it soon becomes everyone’s favorite icebreaker to ask about anything and everything college-related. I guess they just assume, Oh she’s a senior so she must have her life figured out. Wrong. Warning: you will be asked where you are going to college and what you will major in as early as junior year and it won’t stop until… forever, near as I can tell.
2. When you are first starting out with no idea of what you want in a school, you will take blind stabs in the dark and look at the most random college in the middle of nowhere and think it’s amazing. Then you find out there are zillions of schools out there and you hate Iowa (not my opinion, just an example). I personally looked at so many schools that I can no longer remember, and can’t believe all of the wasted time I spent. It is definitely important to visit schools in various locations and of various size, as well as to determine whether you want a large or small, urban or rural school. If you have no preference, just be warned that you will have a much bigger pool to choose from. My advice: have a preference.
3. You will spend insane amounts of time and money submitting various applications to multiple schools, when in the end you only choose one. If you are like me and apply to over 10 schools, be super organized so you don’t miss deadlines (I know from experience). Looking back, I can see that I was insane, especially since I have now narrowed to 2 schools. You will spend money to travel all over and to pay for application fees, which can reach up to $60. I selfishly made my family spend a whole Spring Break touring colleges only to realize now that I will not attend any of them. Not to mention the hours that I poured over brochures and worked on individual essays for colleges, most of which are now off the list. My strongest piece of advice is to place limits on yourself early. Yes an open mind can be good, but stress and wasted time and money never are.
4. You may have to visit schools multiple times. I had always heard that when you step on a campus, you just get a feeling and know that’s where you’re supposed to be. Sounds like magic right? Well I visit many campuses, and whenever I walked through a campus, I waited for a feeling. I waited and waited and… nothing. I liked almost every campus I was on. There is no magic feeling for some of us, but if you like the campus, consider going back and reexamining. You probably missed something small that could set it apart from the many others.
5. This is the piece of advice you may not like, but is true: no matter what I tell you in advance, your college application process will be stressful, and you will have to go through all of these steps on your own. You may know that you will waste a lot of time and money applying to multiple colleges, but you’ll do it anyway because it’s the process that you have to go through. I can’t go through it for you and, though it’s not the best way, it’s the only way that is currently available to find the right college for you. Don’t fret, it all works out in the end. If not, you can always transfer. Then you get to start all over again.
