Getting ready to apply for college can be a stressful and nerve-wracking process for many students. Students must tackle trying to raise test scores, grades, receiving acceptance letters and trying to transition to a new point in their lives. Most students have underlying fears of not getting in because of how selective schools can be.
Kayla Mehu, who is a senior at CSHS shared how she’s been preparing “Some ways I’ve been preparing for colleges is figuring out which college I want to go to because, I already know what I do want, like say I already know I wanna be in-state, I know I don’t wanna go too far. I kind of look for colleges that are near my area and then as I find those colleges, if they’re having someone from that college visiting and talking about the colleges and applications, I’ll go to that meeting and do my research.”
Kayla also discussed ways she’s been getting info from others “I still need to talk to other advisors, talk to friends that do know, cause I still am in the dark about most things. Teachers come up to me and they’ll tell me ‘Oh, you should do this, or you should do that.’ Another way to prepare is to have a bunch of people come up to you or just ask people for help, cause if you don’t know then you don’t know.”
When it comes to applying for colleges, it’s common for students to have trouble with where to start or figuring out the exact process. Ms. Warren, our Brace Advisor at CSHS had helpful advice to give when asked.
“I would say apply as soon as possible. A lot of the deadlines are November 1, you have to fill out the application, send your test scores, you have to pay the application fee and you have to either send your transcript or do something called the SSAR ‘self-reporting grades.’ Those are the four steps in applying for colleges, but you wanna start applying as soon as possible. Also, colleges and universities will look at scholarship money for you, if you apply early like merit-based scholarships.”
Warren was also asked for advice for students who are trying to get higher test scores “Definitely they should retest. There’s the SAT and the ACT so I always recommend that students take both because some students score higher on their SAT and some students score higher on the ACT. I saw a score of 1250 and then they got a 25 on the ACT, so the ACT was better for them. I definitely recommend taking both tests until you get the score that you want or if you’re going for Bright Futures, until you get the required scores.”
Getting ready for college is a very big transition for many students, most are still trying to figure out where to go. One of the common stresses of applying is GPAs or test scores, we’ll usually research schools, read their requirements and most of the time we don’t even bother applying because we feel like we’re not up to the requirements.
Ms. Warren gave advice for students who may be feeling this way “You just have to start; the hardest part is getting started. Don’t think about whether you’re going to be accepted or not, a lot of students think they’re gonna get denied so they don’t apply but you don’t know until you apply. So, you wanna apply everywhere you wanna go, don’t limit yourself.”
