College Application Process

I hope everyone is having a more relaxing weekend than I am! I feel like I have been saying this since May but sorry I have been a little MIA lately. The good news is my outfit and clothing posts are going to be finished soon! Fall is my second favorite season, just behind summer and its mostly because I love fall clothes. Riding boots and sweaters are my absolute favorite pieces of clothing and I'm so excited to take them out of storage.

Now, on to the real topic of this post......

I originally wasn't going to post about this, but today I decided that I would like to be able to read about it from someone else's perspective so her it goes....

Most college applications came out on August 1st, give or take a few that came out the week before or after. I was extremely nervous about writing all the essays, so I got started fairly early and my list of schools to apply to was about ten or twelve. I began filing out the common app and the basic questions for each (i.e. preferred start term, major choices, etc.) and wrote down a few essay ideas. Some were extremely easy to fill out and I knew what I would write about immediately, but others have difficult essay topics and very open ended questions.

After the last few weeks of summer and beginning of September progresses, I ended up with twenty schools between the common app and other online applications. Many of my friends told me that was crazy, until I read them my list and they made it much worse by asking why wasn't I applying to this school and telling me all the reasons I should apply there. My college guidance counselor was very nice about it and told me that if I think I can do it I'm more than welcome too, just work on the schools I really want to go to first so I don't get too overwhelmed by the others. And I wasn't overwhelmed at all, everything was going good. I had topics for or written most of my essays for early action schools and had a few ideas for my top choices.

Last week, that changed. My school neglected to inform me that because it is very big, the guidance department needs our applications one month before they are due so they can get everything in order. That meant one of my applications was supposed to be submitted six days ago and the rest are due at the end of next week!!! After that I went into full panic mode. I came home and wrote four short answer questions for three different schools. Today, I had someone read a few of them and they had a lot of criticism and comments, but offered no suggestion of how to fix them. This left me more overwhelmed than ever. How was I supposed to finish all this in time if I needed to redo my essays with no guidance that was actually useful? Honestly, I'm still not 100% sure, but I do know that after I took a break I felt so much better. I went and drove around for a little and got lunch because I realized I didn't have anything to eat today and that helped me to relax. Instead, of having a friend read them, I am going to bring them to a teacher who has read college essays before.

This is where I am at now and I think I am going to continue updating my college process along the way so I hope it helps anyone who is also in the same position or will be!