After working both over the summer and during the school year and a month anxiously waiting for results, Hastings High School seniors have started to receive admission decisions from colleges. While Early Decision and Early Action applications are done (their deadlines are around early November), Regular Decision deadlines are due around January, meaning that college applications are beginning to slow down. No longer having to stress about applications, students can take their time on the second set of applications and begin properly settling into senior year. Students’ stress levels depend on how they have balanced their schedule.
To understand the other seniors’ situations, I interviewed various students about how their college process was going. Many of the interviewed students felt comfortable about where they were with their college process, likely because of the time of the recording (it was done before the Thanksgiving break, falling in between the Early and Regular deadlines). The amount of supplemental essays each college requires and the amount of work the student did over the summer were both major contributing factors to how stressed students are: “I didn’t realize how much I could do over the summer,” said HHS senior Marcus Galland. The students I surveyed had a large range of remaining supplements, but most who had a large amount of supplements left (>10) felt that they could get through them in time for the January due dates. Those with few left either felt they had gotten relatively few supplements or had been very productive and finished most of their supplemental essays.
There is a key to managing the college process. While interviewing, one tip came up time and time again: start early and manage your time well. “Pace yourself, if you start early it can be super overwhelming… If you have a free day, these are the things I’m going to get done this day,” said HHS senior Jasper Zimmerman
Overall advice from the senior class for the Juniors is: If you work consistently on your college applications both before and throughout the school year, you won’t have to worry about anything.