News Reporter
Your Application is due November 15 and it’s 1 am on November 14. You’re sitting at your desk, staring at your computer screen, willing it to produce a brilliant essay to wow admissions officers. Unfortunately, your college essay is not near completion. Your other work is unfinished, a test is not studied for, and a prefectee knocking at the door wanting to discuss her latest break up. This may seem like an extreme situation, but as seniors, we’ve all felt this kind of pressure.
The most challenging academic term coupled with college applications and essays makes for a traumatic first few months of senior year. For many Choate students, parents also provide an outside stressor during the college process, encouraging them to apply to more prestigious institutions in hopes of continuing a family legacy, or even starting a new one. College counselors, as helpful as they can be, often provide a reality check on a regular basis, instilling in us once more that this will be one of the most selective years in college admissions history.
Many of us have cursed our upbringing for not providing enough of the life changing experiences that good college essays are made of. We’ve toiled over SAT practice tests in our spare time, an activity that seems more like a sixth class than test preparation. After awhile, the idea of taking one of those coveted college visit days just to go home and get a little R&R has crossed all of our minds. Some of us find distractions through friends, sports and weekend recreation, but for many, this ongoing stress is as inescapable as it is oppressive. “You’ll all go to selective schools” has been the motto of our teachers this year as they dodge our complaints and pleas for extensions and freebies.
Every year around this time we see the destruction of one or two early applicants, and we feel their pain. When the acceptance decisions are mailed in December, our empathy will again be triggered for the unlucky ones who were deferred or rejected, and we will all envy the fortunate few who get to abandon Fiske, the college board, and the our counselor’s scatterplots for good.
The cyclical nature of this seemingly arbitrary college selection process remains novel to each Choate class as it goes through it. We seniors have all felt the same pressures to varying degrees, all the same pressures our predecessors and successors feel. We can relate to one another’s frustrations and stresses despite the unique circumstances we all seem to have.
Though it may seem light years away, May will bring us together in a new way as we burn rejection letters and discuss Last Hurrah plans instead of college essay topics. And eventually, we will all go to the selective schools our teachers have preached about, and we will all find our way out into the world beyond Choate. So, while we’re all toiling away at our applications these next few weeks, we are unknowingly initiating ourselves into a special club of sorts- the class of 2007 - unified by adversity.
