adventures of a typical high school student

Hello everyone!

Today I’ll be discussing a constantly hot topic: why teenagers are so stressed about the impending doom of the college admissions process. I’m writing this post as I procrastinate finishing up my weekend homework, so hopefully none of you are currently as stressed as I am. The pressure and the stress that comes with it is only increasing as admission rates continue to plummet. You might ask, well aren’t there thousands of colleges out there? There has to be somewhere that will accept you, so don’t worry. And while this is true, there’s still plenty of reasons high schoolers everywhere plan their entire schooling experience around trying to get admitted to certain schools. Let’s talk about why!

• Pressure from the people around them – Parents, other relatives, and teachers/staff at school who want to be able to say they’ve sent kids off to prestigious schools all might exert their own pressures. If you feel you need to get into a certain caliber of school to impress people or to make your family happy, you take on a huge burden and it seems like the only way out is to get in.
• An intrinsic motivation to succeed – This one is the biggest culprit for me personally. I’ve always considered school of the utmost importance, and I dreamed of attending Harvard when I was young. I’m not sure where I want to go now because obviously Harvard isn’t for everyone and even among the most elite schools there’s different fits, but I put a lot of pressure on myself to get good grades and such for the sake of my high standards and eventually, college admissions.
• Fear of failure – During high school, college is the end goal (for most people). If you don’t work hard enough to get into the college you want, that’s a huge turn of events that will seem like a failure. There’s always that “what if”, and it’s scary to know that what we’re doing now in high school can directly determine our future in that way. No one wants to fail before they even become an adult.
• Equating a good college with a good life – As I said before, college is drilled as the next step after high school. You’ll be taking the first steps into adulthood and furthering your professional life/finding the field you (hopefully) actually want to work in, and a lot of serious changes start to happen. We’re taught that in order to be successful in these endeavours, you need to go to a prestigious school that will help open doors for you. While this can definitely help some people and there are obvious benefits to going to these schools (that’s why everyone wants to go!), it creates this idea that if you DON’T go to a top school, you’ll never be as successful as someone who did.
• Not knowing any better – We’ve all grown up learning what the “best”, most prestigious schools are- the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, UCLA, Berkeley, etc. If no one’s ever told you different, you may think that getting into one of these schools is necessary to be happy, successful, etc. If it’s just always seemed like the ultimate goal or the best thing you can do, you’ll feel like you desperately need/want to get in.
• Financial purposes – College is EXPENSIVE. However, many elite schools are the ones that have the best financial aid for low income students, often giving full rides based on need. All of the Ivy Leagues do this, and many other top schools. Students may be shooting for these schools in order to be able to attend a four-year university at all; that being said, lots of lower tier schools will often give merit scholarships, so low-income students with high stats could get these as well.
• Comparison to others – As the competition gets tougher, we start to look around us. There are so many geniuses out there with amazing stats, extracurriculars, and more; they seem to have it all. One glance at an Ivy League hopeful’s resume can give you stress overload just looking at it- how do they manage it all? This sends you into a spiral thinking about how you need to do more and you’re not good enough… and so on.

These are just a few of the many reasons that us high schoolers are constantly freaking about the future sneaking up on us and college looming in the distance. I hope you found this informational or could relate to some of these- I’ll probably be writing another post on this topic soon. Let me know if you have questions or comments about this post, or if you have any requests for future content!

-Brooke