The Struggle is Real

Growing Grays by the Second

As a former senior in high school I know what it’s like to "exchange blows”  with the intimidating College Admissions process.  Kids are always encouraged by their parents to go to college, but for the parents who haven't gone to college, they don't know how much of a struggle this could be. The weeks go by, and questions get piled on to seniors, asking “What college do you want to go to?”, “What do you want to be when you get older?”. All of this whilst stressing to write a college essay. To add to that, the college admissions process is more of an obstacle course than American Ninja Warrior.  But for people who are productive and on top of all of your work you should be fine. But I was never like that. I asked lots of questions and needed my guidance counselors to break everything down for me. 

Who am I writing to?

When I would sit in my guidance counselors office I would ask, “So what is the college essay”? All he would say to me is, “Write about you”. But what does that mean? When I am told to write about who I am, I would write about my life, background, personal experiences and goals. But is that always the case? When you're sitting at your table, or desk writing one of the most important essays of your life, you have no idea who you are writing , and what they are looking for. It's not as easy as it sounds. Who is my college admissions representative? Depending on who he/she really is I have no idea who I'm writing to. It could be a bald Hispanic man who came up from nothing or, a well of white lady who went to an Ivy League college and grew up with money but that's just an assumption. When a college’s asks to, “write about you” and you have no clue who you're writing to, that would make you change what you are going to write about. As a senior in Highschool I had no clue what my representative was looking for because I didn't know who I was writing to. It almost made me change my whole persona.

Which College?

Many people feel that college defines you. Hundreds of students in my high school used to go around asking all their friends, “What school are you going to?” But does that really matter In Getting In an inside look of the social logic of the Ivy League admissions process, Malcolm Gladwell felt that schools did define people. But I actually disagree with that because it is a sense of knowledge, it's about the student not the school. I could walk out of my lovely SUNY college right now and have the same job as a kid who went to Yale. I feel that it's all about how you obtain your knowledge and how you use it. Let's say the kid who goes to Yale obtains good grades but doesn't really apply it to anything, it's not Yale’s fault, but If I, a student who goes to SUNY Cortland applies the things I learn I will most likely have a more successful future.

Hardest Parts of the Essay

Now let me tell you this essay is far from easy. The ideas they give you to try and construct this essay are pretty good, but it's not enough to really show a college who you are. What's the purpose of this essay? I ask this because when writing this essay you could be writing about  overcoming adversity but wouldn't this barge into challenges as well. It's not so clear what the colleges want you to really write about, the only thing you really know is that they don't want you to be vague, “Don't talk about problems that everyone's faced”. But what if that one problem really impacted my life more than others, who is the college to tell me. Going back to a previous class discussion of how you were groomed or prepared for the college admissions process. My aunt spent many years in college and gave me lots of tips and help during the admissions process. But besides that it was all me. Not knowing people really does not help. None of my parents went to college so that was already a problem to start with, but when your guidance counselor doesn't tell you all of the internal challenges within the college essay it could really be a set-up for failure. Getting into college could be really hard to start with but when the admissions process is difficult as well it adds so much stress to students , even to me as well.

But yeah that's just a little inside of what it was like for me. :)