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College Applications and Long Summer Days
This may be the only thing I have in common with the average seventeen-year-old.
What most teenagers have that few adults do is free time. Trust me on that one. Something else that has changed since my college days is the race to the application deadline. Students are applying to more colleges, and colleges are asking for more material. Many students will finish the application process having written more than a dozen admissions essays.
The Common Application begins accepting college applications on August 1st. Many students will not yet have sat for their standardized tests at that stage. Still, there is no disadvantage to starting early. For high school seniors, the first semester of that final year is one of the busiest of their school careers. Trying to search out colleges, sit the SAT, write admissions essays and juggle a normal class load can be crippling.
And while I concede that summer is sacred, I can promise that it will remain so for at least another four years. You aren't sacrificing all your free time. You're merely tackling some of the unwieldy task of college applications before time becomes far scarcer.
Is it hard to plan ahead? Difficult to generate your best work absent high pressure? Sure. But college is pretty important, and ten weeks of summer will pass in a blink. And like so much in life, you may find yourself wishing you could have that time back.
Think of it as the first of many adult decisions you'll be making over the next few decades. This one may just have a delicious reward at the end.
Labels: College Applications and Long Summer Days
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