Between the summer going into senior year, and the end of first semester of senior year, many students in the past years have argued that this is the hardest period of high school because of one thing: college applications. The process of college applications have been known to be tedious and time consuming to deal with along with all of the other school work seniors have during their final first semester of high school. 

Senior Sophia Kamsha described the process as “less scary as I’ve got through it and as we’ve had senior conferences and stuff. It’s still definitely a little bit anxiety inducing since we have to write a bunch of essays.”

Senior Amar Tripuraneni also added that “the essays are more of a competition rather than being graded in sort of a vacuum so it feels like there’s a lot more pressure for me to write something that lives up to other people’s essays.”

There are several steps to the college admissions process, and students can start writing their essays as early as their summer before senior year, but the Common App which is a platform that students can use apply to colleges officially opened Aug. 1.

Many seniors also noted that college applications are a huge factor in stress for the beginning of the school year because on top of their college applications, they have to juggle school, sports, jobs and more.

“Having to juggle homework, work, and college apps on top of all of the essays for my early decisions has been really rough. Senior year has been taking me out one missing assignment at a time,” said Rami Kim. 

Despite the work that all of the seniors are currently facing, many of them have found ways and resources to help them be successful this application season. Counselors, friends and thinking about when it’s all going to be over have kept seniors motivated throughout the first semester. 

Senior Aidan Kwapiz talked about school counselors and how they helped him navigate the process involved with applying for college.

“One thing that is really underutilized is the effect and the ability the counselors have to help you with college applications. A lot of time I spent navigating through different websites and trying to do research on my own, but a lot of issues that I had were clarified when I met with one of the school counselors to talk about my college applications.” 

There are a few students here at LOHS who were also planning on applying to international schools. Senior Sadie Moneyhan planned on applying to schools in the United Kingdom and explained the differences in processing between American schools and international schools.
“For applying to the UK, they don’t really care about your extracurricular activities. That isn’t much of a focus. They want to know the basics of why you want to go there and what you want to study. […] The American applications were more difficult to do because they asked you a lot of questions about everything like yourself and your parents, whereas the UK one, it’s a lot more simple and straightforward.”

Moneyhan also explained the many benefits of applying to an international school.
“The international schools are a lot cheaper than the American schools, and it’s just like a new experience and meeting new people which is great.” 

Through all of the stress and workload though, seniors still find things they are looking forward to when all of the applications are in.
“I’m excited to have more free time to go snowboarding with my friends, and I’ll be able to get 10 hours of sleep every night when it’s over,” said senior Mason Men.