It’s no secret, applying to colleges can be tedious and unpleasant. You’re required to find the application, fill out pages worth of personal information, get letters of reccomendation sent, write an essay, pay an application fee, and get all this sent into the school before a deadline. It’s a lot of work, and too many, it can be daunting. On top of these, there are many financial barriers, including the cost of the applications ($50 an application adds up quickly!) and the cost of actually attending.
All these barriers combined make many apprehensive of even applying to certain schools, ones that are perceived as being too hard. Instead, many people wind up attending a school simply because there were few barriers to getting in. This is a mistake. Let me tell you a story.
The college I wound up attending after high school actually had a super straightforward application process. For those who were “preselected”(not sure what that actually involved, maybe every high school senior in the state was “preselected” as well). No application fee, no essay, fill out your information online. I applied to other schools with much more complicated application processes, similiar to the one described above, but did not attend.
At any rate, when I arrived at school, I met many people who were attending simply because the application seemed easy, and they got in by virtue of there good grades. They had no special interests in the programs my school offered. Some, when asked what they wanted to do, would tell me about how they wanted to pursue a career that had nothing to do with my school’s speciality, engineering.
One by one, I saw these people drop out. Though though were low barriers for applying, when faced with the full rigor of the curriculum, they quickly dropped out and pursued other things. When I saw this, I couldn’t help but think that they would have been better served pushing through a slightly more difficult application, so they could get into a school that better met their needs.
Instead of letting the challenges of applying and getting into a school distract you from what you really want, plow ahead through the process. The reward of getting into your ideal school will be worth the extra trouble involved. Even if you fail, the risk is certainly worth it.
Be sure to check back here later, or subscribe to this blog via e-mail or RSS, as I will be following this post up with a guide on how to plow down the most common barriers to applying for college.
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