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Health & Fitness

The Woes of Senior Year: Trying to Give Colleges All the "Stand out" Qualities Without Collapsing From the Effort

My senior year has finally begun and it has me thinking about college.

So I started school last Thursday and all I have to say is ugh. Yea, I have exciting teachers and I’m going to be learning interesting stuff but I’m just pooped. I’m so tired from having to get up so early every day and my work load hard and my backpack is pretty heavy.

Dance starts up again this Thursday and it’s going to be very… interesting trying to manage it all. But it’s what I have to do to get into my dream college, Oregon State University. I have to take good classes with at least one AP class and I have to do all my homework to get good grades in my classes and I have to do some extra-curricular activities because colleges seem to like people who can juggle a ton of things because it makes us “well-rounded people”.

OK, so if colleges want to know that we’re all hard-workers, why don’t they want us to say so in our college applications? My college prep English teacher told us it’s because they want to see something from us that stands out from everyone else…. Really? Because, last time I checked, it seems like everyone does the whole juggling-school-and-homework-and-sports-and-jobs thing.

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So what I’m seeing is colleges want us to be just like everyone else while in high school but then want us to stand out when applying for said colleges. I don’t get it. It’s like training a dog to come get its food when it hears a bell all its life depended on it and then one day expect it to do something completely different when it hears a bell.

Personally, I think they expect too much. Besides, not everyone is a super awesome essay writer. I mean, it’s not my fault the admission officers get bored because my essay isn’t a best-selling thriller novel. I didn’t know it had to be. We’re trying to get into college to further our education. It’s not fair to not let someone into college because they can’t write a good essay, especially if that person isn’t even going to go to college for English.

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But fine, whatever college guys, your loss. Because you might one day look over an admissions essay for someone that wasn’t very good but belonged to someone who will one day become the greatest doctor ever and will find the cure for cancer. And you’re going to wish you’d been a part of that person’s education.

But you weren’t because they weren’t a very good essay writer when they applied for college. So there, college admissions guys, so there.

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