Alexis Moran ’29
EE Staff Writer
Many believe that the College application process has increasingly gotten more competitive, and not always in a good way. Competition is a way of life, it is built into our DNA. But when does it go too far?
This is the season of, “where are you going?” and “what are you going to study?”. Eager students wait by their computers to receive the acceptance letter of their dreams. They wait and wait to see if they can become the lawyer they’ve always aspired to be, the doctor, the teacher, the electrician and obviously so much more. Dreams seem endless and time seems to be going quickly. No doubt, every single one of the THS class of ’26 students will be successful, and they will be leaving soon.
From freshies, to seniors, time really does seem to fly.
One senior at Trumbull high says, “It went by so fast”. Others say it was, “Too much work”. But what most of them have in common is the stress of the application process.
The endless peer editing and of course the rewriting of the college essay: Will one typo ruin my chances? Or am I not putting enough down? All of these ideas run through seniors scattered minds as they try to make the perfect application, but it is almost toxic.
Is the application process too competitive? Many would say so.
Mary Frances Ruskell from CNN health explains how “the open-ended stress became a constant, toxic influence on [her] high school’s culture”.
But do T.H.S students agree with that statement? For many the answer is yes.
“On my common app I felt like I, as an entire person, was being judged off of snippets of information about me”, said one. Some even described it as, “cut throat”.
Despite the fact that these students are obviously trained in math, science, reading, writing etc., are they truly prepared for the vicious cycle of admission decision? Although the decisions are vastly different to different applicants, the experiences Trumbull High seniors are all embarking on represents a new stage of life from their teenage adolescence to their adulthood.
Photo courtesy: Douglas Edric Stanley CC BY-NC-SA 4.0