By Lauren Carlo, Alexa Erickson, Marisa Papagelis

College applications have to be one of the most difficult and stressful times in a 17-18 year old’s life. With all the other homework piled on us, extracurricular activities, and maintaining a social life, how is it remotely possible to add the huge stress of college without losing our sanity?

The college process is a never ending one:  requesting transcripts, completing the Common Application, writing extra supplements, composing a perfect essay, scoring well on SATs and ACTs; all those things piled on plus additional schoolwork can make a student very stressed.

Guidance appointments do certainly help, but we believe that a full day of college preparation would be extremely beneficial to all seniors going through the college process. We would have access to all guidance counselors and resources we need.

College application deadlines approach quickly after senior year begins. Most students are unaware of the amount of work they have to put in, until they are already swamped with classwork. Guidance suggests that students begin their application process over the summer; however, they do not stress how much work it is. Students push it off until the start of senior year. At the beginning of senior year, students are told they need to have everything done by their deadlines. Most students have at least one deadline of November 1.

The school allows no time for students to work on their applications. Students have trouble completing this process efficiently because they are swamped with school work–and they need to have good quarter 1 grades to send to colleges.

Allowing students to have one school day to complete most, if not, all of their college applications, activity resume, college essay, would make the college process so much easier. That way if anyone has questions for their guidance counselors, they can ask them on the spot rather than setting up multiple appointments and missing classes to fulfill our needs for our future.

Schools in Massachusetts, such as Worcester Academy, have already started providing their students with a day for this purpose. Implementing a day like this has helped students immensely.

A day dedicated to just college prepping would cause students to be less stressed during the process and not worry if they’re missing any important information or if it was completed incorrectly.