By:  Caitlin Wallace

I have been looking forward to college since sophomore year.  And since the end of my junior year, I have looked forward to college at not just any college, but my Number One college. The school that I have chosen–the one that I want to go to more than any other–is been the cause of  my motivation to do well on my SATs and keep up my grades.

But who is to say that I will get into this college? And my number one fear that has been haunting me since the day I discovered my Number One, is that I will not get in. And instead of receiving a big heavy envelope in the mail, I will instead receive a sad small one, telling me that unfortunately, my Number One regrets to inform me that my dreams have not come true.

Four to six weeks is the estimated time it takes to hear back from my Number One.  This gives me plenty of time to chew off every single one of my fingernails and slowly but surely go a little insane. The day I hit the submit button was the day I began the waiting game. And I believe that playing this waiting game will be the most stressful and worrisome time I will experience in my eighteen years.

I believe the reason for all of this added stress is due to the fact that I no longer hold the power to decide my own fate. Now that my application has been submitted and I can no longer tweak my activity resume or edit and reedit my essay-my future is no longer in my hands. Once I hit the submit button, my destiny rests in the hands of admissions, and I no longer have control over what is going to happen. As soon as I lost that control, I began to worry.

I have found that waiting for my letter to arrive has produced far more pimples and back knots than any essay or supplement question. Nothing has caused me more stress than thinking about that letter and what it will say when I finally open it. Will I be accepted to my dream school and everything will work out like I imagined, or will I be, dare I say it, rejected?

The dreaded college application process was exactly what I expected it be:   highly stressful, time consuming, and bottom line terrifying. But the stress doesn’t stop there. As soon as the applications are sent in, and you have requested your transcripts, there should be a huge weight lifted off your shoulders, right?

Wrong. Very, very wrong. What I have come to realize about the college application process is that the most stressful part of the whole ordeal is not filling out applications or writing essays, but rather waiting for that acceptance or rejection letter to arrive in the mail. The day I hear back from my Number One is the day I will finally stop picking at my eyelashes and peeling away my fingernails layer by layer.