It doesn’t matter how much you’ve been through with your closest clique, how much you tell each other, or how long you’ve known each other, when it comes to the college process it is every man for himself.
This is especially true when you’re put in the unbearably uncomfortable position of applying to the same schools as your friends.
During senior year, college just about takes over students’ lives, and feeling pit against the people who you’ve been through everything with is both foreign and unfortunate.
Anyone with common sense will tell you that whether or not your best friend gets accepted has very little impact on the decision you will receive. However, for whatever reason, that has almost zero impact on the Olympic-level of competition you feel between you.
During the months of September through to January, when applications are in full swing, it seems as though, no matter what, every conversation you have comes back to college. What is even more surprising is that regardless of the hours and hours of college talk, you will do just about anything to never once give a name.
There are countless conversations about everything from the writing supplements to the access to insomnia cookies on campus where the name of the university will never actually be spoken out loud.
It is definitely a weird transition from telling a certain group of people everything to doing whatever you possibly can to make sure not a single soul could recite your college list.
It is hard to pinpoint why exactly this happens.
Yet, it’s almost never fun to feel this much competition between you and your friends. While, yes, a summer scavenger hunt or race to kitchen at dinner can be the exceptions to the rule, they are unfortunately not the kind I’m talking about.
Senior year is tough enough as it is and the college process keeping you feeling like you’re on thin ice does not help.
Whether or not your friends apply, it’s still you that has to do the work to get that fat envelope stuffed into your mailbox, yet, every time someone asks me “where are you applying” my heart rate increases and my mind searches for the vaguest possible response I can get away with.
There will be about one in one hundred conversations where you get lucky and the person doesn’t bother to continue questioning. However, for those other 99 awful discussions, I wish you the best of luck.
