The College Admissions process is one that has given students strife probably for as long as it has been around. One aspect that is especially difficult is sorting through the large amount of different advice and information from people. It is especially complicated with social media and the internet, where millions of pieces of information contribute to a lot of peer pressure, unhealthy comparisons, and unrealistic ideas about the college experience. It can be confusing to receive all this information about something you have yet to even experience. It can even make you think you need to have your college experience be a certain way even if you don’t personally want it to be that way. Certain schools and majors that seem to be more popular, schools where friends might be, and so on, can all be distracting factors in the college admission process.

So how do you keep your focus and aim for what will set you up for success? The first thing you should do is take some time for yourself to ponder what you want to do for your future. Forget all the articles, forget what older siblings or other family members have done, and forget what you see on Instagram and Tiktok or what your friends have done. When you close your eyes and forget all that, what do you see yourself doing? Do you imagine yourself at a large school with crowds and hundreds of people in a class, capable of being independent and managing yourself in that environment, or do you picture yourself in smaller classes, having direct contact with the professors, working in study groups and going into office hours where you can directly ask the professor questions you’ve come up with while doing homework? Which environment would best help you thrive and match your learning style? 

The same can be said for picking a major. This decision is a hugely important one- one that can sometimes be forgotten when in the midst of deciding on a school. The latter usually takes up nearly all the attention. However, your major can define your college experience just as much as the school itself can, and it may even have a more profound part in shaping your future. Choosing a major can also be just as challenging. Yet, the same advice for picking a college applies here: let go of distractions and input from other people. What is it that you, individually, want to do? Not what is most popular, or what your friends have done, but what jumps out at you the most? What are you most interested in not only learning about but actually implementing towards a future career? What, when you hear about or work on or learn about, excites you the most? What have you been most interested in learning or working on in high school? What have you most dreamt of doing that you simply have not been able to but can’t wait to do now? All these questions should be on your mind as you begin the application process.