Senior year is plagued with the dreaded disease of Senioritis. It is characterized by apathy and laziness towards school work as a result of already being accepted into college. Yet many seniors must still stay busy, motivated, and stressed during first semester just as the lower classmen due to one thing: college applications. The degrees of stress vary between every senior. Those who apply to as little as one college may not feel the rush and amount of work as one who decides to apply to sixteen to twenty, but the pressure and anxiety to get accepted can be overwhelming.
So far, the Senior House has processed over 3,000 applications. Class House of 2009 receptionist, Maggie Armstrong, has aided students three times in the application process. “It’s not hard” says Armstrong. “There’s just so many [students].” The class of 2009 is the largest class to graduate at Neuqua thus far, which means the class house has its work cut out for them. They have been processing applications since about two weeks before school started and they predict that it will not end until early March.
Processing applications is not very difficult. The class house enters application requests onto PrepHQ, pulls transcripts, puts it together with the school profile, and enters it again into PrepHQ where it is then sent to the post office. If applications require involvement from the counselor, it is given to them. Counselor Mareen Cohoon estimates that she spends about half and hour to an hour on letters of recommendation, and about fifteen minutes for supplementary objects such as a secondary school report.
Though the application process is work for the office, most of the burden falls on the students. They are responsible for putting the materials together to make it convenient as possible for school administrators/offices. And of course, they are the ones who write the all important college essays. With the amount of work that has to be done, students can crack under the pressure. “As deadlines get real close, [students] are really nervous and anxious” says Armstrong. “Yeah, there are some students who come in a panic” says Cohoon. This is manly due to the overwhelming consequences college applications can bring. Though applying is over, many students feel anxiety when waiting for the decision.
By Christy Kim, staff writer
