Over the next couple weeks, most seniors will begin to hear back from the schools they applied to under regular decision programs. As the decisions come in, seniors will have to make the very big decision of where to spend the next four years of their lives. I hope that by going through my reasons for choosing to attend Dartmouth, I can aid those seniors hearing from schools in their process of choosing where to go.

Firstly, the college you choose will not only be your place of learning for the next four years, it will also be your home. You have to find a place where you feel comfortable living. For me, I love Dartmouth’s campus and location. I love the snow and the cold, the fact that Dartmouth is secluded in a small town surrounded by a forest, and even just the buildings on campus. I also feel more comfortable moving to a small town knowing that Boston is only a little over two hours away and that Dartmouth runs buses to and from Boston almost every day.

In addition to making sure a college’s physical location and campus suit your personality, you have to make sure the students do as well. I am a very active person. I love playing sports, and growing up in Colorado, having access to the outdoors is also something that is very important to me. The fact that 80% of Dartmouth students participate in some form of organized athletics and that the Dartmouth Outing Club is the largest club on campus made me feel right at home with the students.

You also have to find a school that is the right size for you. I go to a large high school with more than 3,400 kids. I wanted to find a college that was a little bigger than my high school, but not by much. I like the size of my high school. It seems large enough to provide me with the activities and facilities I need while not being so large that I feel like a faceless person in the crowd. Dartmouth has a little more than 4,000 undergraduate students, and that size feels right for me. Other kids may feel that only 4,000 kids are too small for their liking.

There are some “just because” reasons that you want to go to a particular college. For me, those “just because” reasons were tradition and community. I wanted a football team to support, and I needed a strong sense of school spirit. Probably because of its relative isolation, Dartmouth has a sense of community that I didn’t find anywhere else. More than 90% of students live on campus all four years and I have yet to meet an alumnus who hasn’t told me how they wish they were back in my shoes, about to start their Dartmouth experience.

Last, but certainly not least, are academics. You have to choose a place where you fit academically. I liked the concept of small class sizes and having professors and not T.A.s teach the classes at Dartmouth. But going to a smaller school like Dartmouth may prevent you from taking classes that are only offered at a larger institution with the resources to support different types of classes. Going to a liberal arts college also may not provide me with the technical expertise I might need for specific jobs. But this is something that I valued less than the benefits I saw from pursuing a liberal arts education. Dartmouth is also on a type of quarter system called the D-Plan which I fell in love with because it requires 3 classes a quarter instead of 4 classes a semester. However, some people may not like the fact that the D-Plan also involves staying on campus during sophomore summer, but it’s something for which I am actually excited.

As you can see, choosing a college is an involved decision which only the person going to the school can truly make. Input from parents and friends is definitely helpful, just as long as you remember that in the end it’s your decision because it’s the next four years of your life. Good luck choosing a school and remember that at the end of the day, your college experience will be what you make of it. No one school can guarantee you a good or bad experience. That’s up to you.

I’m no college admissions officer, but I do believe I’ve picked up some helpful ideas during my time writing college essays. Hopefully you will find them helpful too:

1) Start Early. Especially when it gets close to submission dates, all I hear from my friends is how they wished they had started earlier than they did. Learn from their last-minute mistakes! Don’t put yourself in that position. Being stressed about not having enough time adds unnecessary pressure to a situation that is already full of stress. You’re not going to understand how much time and effort it takes to write a college essay until you start the process yourself, and too often you underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes. The summer before your senior year is a great time to get rolling on your essays because then you don’t have the pressures of school or application deadlines.

2) Don’t limit yourself, especially in the beginning. You might think that you have a defining experience or influential moment already lined up to write about for your college essay, but don’t close yourself off before even starting. Take some time before writing to look at the specific prompt and let your mind wander within the parameters of that prompt to see where you end up. You might be surprised at where you do. The essays I used for college were not the ones I thought I would write. They ended up being the essays I thought of on a whim during such brainstorming exercises.

3) Sleep on it. Sometimes when you are caught up in the passion of writing, words flow that just sound remarkable, incredible, and seem to not need a second glance. But nothing that you write the very first time will be perfect. Always take the time to stop, sleep on what you wrote, and return to it the next day, or even the next week. All of the essays I used evolved over months of rewrites. Make sure to sleep on “finished” drafts and come back to them for review.

4) The more eyes, the better. Having your siblings, parents, and friends look over your essays is helpful. The more people you have to give input, the better. Just remember two things: (1) don’t lose yourself in everyone’s suggestions and (2) family’s and friend’s suggestions are great, but remember they aren’t your college admissions officers! Also, try to get an English teacher, counselor, or someone else more directly related to writing or college to take a look at your essay. (Current college students, especially freshmen, are great too because they just went through this process. Try to pick students you know at the schools you want to go to, if possible.)

5) Be yourself, and stand out. Colleges get tons of applications. Even though you spend countless hours perfecting your college essays, college admissions officers spend only minutes reading them. This may seem unfair, but it is understandable considering how many applications they have to read. Knowing this, however, should prove to you the importance of making your essay unique and of being yourself. Everyone has unique and fun experiences. Just spend some time trying to remember yours. And remember that the largest event in your life may not always be the most revealing of who you are. Sometimes quirky, seemingly less-significant stories paint an even better picture of who you are. Also, trying to write as if you are someone you are not is easy to see through. Be authentic. If you think that you need to change who you are in an essay to be admitted into a particular college, think twice about whether that college is right for you.

I hope these tips help you as you start to think about your college essays. If you give yourself enough time to make the process less stressful, writing about yourself and your experiences can not only be rewarding but actually kind of fun. And remember that when you begin to write your essays — have fun with them!

Each morning during my third-period class, the school announcements begin. Last week, a new announcement was added to the traditional list of sporting events and club meetings — next year’s scheduling sheets are now available in the registrar’s office for current freshmen, sophomores, and juniors.

A few thoughts crossed my mind when I heard that announcement, the first of which was the realization that, for the first time, I was not a part of that challenging, yet exciting process of picking high school classes.

I took a minute to remember each high school year when I went through the process of selecting the following year’s classes. In remembering this process, I stumbled upon some tricks I discovered along the way. Hopefully they’ll be helpful to you in choosing your own classes:

1. Talk to your current teachers. Your teachers have a pretty good idea of how you are as a student and a pretty good idea of what the next level of classes are like. Be sure to make use of the fact that they know both! Your current teachers will give you a pretty good idea of where they think is best for you next year, but be warned — they teach the subject they do because they are passionate about it. You may not be, so make sure they aren’t pushing you in a direction that you don’t want to go because THEY like the subject matter so much.
2. Talk to students who took the classes you are interested in. For the most part, kids don’t sugarcoat their feelings about classes (after all, they don’t work with or have personal relationships with the teachers of those classes like your current teachers do). This is very useful for getting to know the things about classes that teachers won’t tell you — if the teachers are tough graders, if they care about tardiness, if they’ll bump your grade at semester if you’re on the border, etc. Just remember that students have their biases, especially if they didn’t do as well as they wanted to in a particular class. Make sure to get a few different opinions about a class from the kids who are most similar to you in personality, study habits, and interests.
3. Talk to your counselor. Counselors, although not in such a specialized way, know a lot about the different classes and teachers at your school. They, like your teachers, should also have a pretty good idea of who you are as a student, but they also know your overall goals and your planned path through high school, so they can recommend pretty good matches as far as classes and teachers go. You can also talk to the department coordinator. This person knows each one of the teachers and classes in their department very well, so they are always a great resource and are typically willing to help students who want to find the best fit for a class in their department. Just remember that coordinators are busy, so try sending them an e-mail to set up a time to meet that works for them instead of just barging in on their office.
4. Read through the course descriptions and try to get a copy of the syllabus if the teacher provides one. Although these formal documents may be a little dry, they are still worth reading. They tell you exactly how the class works and what you will be doing. They may not give you insight into the teacher’s personality or some of the details, but they help you to figure out if you’re at least interested in the subject matter.
5. Go for the good teachers instead of the classes when possible. You may not always be able to pick classes based solely on the teacher, but when you can, go for the teacher over the class. Teachers who are fun and interested in what they are teaching always make class the same way — fun and interesting. Some of the best classes I took in high school were ones that I may not have thought about taking were it not for the teacher. Take a risk; learn about something you may never have considered!
6. Take a rigorous course load. Most schools offer classes of different levels. It may not seem worthwhile at the time, but taking the most rigorous course load you can handle is important. Learning to work hard and get through challenging material is one of the best ways to prepare for college and beyond. At some point, some class will challenge you. The sooner you get practice with challenging material, the better prepared you will be to handle it in the future.

I hope these six tips on picking classes help those of you who are doing just that for your next year of high school, and remember each year of high school gets better than the one before!

It’s like I’m watching the same movie scene over and over again each time one of my friends gets into college. Immediately, he or she is understandably overcome with excitement; after all, four years of hard work has been leading up to this very moment. Then, deserved congratulations come from most everyone who hears about the acceptance. It’s not until later, after the exhilaration subsides (which can take days, even weeks!) that a realization hits — how am I going to pay for this amazing school I just got into?

In my search for an answer to that very same question, I have come across some resources that I found helpful and that I hope you will too. But before I discuss them, I have to clarify one thing about scholarships: they come in two varieties. There are need-based scholarships, and there are merit-based scholarships. You must qualify for need-based scholarships based on your family’s income. Merit-based scholarships require no such qualification and are open to anyone. Both merit- and need-based scholarships can be found through the following two resources.

The first resource I want to talk about is my first stop when it comes to any question of mine: the Internet. The best website I have found so far for scholarship searches is www.fastweb.com (opens new window). The Dartmouth financial aid website is actually where I first heard about it. For this website, you create a profile by answering some basic questions about yourself, your grades, your test scores, and your interests. Based on your answers to those questions, the website matches you with scholarships registered with the site. The first time I logged on, it suggested more than 50 scholarships for me, and every few days it seems I have an e-mail from fastweb.com (opens new window) about a new scholarship for which I am eligible to apply. (ACT note: Always read a website’s terms of use and privacy policy before disclosing personal information.)

There really are scholarships for everything, and some scholarships take less effort than you think. For example, I submitted an application for a $1,000 scholarship that only required me to fill in my name, e-mail, and address and to provide a digital copy of my common application essay for consideration.

In addition to going to the Internet, I used another resource to find scholarships: my school counselor. I set up a meeting with my counselor, and she knew about some scholarships that were unique to my school and area that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about. For example, the retired teachers of my school district sponsor a scholarship for one of the district’s graduating seniors. I also found out from my counselor that even some of the clubs at my school provide college scholarships. Make sure to meet with your school counselor. Your school may also have unique scholarship opportunities like mine, but how will you know if you never ask?

Whether you look for scholarships on your own through the Internet or with the help of a counselor at school, or both, good luck scholarship hunting!

Second semester started today at my school, and with it came the relief of the senior class. College applications were out, 1st semester grades were in, and all anyone seemed to be talking about was this ubiquitous disease called, “senioritis,” which apparently infects the senior class starting about this time.

At first, even I started to notice some of the symptoms of this disease — lack of concern for future grades, an excessive need to be social at all costs, and even a general disregard for responsibilities pertaining to high school. But then I realized that it was my choice whether or not to catch this disease, and maybe it wasn’t as harmless as everyone had thought.

The fear of a rescinded application (which I found out is a real possibility when I talked to current students at Dartmouth about it) was enough to make me think twice about catching a serious case of senioritis. But at the same time, how could I treat the unique opportunity of second semester as something ordinary?

On the one hand, this is the last semester of high school, the last semester to be with high school friends under the same school roof. It is a rare opportunity when we have a smidge more latitude on grades, and being the oldest, we seniors are finally at the top of the totem pole. But our grades do still matter, and we still have responsibilities to the organizations and clubs to which we belong.

The conclusion that I have come to about “senioritis” is one of moderation: it would be a waste for us to ignore the benefits of second semester — we should enjoy the last months with our friends and the opportunity not to have to worry about grades as much — but we can’t forget about our responsibilities — our responsibility to our classes, to our clubs, and most importantly to ourselves. If the fear of not being prepared for tests or a rescinded application is what scares you healthy, then so be it, but ideally our personal integrity should keep us from developing severe cases of “senioritis.”

Good luck to all of you in finding your balance between fun and responsibility this last semester. Enjoy your friends, and keep working hard!

Postnote:
Right before the semester started I talked with a lot of my friends about “second semester resolutions,” and here’s what they said:

“I want to finally read a book for fun.”
“I want to become friends with more of our class before we graduate.”
“I want to go to lunch with friends every day instead of staying in and studying more.”
“I want to learn more about my favorite subject instead of studying more for a class I don’t like.”
“I’m going to start running for exercise.”
“I’m going to have breakfast with my Mom before I leave for school.”
“I’m going to help my younger sister with her homework more.”
“I’m going to pick guitar back up as a hobby.”
“I’m going to listen to lectures from iTunes U to prepare for college classes.”

Two p.m. MST on December 8th, 2009, is a date and time I will never forget; nor will I forget the series of events which led up to and followed that point in time. Let me explain. I’ll start at the beginning.

On December 4th I received an e-mail from the Dartmouth admissions office explaining that my admissions decision letter would be available online starting at 4:00 EST on December 8th. This was quite a surprise, as I had not expected a decision before December 15th, the date they had set for admissions decisions.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much that weekend. I did try, however, to occupy my time by working on a government term paper, by volunteering at Denver’s parade of lights for my National Honor Society and by playing racquetball with both my Dad and my best friend. Those things helped distract me, but I still couldn’t wait for Tuesday.

Monday came and went with no news.

I woke up Tuesday morning earlier than normal, ready for the day to begin. Before I left for school, I opened the Dartmouth application status webpage and also opened the e-mail containing my assigned username and password. I closed the screen, knowing that the next time I opened it, I would know the answer to the question which had dominated my thoughts ever since I had clicked the Dartmouth submit button.

At 2:00 p.m. I met my brother (a junior at my school) in the counseling office where I work during the last period of the day. We grabbed my laptop and headed to the empty foreign language resource center.

I opened up the screen, logged on to the school’s wireless network, typed in my username and password, clicked the return button, and stepped away. I couldn’t read the letter. I told my brother to read it aloud.

The first word which came out of my brother’s mouth was “Congratulations.” That was all I needed to hear. I’m not going to lie — I went a little crazy.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur, but it was full of sharing that moment with friends and family over the phone, on Facebook, and in person, when possible. Successes aren’t worthwhile without friends and family to share them with, and I am thankful to have the friends and family I do.

Dartmouth has a class of 2014 webpage on their site, which has everything from menus for the different dining halls to tips on how to deal with parents experiencing separation anxiety! The webpage also has a directory of all the admitted students, which lists their name, high school, e-mail address, and a personal message from them. Using this and the Dartmouth 2014 Facebook group, I have already been able to make contact with many of my future classmates.

Even as I become excited with things like getting to know my future classmates, I still have to remember that I have another semester left in high school. I still have responsibilities to follow through with, however tempting it may be to say, “Forget this! I’m already accepted to college!”

To all of those who also received a good early letter, congratulations! And to those of you who are still waiting, best of luck. I know your moment will come soon enough, and I promise, it’s worth all the hard work and the wait!

Last week was Thanksgiving break and except for the food, the games, and catching up with family, college applications dominated my time off from school. You know something is wrong with you when college applications surface in your dreams, or rather, nightmares! Nightmares aside, I hope to finish these applications before they are all I can think about.

I had tried to finish up applications before break, but the constant flow of schoolwork prevented me from accomplishing that goal. I guess that’s what school breaks are for anyway — catching up.

Even though I wrote many essays during the summer when I had a fair amount of free time, I quickly discovered that many of the essays I needed to complete for college applications didn’t relate to the essays I had written over the summer. So, before I went any further, I compiled a Word document listing every essay prompt I needed to finish for every college on my list, including the number of required words for each essay. Then I posted the list on my wall and marked off prompts as I finished the essays, confident that I had listed every requirement.

So during free time on break (mostly late at night after family left), I worked on the essays I still needed to finish. Although I’m not completely finished yet, I feel like I’m in a much better position than I was before.

Looking back now, I realize it would have been better to have finished these applications sooner, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Working over winter break (if I don’t get accepted by my early decision school) will be the consequence.

The first Monday back at school was the day I had to turn in my transcript request forms for all my regular decision colleges. Shelling out $90 for just transcripts to my schools wasn’t fun, but I guess it was a good lesson to learn early on: applying to college can be pricey! After a bit of prompting, my school’s post-grad office agreed not to send my transcripts until after I hear back from my early decision school. This way, if I’m accepted at my top choice college, I can retrieve my check and save myself the time of calling all those schools to cancel my applications. For the same reasons, I am also waiting until I hear back from my top choice school to send all my common applications and test scores.

The fact that my first choice college said that decisions would be made on or before December 15th has made me even more anxious. I don’t even have a specific date to check the website — the decision could be made before the 15th! What’s worse is the realization that all the hard work I’m putting into my other applications could all be a waste of time if I get into my top school; it makes it hard to stay focused and to keep working. In these moments, I remind myself that I can hope for the best, but I must always prepare for the worst.

Because I decided to apply to my number one college early decision, my application was due last week. The hardest part wasn’t the application itself; it was mustering the courage to click “submit.”

Eventually, of course, I did, and an unexpected wave of mixed emotions followed. I was happy and relieved that the application was off, but the idea of my college future being completely out of my hands at that point left me feeling a bit helpless.

Over the next four weeks, until I hear back, the best thing I can do is not think about the pending decision. The more I dwell on it, the more anxious I will become, and that is a useless way to spend my time. I have plenty of things to keep me occupied here in high school — not to mention all the regular decision applications I still have to finish in case things don’t work out.

But I can’t help but take a moment now, for your sake if nothing else, to dwell on the moments leading up to me clicking that submit button.

The last week leading up to my early decision deadline was eventful. I had finished my common application much earlier, but it never seemed quite finished, and that was a source of much frustration for me … until I actually clicked submit.

I got as close as putting my computer mouse over the submit button at least three separate times before the encroaching deadline three days away finally pushed me over the edge (I had heard that prior to a due date, the common application website often becomes very slow due to surges in the site’s traffic).

The realization that I came to — and the reason why I was finally comfortable clicking submit — was that there will always be something more to add, something more to revise. It is, after all, an infuriatingly impossible task to sum up 18 years of life in a few meager pages. But at some point, the changes you focus on are insignificant in the grand scheme of your application. And at this point you need to click submit and move on with your life!

But pushing submit wasn’t the end quite yet. I still had to follow up with the school to make sure they had received everything they needed: score reports, school reports, transcripts, letters of recommendation, the common application and their supplemental materials.

Having confirmed that my application had all these necessary components, the only thing left to do now is waiting in anticipation for December 15th, my collegiate judgment day. Wish me luck! And good luck to those of you who also applied early this year.

Fortunately, at the end of each October, my school has a week off called Fall Break. Many juniors and seniors take advantage of this unique time off from school to go visit colleges, as I did. There is no better way to get a taste of what a school is like than to go visit it yourself. Since college will be your home for the next four years, if you have the chance to take a day or two to go visit, it is well worth it.

Visiting colleges, being able to experience college life (for however brief a time), is extremely exciting, but it is also somewhat painful when you realize that your visit was just that, a visit, and you have to return to high school afterwards. College will be here soon enough and now is not the time to focus on the prize. Rather, now is the time to focus on the effort needed to get the prize. Let me take a moment to discuss some of the things I learned while visiting colleges, some of the things I would have found useful before I went.

The first thing I learned was the importance of having a consistent experience at each school. What I mean by that is it’s unfair to see one thing at one school, a completely unrelated thing at another, and then try to compare the two schools. What I attempted to do at each school to keep the experiences similar was to:

1. Go on the campus tour
2. Sit in on a class
3. Try to meet a student at that school for coffee or a walk around campus to get his or her perspective on aspects of the school that the admission office doesn’t cover.

The second thing I learned is to not restrict yourself too much during college visits. Take some time to explore, because the random experiences I had—like going to the school’s library late one night when I couldn’t sleep—gave me better insight into the school and the students than anything else. Blocking off an hour or two to just wander around campus and observe was one of the most useful things I did at each school. I always started at the student center to see what was going on, maybe even grabbed a snack, and then watched different groups of students to see what they were up to.

The third thing is to remember that this is your future and not your parents’ future. Far too many times, the parents on the informational tours were acting as if it were they who were the ones going to the school, not their children. Whether students fully realize it or not, Mom and Dad won’t be the ones having to spend the next four years of their life at the school, so it is up to them to do the research, figure out what they like and do not like and make the best college choice. There are so many colleges and opportunities out there. Students shouldn’t limit their college search to those schools that Mom and Dad know about, care about, or even want you to attend. Of course you must respect your parents (and their finances), but the choice of where to spend the next four years of your life ultimately is up to you. Take advantage of that opportunity.

Visiting schools last week, I learned the need to have a consistent experience at each of them, the things you can learn off the beaten path, and the importance of the student—and not the parent—in this process. Happy hunting. I hope these college visit tips help.

My school newspaper, the Union Street Journal, has been my greatest passion and my greatest challenge in high school. Being the paper’s editor has taught me as much about leadership and life as it has about editing and writing. The late nights in the newsroom with Dave Mathews blaring from the same obsessed editor’s computer have provided me with some of my greatest frustrations, and my best memories. And that is precisely why I am sad to say good-bye.

At the Union Street Journal, we have a tradition of passing the editorial torch about this time of the year. This is done for two reasons. First, past experiences have proven to us that second semester seniors are about as useful as Dr. House’s bum leg (sorry for the House reference — I’m kind of a fan). And second, the first semester transition is made in enough time for the old editorial board to supervise the new board for two production cycles.

This past Monday, editor applications were distributed to interested students at our weekly meeting. Those applications are due this upcoming Monday at the next meeting. Final decisions will be made by the current editorial board and sponsors right after that meeting.

It’s hard to believe that not that long ago it was me walking up to room IC 742 early on a Tuesday morning to see whether I was chosen to lead the paper. I was so anxious that I got to school an hour before it opened, hoping they had posted the results on the door the night before. They had.

Being the editor of the newspaper was a roller-coaster ride of sorts. In between the ups and downs, the twists and turns, I did pick up a few things while on the ride. Learning how to manage different types of people in the newsroom was difficult, but doing so taught me invaluable lessons about working with people. Being the last line of defense forced me to develop solutions to advertising, content, and design problems when they came up. The solution-oriented mindset I developed as a result has helped me in many situations outside of the newspaper. And learning how to lead was a challenge. But in doing so, I discovered the power of mutual respect and creativity, the need to lead by example, and the need for firm yet flexible leadership.

Selecting new editors is a bittersweet process for me. On the one hand, it will be quite a welcome relief to move the burdens of the paper off my shoulders. But on the other hand, once you reach the end, you start to think about how you got there, and getting to where I am now with the paper has been quite a fun journey and one I will miss.

This process will surely repeat itself throughout senior year as the organizations, teams, and projects that have meant so much to me will be transferred to a new group of students. But the first in any series is always the most profound, and that is why this passing of the editorial torch forced me to take a second, to process and reflect. My thoughts have led me to this conclusion — time passes faster than we would like, faster than we may be comfortable with, but there is no changing that. So let the passing of time be a reminder to make the most of it, a reminder to reach out for the torches being passed down to you.