Seniors - It's time to break out your "botany" powers.
You've officially entered the land of college essays, applications, and admissions, and shuttling off the Red Planet will require perseverance, organization (aka a time-management plan), holding true to yourself and what you know, and resilience to buoy you as you revise essays and hear news from colleges. Even if you've prepared for this moment throughout high school, navigating the unknown and uncharted terrain may leave you feeling shaky, scratchy, or even energized, depending on the moment. On any journey, you want to make sure you have what you need:
Know your mission and have ground support.
In some cases, put on your safety or science hat for extra armor or to help you understand the realities of what's ahead to help you stay the course.
Stay positive.
Manage expectations, both yours and, if necessary, the people around you.
Yes, one of my favorite movies is The Martian (and if you read my newsletter - Ditch the Fluff, you caught a clip with tips for writing). For me, this movie resonates and underscores that although life comes with hiccups and the unexpected, navigating those challenges or obstacles is both possible and, in some cases, necessary. It may require drawing deep from within yourself, developing new skills, or tweaking a college list as you do the math to affirm admit numbers so your application strategy aligns with your aspirations.
Of course, your life may not involve being an astronaut/botanist on Mars like the protagonist in the movie, but believing that you will go to a college where you can achieve your goals is important. But what can undermine that in the middle of applying to college is focusing on only one school or a few schools, and creating an idea in your mind that your future hinges on one specific "dream" school.
As they say, the "results are in," and in 2018, Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, released a large, well-documented research paper entitled Fit Over Rankings, showing that it is not which school a student attends but rather what a student does while attending a school that determines their success. Despite this now well-established premise, headlines continue to focus on schools with admit rates less than 10% and social media influencers or threads are filled with how to get into the Ivies or other highly selective schools. Like bad gossip, it's hard to combat the myth that going to a highly selective school is the ticket to a student's future or that highly selective schools with an admit rate of 9% are somehow better than a school with a 30% admit rate. What makes a school the right place for you is not whether it is selective. Instead, it depends on whether it has what you need to be successful, and that can range from having a specific major or program, flexibility in choosing a major to explore, or opportunities to prepare you for the next step, which could be a graduate program or job.
You bring your skills and everything that makes who you are on every journey you take, and wherever that journey takes you. So even if you feel like college admission is beyond your control (like the space storm knocking out the communication system in The Martian), which school you ultimately attend is just a small piece of that next step into your future.
Time to break out your "botany" powers. You got this!
If you're looking for a few more voices to underscore that it is not where you go but what you do when you're there, these articles are worth reading.
Have more questions or looking for more support? Email me at dane@collegeu.solutions
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