Over summer, a friend of mine who was just finishing his first year at college gave me a piece of advice: “Don’t apply to too many schools because it will just make the selection process all the more difficult.”

I thought that his advice was great and that it would be easy to follow, but here we are now in December and guess what, I didn’t heed his advice.

It started subtly enough: e-mails offering free applications to their respective schools came into my inbox. I couldn’t help but filling out some of them that were sent to me. I kept thinking, “Oh this isn’t that big of a deal” and “sure why not”. I kept trudging through my first semester not keeping track of how many schools I had applied to. I figured that I was pretty firm on where I wanted to go and that these other schools would not even be considered in my selection process.

And then admissions and scholarships came pouring in, and I started looking into their programs and there you have it: a self-inflicted bullet wound.

I never knew how stressful it would be to decide on where to go to college, and it’s stressful enough when you have two or three schools to choose from, let alone five to decide between.

So my advice to any juniors that may be reading my blog: Don’t apply to every school that encourages you to apply to or any school you are remotely interested in! It just adds a great amount of stress to an already stressful senior year. Make sure you are very interested in attending that school before you send off that application.

Also, are there any of my fellow seniors that have put themselves into this same hole? If so, send me an e-mail at [email protected].