As November 1st and 15th come and go, many seniors check their common app essays for the last time and finally click submit. As relief or anxiety washes over them, they reflect on this process and the next essays they’ll write. Here’s what Eastlake students had to say.
The first step, for many, was finding schools to apply too. With over one-hundred-and-eight colleges and universities in Washington alone, there are many tours, information sessions, and interviews a student can participate in. Eastlake students chose their schools for a variety of reasons: intended majors, the campus, the financial aid, etc. Once picked, the students sat down at their computers to type out their first essays.
Now, at the end of November, there are a multitude of feelings and opinions on the process. Some feel on top of their essays and applications. Balancing homework and admissions, they’ve either finished or are on track to do so before their January deadlines. Some people, like Claire Heye (’25), feel that their college counselor helped immensely in her college process. She says, “[my counselor] helped me make my essay’s more focused on what the colleges want to see.” Some people, independent of their editors, had trouble finding a topic to write about. Shakhana Muhilan (’25) says, “I had to think through my entire life…I realized I needed…show the admissions counselors the real me.” No matter what the process, students interested in heading to college after high school, had a lot to think about.
When asked about what they took away from the process, Muhilan (’25) stressed the importance of starting early. She stated, “Start ahead of time. Start in summer and get all of your ideas down”. This, she found, allowed her to balance her school work and college essays. Heye (’25), said that if she could have changed on thing, she wished she’d gotten more instruction on how to use college sites. She said, “I basically had no idea where to start or what to do”. Reaching out to outside recourses helped her figure out the rest of her application, but she said understanding the process from the beginning would have helped her much more.
As college admissions officers work hard to review their applicants’ work, Eastlake students wait for their response and cross their fingers for an acceptance, hoping to be part of their class of 2029.
