Junior year is obviously stressful, as is every year of high school. It’s only recently that I’ve started to understand why junior year has been the most stressful year of high school. With semester grades coming out and college counselor meetings being booked for the junior class, everything feels like it’s ramping up. Grades especially feel confusing. It’s hard to know where I’m supposed to be, when I’m supposed to be there, and what any of it actually means for the college process, and don’t even get me started on the list.
As a junior I feel like I’m expected to have a rough list of colleges to be keeping in mind, and as a daughter I am expected to create a list of college tours over spring break. Where do I start? To be honest I have nothing to base any of my information on. I find random schools on TikTok that look pretty and have an acceptance rate that I’m semi confident in, but it looks like my list of reach schools is much larger than my targets. Finding my dream school at this stage seems nearly impossible because I don’t know when I will have that moment of “I want to go here.” It’s not just an education but where I will be living for four years of my life and likely longer.
Being a junior at Parker also means competing against a lot of people with similar credentials. Since Parker tends to send students to the same few schools each year, it can be difficult to find a way to stand out.
Now, if anyone is curious about what it’s like going into second semester junior year at Parker, I can tell you it feels about the same as every other semester, except now, college is constantly floating above me like a halo, keeping me in line. The part that I’m struggling with the most is the concept of time. Especially with keeping Early Decision opportunities in mind for colleges, I feel like I need to be on track to have my top three schools by June. And I need to start my supplemental essay around then, too. It’s a lot to keep in mind, with not a lot of time to get my grades up, college tour, and envision my future.
As many students in the junior class could say, it’s not the easiest thing trying to fill out the college counseling form over winter break. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have the intentions and then proceed to skip half the questions, or, if you’re anything like most of my grade, you won’t finish it until way after the deadline. Then after the long form with a bunch of questions about life at home and your ideal colleges, you will have to book a meeting with your assigned college counselor and anticipate the 75 minute zoom call with your parents and counselor discussing just how meaningful or useless the past three years have been. I have yet to have my meeting, but from what I can tell, it sounds like hell. It’s all in good intention, I know, but it’s still a daunting thing I have to put on my to do list. One of the last things I want to do is look at all my transcripts and activities with my mom, dad, and a random lady and think about what kind of school would maybe want to have me around. What do I bring to the table really and how am I supposed to know?
The truth is, junior year is full of unknowns. It’s what my mom would call a “learning opportunity,” but what I think of as my undetermined future, placed in the hands of people I’ve only just met and with a process I don’t yet understand. I’m told that we’re all in this together, but at the end of the day, it just feels like me, doing something I know nothing about.
So, fingers crossed for second semester junior year. Wish us luck!
