WOODBURY — Crunch time: the time between coming back from spring break and the May 1 national college decision deadline.
Seniors scram to pick their college to attend in the fall semester. A lot of emotion, like anxiety, stress and uncertainty, tends to stick around this time of year. A lot of students wonder if they’re making the right decision or not.
Kathy Green, Nonnewaug’s College and Career Resource Center counselor, believes that stress plays different roles in trying to make a decision during this crunch time.
“There are a lot of stress factors that can be added to making a decision with picking a college,” Green said. “One can be parents who are asking constantly about making a decision. Another is the impending transition, or moving on to the next phase. Emotions can run high. Finances can also play in that stress level category, [as well as] what programs different schools offer, and even crushed dreams, like not going to your dream school.”
Senior Jeff Bernardi has been holding off on choosing one of his top two schools for next year: Norwich and St. John Fisher. But why was he holding off making the decision for so long?
“The reason I took so long with my decision was because the prospect days that the [wrestling] coaches wanted me to go to were recent, and I want to see how they ran their program before I signed,” Bernardi said. “These days gave me new insight into the programs and helped make my decision easier.”
Bernardi said that he wasn’t stressed even though he did everything at the last minute. He has decided to attend Norwich in the fall.
Opposite of Bernardi, there are also seniors who committed right when senior year started. One of them is Ellie McDonald, who will be attending Middlebury College to run track and field, and she made this decision in July.
“I spent pretty much all of my junior year talking to coaches and visiting schools,” McDonald said. “Each school has only so many spots for incoming freshmen, and most athletes tend to commit early.”
She verbally committed in July.
“I only needed to apply to one school,” McDonald continues, “because with each school you do a pre-read to say if you’d get in or not. So since July, I knew where I was going.”
Even though McDonald and Bernardi made fairly easy decisions, Green believes that another reason students put a hold on deciding where to go can be your family.
“Sometimes families hold off on deciding a little longer to appeal the office for financial aid or more merit,” Green said. “Sometimes students just delay making the decision because it’s a hard decision to make, so they put it off for as long as they can.”
