With a new year settling in , Hamilton seniors reflect on their success in submitting a few of their college applications. With college application season slowly dying out, there has been lots of stress in the air due to the decisions seniors must make about where they will be attending. Early action for common applications for private and out-of-state schools was due November 1st. Additionally, UC and CSU applications have been submitted as of November 30th and seniors have felt some relief off their shoulders. Recently, a few of our students and teachers talked about how they feel about this school year’s college application season. 

Lindsay Lopez, a Senior in AMPA, stated, “It’s kind of difficult getting all your information prepared, especially with portfolios and everything. And not to mention, every single college expects Performing Arts deadlines in a month than everyone else. So instead of applying to USC in January and being able to relax, I had to finish USC, PACE, NYU, and Ithaca. So it’s stressful trying to finish early. What year was it? December 1st.” 

Students who had applied for performing arts majors had a bit of a more difficult time due to the time crunch they were under. Some students talked about their mental health and how it affected their school work during this difficult time. 

Ashton Martini Jumawan, a senior in SAS stated, “I have a bad habit of putting things off, so I did take it up to the last minute, but I am somewhat confident in my PIQs and in terms of my mental health, I was pretty stressed because I had to juggle a bunch of other stuff, especially as a senior when you’re dealing with senior level coursework.” 

Lindsay Lopez said, “To be pretty honest, it was pretty awful, but I think compared to junior-year stress, it’s at the same level. So in some way, I was able to get used to it in some sense, which is also bad. But I was able to just manage and just stress through it and get it done.”

Kiya Durate, a senior in AMPA, stated, “It was very stressful, I took a hit in September, but it’s okay, it’s over now and I feel a lot better knowing it’s off my plate and I can move on.”

Although a lot of seniors have struggled, others had a less stressful time and were able to use some resources that positively impacted them. 

For example, AMPA senior Emorah Smith stated, “To be honest it was kind of hard but since I decided to multitask instead of waiting this last minute. I went to people like Gerrell from the Black Student STEAM Success Program and went to people like Ms. Monroy in the college room for help. They have been a big help to me. Also, because my seventh period is a senior seminar I decided to go to UCLA room for Ms. Jolly’s help and different resources like that helped me out.”

Senior Dylan Lewis in AMPA said, “Working on my college applications was a little bit rocky just because I had a few to do. But it didn’t affect my school work because I just took a little bit of time out of each day to do it.” 

Although each student had a different experience completing their college applications they all had a similar answer when asking others what advice they had for rising seniors who will soon be completing their college applications. 

Lindsay Lopez stated,  “Please start applications early. Get everything you need to do. Get it done.”

Keayln Morales, a senior in AMPA mentioned, “Don’t wait until the last minute to do your PIQs, because that is very overwhelming.” 

Ashton Martini Jumawan said, “I would say document the stuff that you’ve done now so that you don’t have to reach into the depths of your mind to put it into a PIQ or activity sheet.”

Dylan Lewis stated, “Set aside time in your day to do your college apps, if you do it a little bit every day then it’s going to get finished quickly.“

Ms.Monroy added, “You can pace yourself accordingly, and you don’t have to rush into doing your applications. Make sure that August 1st when you begin your senior year, you can already start applying to the common app and the UCs.”

All in all, seniors did an amazing job completing their applications and were able to overcome some of their challenges. Although this was just the beginning of senior season, it isn’t over for Hamilton’s class of 24′ yet. Thankfully, the first half is over now for the second semester!!