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I am unsure what odd blend of circumstances brought about the unusual actions I have witnessed this application season, but I hope never to see them again. Everything seemed normal as the spring semester was coming to an end. Hearing excuses from juniors about how busy they were did not set off any alarms. The expectation was that work on the essays that were already available and other preparation for the coming application season would be completed in June.
The first indication that something was significantly different from other years was when June arrived with only a handful of rough drafts of the personal statements. I stepped up my requests to send me something, anything that had been written on the primary application essay. Only one or two of the growing number of seniors responded positively to the idea of essays and applications interrupting their summer break. There was also a larger influx of seniors who woke up one morning in May or June and realized that they were about to begin their final year in high school. Fighting a war on two fronts should be avoided at all costs, but that is precisely where I found myself before recognizing the coming conflict.
Much of the battle involved bringing families up to speed who knew nothing about the application process but attended the first meeting with a list of elite colleges in hand. The tragedy of meeting families for the first time when the client is already a rising senior is that you have to dash their dreams of an Ivy education immediately instead of educating them about expectations over time. A student in the bottom 50% of their class has no business spending the time and money required to apply for admission at colleges who accept less than 10% of their applicants. Then came the families with colleges whose sticker price is just under $100,000 and the majority of their questions revolved around accessing the billions of dollars of unclaimed scholarships.
Between giving crash courses on creating college lists, being able to afford going to college and dragging my longer-term clients into the process kicking and screaming, this application season has been one to remember – or should I say, one that I would like to forget. More than half my clients this year refused to complete anything until they felt the pressure of a deadline. Completed applications have routinely been left unsubmitted until I insisted that they pull the trigger on them. Whatever has caused this peculiar blend of application madness, I hope it goes away and is never seen again.
