The winning entry of our $5,000 fall scholarship, which goes to high school senior Mandy Gao, highlights the difficulty of navigating the application process as the biggest hurdle. The 18-year-old senior at San Francisco’s Abraham Lincoln High School wrote:
“As the first person in my family applying to college, it’s extremely hard for me to research and have all the information necessary for college admissions. I never knew that colleges require you to fill out essays and supplemental questions to apply for their schools ... Applying to schools can add up, and at the very end, you only choose to attend one school and that college tuition is also expensive!”
From the 26,196 responses submitted by entrants from all 50 states, we were able to identify applicants’ top 5 frustrations based on word count:
1) Essays - 13,500
2) Cost - 13,342
3) Test Scores - 7,973
4) Parents - 5,166
5) Grades - 4,129
We further broke down the “parents” statistic and found that students were three times as likely to mention their “mother” or “mom” as the source of frustration than “father” or “dad.” (Tiger moms, looks like you’re living up to your name.) The entries we received were at once haunting yet hopeful. Here are a few of our favorite responses from our 10 finalists:
Kyle from San Francisco, CA considers the stress of writing essays to be the “most irritating” part of applying.
“The difficulty lies with choosing a topic… that presents yourself in a way that differs from others… to convey a different part of yourself through writing that is separate from grades and test scores.”
He hopes to study Communications or Psychology at the University of Colorado - Boulder.
Liz from Sugarland, TX and a Johns Hopkins prospective student is frustrated by the emphasis placed on minutiae in applications.
“With so many requirements in applications, mistakes can easily be made. Students have very little time, but need to pay attention to every small detail to ensure that everything is done perfectly.”
Like many in today’s generation, Nathan, hailing from Blackstone, MA, plans to study Computer and Information Systems and Engineering at Boston College this year. He looks back on his accomplishments as well as his missed opportunities with 20/20 hindsight:
“Some of the most frustrating parts of applying to college is learning exactly what I’ve been doing wrong with the last few years of my high school life. I look at my GPA and my SAT scores thinking if only I had studied a little harder, worked to get a better study habit etc. … it’s a little discouraging to know that I don’t have the best chance for my school based on what I’ve done and not done.”
Sara, from Pawacatuck, CT, finds an admissions process that rewards academic achievement over intellectual curiosity to be frustrating and discouraging.
“I’ve never been grade driven, I’ve always taken classes that I’m interested in, whether they give me an AP or Honors boost in my GPA or not. However, most of the time the kids who lack intrinsic motivation for learning, are often the ones who gain acceptance to the best colleges, due to their 4.0s, perfect SAT scores, and their thousands of extracurriculars.”
Sara dreams of bringing her academic passions to Tufts University to study Biological Sciences.
We hope these insights gathered from our Fall 2015 scholarship are both informative and enlightening and that they will help you reconsider your application approach. See more of our admits here, and don’t miss out on the opportunity to apply for our Spring semester scholarship!
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