forum College Application Station

Started November 25, 2019 by @Moxie group

tune

College apps suck. Come complain about them with me
I know quite a bit about them too so you can ask questions if you have them.

OH! OH! When is the right time to start looking at apps fo different colleges and start writing them? (I'm 13 (almost 14) but I've spent (sadly) a lot of time thinking about college and we also just had a career project in English that's gotten me thinking about my future.
Also -I'm just curious so you don't have to answer if you don't want to- where are you looking at for college and what are you thinking about studying?

OH! OH! When is the right time to start looking at apps fo different colleges and start writing them? (I'm 13 (almost 14) but I've spent (sadly) a lot of time thinking about college and we also just had a career project in English that's gotten me thinking about my future.
Also -I'm just curious so you don't have to answer if you don't want to- where are you looking at for college and what are you thinking about studying?

Well, I think if you're excited about it freshman year is a good time to start looking at the colleges you might want to attend. I don't think you should finalize your list though until the beginning of senior year, only because that's when you'll be the closest to attending college. You can't physically start your application until the beginning of senior year, unfortunatly. (Something you can do, however, is look at personal essay prompts and start brainstorming or writing your essays)
I am looking at schools in southern california and university of oregon, which is my only out of state college I'm applying to. I am going to study physcology and minor in creative writing.

But also, don't put too much pressure on yourself to figure things out right now. I'm a second-year e in college and I've been through so many changes in the past few years alone. Even changed my major this semester. Having goals and having some idea of what you want is good, but being hard on yourself and having no flexibility whatsoever is not.

I had my heart set on doing Health and Social care for 3 years, but due to my own mental health I wasn't able to do the course.
I then wanted to do a Level 3 Extended Art Diploma, but the exam board screwed me over and I wasn't able to do the course.
I applied to then do Fine Art, Photography, and Philosophy, but due to how my brain works I couldn't do Philosophy.
Finally I applied for Level 3 Criminology instead of the Philosophy, but ended up dropping it at the end of my first year.
I am now in the final year of college and I am only doing Fine Art and Photography.

Expect changes to happen, and expect things to get in the way of what you originally intend to do.
Always give yourself a plan B in case your plan A doesn't go the way you want it to.

^^^
Basically I went from being like: Hah, I can become a doctor and major in chemistry, it'll be easy
to: Hahah dear god, please make it stop! Oh, look! I can become a Physician's assistant instead!
Then taking organic chem and withdrawing from the course and thus cutting off my path to entering the medical field.
But I'm pretty set on public health now as my major and I'm minoring in psychology. I'm pretty happy about it so far. Sometimes you don't know your best fit until you try it.

Does one have to graduate with a major? I had a plan to become a teacher for my entire high school life but after, I missed the deadline to apply, I started second guessing my decision and now idk what I want to dk

Yeah, you have to graduate with a major. Because otherwise you’re not getting your degree in anything. Did you miss the deadline to apply to college? Because then you could go to community college and then transfer to a four year university.

No, the university i go to has a couple different deadlines to apply for certain programs. I ended up applying to arts and science but i have no clue what i want to do.

The courses you take don't always have to correlate to what you want to do when you leave.
I took French for 9 years and History for 10 years, but I don't want to do them as a career.

Also depends on what country you're in. In the U.S., you can change your major at any point as long as you hit the necessary class requirements before you graduate. We were actually talking about that yesterday- how American universities keep you in longer because there are so many gen eds and stuff, and they take more money, but they also give you a lot more freedom to change your mind, even part of the way through.