Every single year, the upper form at Hill has a certain unease in the fall. If you’ve been around even a single senior during your time at Hill, you know exactly what that uneasiness means: college season. Every year, the 6th form scrambles for Nov. 1 and beyond, hoping to be able to secure a spot for their future in the country’s top colleges. Whether it’s weighing athletic offers and going through recruiting, or just sending in applications to colleges, everyone goes through the process in some way. And as most people who’ve done it will say, its not the most fun experience. And while they’re important, most people find the process to be not only a negative experience in terms of stress, but as a four-year process that culminates in the blow over of stress in the fall of their 6th form year.
In the last 10 years, acceptance rates all across the board have dropped significantly. Boston College accepted 48% of applicants for the class of 2015, and 12.6% for the class of 2029. Students have more statistics to worry about: whether their Extracurriculars are sufficient, how many leadership positions they hold, how many awards they’ve received and how their personal background could be of benefit or to the detriment of their chances of “getting in”. Everyone scrambles to gather as many titles and benefits to their name as possible, and it results in a rat race for the whole school.
Obviously, this then leads to people worrying about this from the moment they get into high school. “I’m a sophomore and I’m already planning on what activities I need to do and what I should put on my college application,” Evan Meyers ‘28 said.
Students are carefully curating their application and achievements before they can even get a driver’s license. And it’s a pattern seen across the board in schools: more and more students each year get this mindset. And while self-improvement and aiming for heights is a good goal to set, it becomes harmful if those goals matter more than you do to yourself.
High school has become more of a proving ground for students heading into college than a place to get truly ready for college. Every failure in high school is made out to be catastrophic, and they’re compounded even further by online content related to the process. Every aspect of high schooler’s lives become engulfed by the college process, and it’s clearly not a good effect
“I’ve been stressed for so long I forgot what it’s like to not”. Colin Wang ’26 told me this during an interview, and I think it sums up the effect of this process. As more and more colleges drop acceptance rates, and people become obsessed with college and admissions earlier and earlier, the effect on the mental health of all students no matter where is seen. High school has morphed from a place where you can mess up and get back up, to a deciding factor and a key point in many people’s careers and lives when it really shouldn’t.
“You aren’t gonna remember the test you failed in IM 32 when you’re 30, or even 20. And if you do, you’ll realize it doesn’t matter,” Brooks Bernabei ‘27 said.