Admissions Impossible?

By Nitasha Ranganath

Everything – from politics, to a writers strike, to college applications – can be put into terms of the good, the bad and the ugly.

I’ll start off with the good since I’ve been feeling glass-half-full as of late, which is remarkable seeing how college deadlines are rapidly approaching. The best part about the application itself is the chance to prove yourself and finally taste independence. Adolescence is spent under the shelter of parents who can, for the most part, clean up your mess ups. But the college application rests entirely on my shoulders. Normally, I would not be fond of carrying around such weight, but in this case, holding it up is half the fun.

Granted, this weight does consist of an essay that can be the most frustrating experience. But even so, you would think that after 17 years of existence, articulating life wouldn’t be such a painful task. If someone were to wake up and live a day in my life, how would they perceive the world? This isn’t a response you can whip up in an hour’s time, and the thought and introspection it demands often provide clarity to areas in which you may have lost focus. Thinking about how I spent the last 17 years of my life makes me wonder which road to take from here. This wondering is good. I’m sure of it.

However, the aforementioned process I have just glorified does have its share of pitfalls. Primarily, it is oftentimes difficult to strike the precarious balance between being a senior in high school and being a college applicant. What would you choose to do if given an extra hour to work: study for a psychology exam or work on a college application? Sure, senior year has invoked a reshuffling of priorities, but it’s hard to make the right decision every time. Juggling the future and the present is a challenging game, but ultimately, it’s a game that never ends. It starts with college applications and persists all through life, such as juggling a job with planning for the future. Learning to think ahead without losing track of the present is truly a skill, one that I will probably only master long after college applications.

I’ve covered the good. I’ve covered the bad. The ugly? Do I even need to say it? Standardized testing. It has a suspicious tendency to reflect extravagant tutoring and test preparation, so naturally, this becomes a point of frustration for many students. However, I understand a college’s necessity for a uniform basis of evaluation, so rather than obliterate its existence, I would just prefer that it hold less weight in the process. True aptitude cannot be measured by comprehension of a critical reading passage about pigeons. It just can’t.

When it comes down to it, the good, bad, and ugly aren’t going anywhere. The application process is a package. Like it or not, it’s all here to stay. And for now, I’m sticking with the good.

Ranganath is a senior at the Harker School in San Jose.