Seniors balance college applications, schoolwork, and extracurriculars

Seniors try to manage their existing responsibilities along with college applications and their upcoming deadlines

Staff Writer

As the first semester continues, seniors find it increasingly difficult to manage their college applications alongside schoolwork and other extracurriculars as they aim to meet major application deadlines.

As stated on the Best Colleges website, early decision and early action deadlines are in October and November while regular decision applications are due later in January 2025. The application filing period for University of California (UC) applicants began on October 1st and ended on December 2nd, as stated on the UC website.

These deadlines essentially span over the entirety of the first semester, meaning that students can have multiple college applications due every month.

A senior, Elisa Varghese, who is applying to 19 colleges, said that she had deadlines “on October 15 for UT Austin, five early action deadlines for a couple out-of-state universities on November 1st, and then [a] final deadline [on] December 2nd for UCs and CSUs.”

Tanvi Bhide (12), in addition to having similar deadlines for November and December, also has a few more private university applications due in January which she still wants to get done before December.

As Varghese manages her college applications with schoolwork and extracurriculars, she also said, “There are pockets of time where I have felt really overwhelmed. I have definitely had breakdowns in the last couple weeks regarding college applications and not being able to balance it with my schoolwork. Extracurriculars wise, I feel like I have taken it down a notch for senior year, but school work and college applications have not been very well balanced in the last couple of weeks.”

In terms of her balance between college applications and extracurriculars, Bhide said, “My extracurriculars take up most of my time because I am part of the play. That has been a big stress factor because I am there for three hours after school every day, and I get home by 6:00 or 6:30 P.M.”

Another senior, Pradhi Waghray, said, “I try to prioritize my college applications on the weekends, so the weekdays aren’t as packed. Usually, my weekdays are super busy with schoolwork, especially because I have sports and other extracurriculars that I am a part of. That’s why weekends are very important for productivity for college applications, because I try to maximize the amount of time I spend. And if I have a long weekend, that’s a big blessing, because then I can find more time to finish my applications.”

Waghray, due to having busy weekdays and wanting to stay organized, said, “I typically write down everything I need to do in my Notes app because that’s how I have always written a to-do list for everything that I have to do for the day. And for college applications specifically, I have a Google Sheet where I have all the colleges I am applying to. Before I started my applications, I specifically sorted out how many supplementals each university has and which ones are test-optional.”

Pragathi Panigatti (12), who applied to multiple UCs and CSUs, also said, “I use Notion [a managing tool] to write down my assignments, so it makes it easier.”

To manage her stress or when she feels overwhelmed, Bhide said, “I just go to sleep. Then, I wake up early the next morning, like around 4:30 or 5 a.m., to do the work that I didn’t do.”

Similarly, Waghray said, “I just take a nap when I feel overwhelmed because I love sleeping. When I wake up, everything seems like it’s better.”

When asked about any advice she would give to incoming seniors, Bhide said, “Start in the summer. Make a list of each college you want to go to and don’t stress over the acceptance rates. And don’t stress yourself out too much because in the end, you are going to get in somewhere, so you’re going to be fine.”