Seniors: Tough Decisions

Seniors: May 1st Approaching  
It is spring break at various high schools throughout the Bay Area and many seniors are out touring the colleges that have admitted them. Others are taking a more relaxing break having already reached a decision after reviewing an excel sheet of the pros and cons in each offer.

If you are having trouble deciding, here are some tips:
- Ask yourself which campus most excites you
- Discuss the financial differences of your offers. If one offer is significantly less in cost, consider negotiating with your parents. For example, if you go with the more affordable offer, can you use the remaining funds for graduate school?
- Take a careful look at the happiness rating of the schools that have admitted you.

The Final Twist: Waitlisting
If you were waitlisted at a college or if you submitted an appeal, you will not hear back until after May 1st. This means you will still have to accept an offer at one of the colleges that admitted you. If you learn later in May that you were taken off a waitlist and moved on to the admitted list, you will then have a new choice to make. This can create quite a bit of confusion, so make your decision wisely and without too much regard for the deposit which you will lose if you decide to go with the new offer.

To get some distance so that you can make the right decision for you, consider these activities:
-Do something fun! Get luxurious. Go for a massage at Happy Feet or take a long soak in your tub. Get creative and add bubble bath, play your favorite tunes, eat your favorite snack.
-Get out of town. This can be as easy as going into San Francisco and wandering about in a neighborhood you don’t know. Just leaving your hometown helps you to get out of the mental space of college admissions to see the bigger picture.
-Go out into nature is recuperative. Go for a long hike or get to the beach.
-Go see an inspirational or funny movie.
-Read a beautiful work of literature.
-Spend some time alone in your favorite place.
-Do some journaling.
p.s. Remember to keep up your grades. Colleges can reverse or change the conditions of their admissions decisions if your grades drop.