Spring may be known for April showers and May flowers, but it is also the season of college decisions.

As these responses from colleges are rolling in, seniors can experience a wide range of emotions depending on what they hear and the decisions they have to make.Planning for college and deciding where to apply are huge choices to make, with many variables factoring in. Seniors have to take location, cost, school size, acceptance rate, and many other things into consideration. 

While senior year is the most crucial time for college applications, the process typically starts long before. 

Erin Regan, one of the guidance counselors at Norwood High School explained that on a lesser level, planning for post-secondary education starts as early as freshman year. 

“When we do course selections, even with 9th graders, we already start thinking about what are your future plans. So like you might not know, but if some kids have an idea, that’s when we start the initial tidbits of colleges, and like if you want to do this you should take this class” Regan said.

For most students, they start thinking about college on a more conscious level during junior year. 

Senior TJ Martin said “I would say the end of my junior year is when I kind of like started to figure out what places to like start looking at, like the size of the school I was looking for, and the crowd, what schools have sports and stuff.”

Julia Figueiredo, another senior, agreed with Martin. 

“I really started thinking about colleges junior year, and I was just thinking about what type of school I wanted. I knew I wanted a big school. I thought sports were really important to me and obviously my major. Also thinking of, ‘do I want to go far or not?’ and definitely the money aspect,” Figueiredo said.

Like many seniors, Figueiredo knows what she wants to major in, but has yet to decide where she is going to school. 

Senior Bridget Connelly is an exception. She has committed to Boston College after weighing her options. 

“I got into Providence for nursing, and I went through an era of ‘oh, do I want to do nursing or do I want to go in undecided or into the arts and sciences schools of other places?’ I was looking at everyone’s nursing programs and seeing how different it would be than another college experience. But then I also knew that I really wanted to study abroad, so I had to look for something that would allow me to do both programs” Connelly said. 

Figuerido also shared some insight about the application process and her experience. 

“The most important thing is keep track of everything and stay organized because there’s so many things. The most annoying part is there’s so many different accounts for every little thing, like there’s the FASFA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid], theres the CSS [College Scholarship Service Profile], there’s like all these different financial things and for all the different portals you need a different password. It’s very annoying so just like keeping track of everything is very important” Figueiredo said. 

TJ Martin explained that different schools will give different amounts of money as financial aid and how that is a big part of eventually deciding where to go. 

“Two of my schools, Northeastern and Villinova, are private schools, so I’ve gotten almost no money from them. UMass I didn’t get a ton because they don’t give a lot of money to in-state. But then all my other schools I got a good amount, I think Quinnipiac is the most” Martin said.

One of the other college factors that many students are concerned about is test scores. 

Traditionally, most schools required students to submit either SAT or ACT results. Most of this stress can be taken away by applying to test optional schools, therefore feeling less pressure to get a great score on those tests. 

“You don’t really have to use SAT scores as a search engine, but if you are looking at Ivy League schools, because most of them brought back the SATs, Stanford, MIT, Georgetown, they do require SATs again, so you want to factor that into the plan, which just means that you need to schedule the SAT or the ACT. But then the majority of schools are still test-optional, which means if you score well, send them, but if you don’t score well, or you don’t take them, you don’t need them” said Regan. 

Overall, the most important thing about preparing for applying to colleges is the high school transcript. Guidance counselors really want students to do they best they can for all four years of high school, and not only think about grades during junior and senior year. 

“Make sure that you’re taking challenging classes that you can do well in. It’s not about taking 4 APs or 5 Honors classes and not doing well, it’s about taking them and doing as well as you can with what you have,” said Regan.