With the festive season upon us, many students are planning for break and enjoying the last month of 2017. The exhilarating season of gift giving, family time, and finals has set upon Heritage students. Yet this time of year is a critical moment for the graduating seniors as they prepare for college acceptances.

    With numerous deadlines approaching for UCs, CSU, and privates seniors are overloaded with preparing their applications. Seniors not only have to take standardized tests and maintain good grades but they also must present themselves within several personal essays. These essays reveal students’ personalities to whichever college they are applying to. Despite how exciting this sounds, essays are the biggest source of stress in the application process. With some colleges asking for up to __ essays, students are able to freely express themselves as they wish. Although this process is exciting for some, the struggle of balancing school, sports, and college apps easily gets overwhelming for many.

“ College apps were honestly so stressful. It’s hard because you’re because you’re laying out your past 12-13 years and hoping it’s enough,” said Caroline Jones (12).

    November 30 was deadline for all UCs and CSU. Popular colleges that many Heritage students applied to include Irvine, UCLA, Santa Barbara, and SDSU. Many students choose to go straight to a four year while others decide to do a two year transfer in order to save money.

   Along with common applications, students had to apply for FAFSA (Federal Application for Federal Student Aid) when they submitted applications. Now with all major deadlines over with, the graduating class is now in the excruciatingly painful waiting period. Nevertheless, students can now enjoy their senior year and all the fun activities that come with it.

“Senior year is stressful, but it is not impossible,” admitted Sarah Feldmen (12).

    Upcoming senior events include prom, senior sunset, and the heavily anticipated graduation day. Now that the stressful period of applications over, senior can relax enough to focus on their regular classes again.  With the feeling of satisfaction and gratification, seniors that submitted college apps now have to sit back and anticipate the responses. Regardless Heritage seniors are excited for whichever college accepts them as they take on the next step in their academic careers.