iCollege: Making the Ultimate Playlist

By REBECCA COSTA

College: it’s a word that places fear in some while filling others with excitement. It’s a word that has been weighing heavily on the minds of students at St. Paul’s School this summer. It’s a word that as hard as one may try, in the next few months (and for some the last few months as well) will come up very frequently—if not every day. For some ambitious students, the college process is well on its way, while others slowly trail behind. Either way, every student here is serious about his/her education and has something that they want to accomplish in the next five weeks.


Maura McCarthy and Cory Waldinger are the counselors on campus here and meet with each student for a 30 minute session where McCarthy or Waldinger “provide whatever help may be needed.” During the meetings, McCarthy feels as though her job is to reassure students that they have done good work up until this point. “They’re wonderful,” said McCarthy referring to the meetings at the Advanced Studies Program (ASP). Not knowing the students, McCarthy does feel she needs to read between the lines a little bit, but feels she can usually get a good sense of a student. According to McCarthy, the best case right now is for students to have taken the SATs, seen a few schools and done some research, but if a student hasn’t done that yet, he/she is not too far behind.

          


For Shakespeare student Shaun Spinney from Raymond High School, who is certainly not behind, his only goal is to leave the ASP knowing what he wants, and how to get there—and of course have the college essay out of the way. Spinney has toured 19 schools and is satisfied enough with his SAT scores that he will never take them again.


And for those not quite so far along in the process, there is some advice one can take from Spinney. He looked for a close knit community, not dominated by sports or Greek life. His top three schools are Amherst, Vassar and Bowdoin. “I automatically knew,” said Spinney. The feeling of just knowing a school is right for you will come as you take the first steps onto the campus of your dreams or the “I like this place a lot feeling,” as Anna Ravenelle, Goffstown student describes it.


In looking at colleges a size can really make or break it for most people—it will be a huge factor for most, including Spinney, who prefers a small to medium size school. For Forbidden Fictions student Ravenelle, size seems irrelevant. Not as far along in the college process as Spinney, Ravenelle has toured only three schools, and still needs to take her SATs at least one more time, but according to the counselors, she is on the right path. Her top schools so far include Cornell and Brown, but Ravenelle knows she needs to find more “fit” schools. McCarthy sees her role as a counselor to educate students on the procedure, competition and finding the “fit” school, so students including Ravenelle can find this meeting helpful. Everyone is in a different spot in their journey and neither Ravenelle nor Spinney knows what they want to do after college. They just know they are on their way to getting…well, somewhere.


Both students have a short term goal for the next five weeks. Spinney, like many other students far along in the college process, wants to focus on his college essay if not have one written by the time he leaves here. Ravenelle, on the other hand, wants to find a way to make learning enjoyable no matter what. The counselors’ main goal is to prepare the students for the future and to remind student to “not be afraid to get started and get going,” said McCarthy. 


It shows that no matter where we are now, in 6 months time everyone will need to be at the same place. Some have more work than others for the next year, but the end result should be the same—an amazing school, hopefully a top choice and a feeling of excitement for the next four years ahead.