Article by Diba Mottaghi
Art by Ninia Abramishvili
Edited by Zura Gigineishvili
Source GZAAT Gazette
As the seniors have almost completed their high school years, with that follows a new and exciting chapter of their lives, UNIVERSITY. Although they have worked for four years for this new beginning, the process to achieve this may be challenging- the applications, exams, acceptance results from their dream schools, and many other complications for a new beginning!
To understand how the process is going, an interview was conducted with fellow senior students at GZAAT, Ann Kldiashvili, and Lizi Ebralidze, to conclude and discover the details of university applications:
How many colleges have you applied to, and where are they located?
(A)I have applied to 17 colleges so far. All of them are in the US, but I’m definitely adding some European universities to my list.
(L) I have applied to 19 universities in the US and 1 in Canada. I could send my application on either early action or early decision rounds in November. I chose to apply restrictive early action (meaning I could apply early to only one private university in the US), Harvard University. I got deferred, meaning that they postponed deciding on my case till the regular decision period, which is in March.
How many have you heard back from?
(A) I haven’t heard from my regular decision applications yet, but I received a rejection in December.
(L) I am now waiting for all the 20 universities’ decisions and will know them by the first of April.
How was the Application Process?
(A) The application process itself is pretty overwhelming because there’s a lot you have to do in very little time. There are many things you don’t know and will have to learn about, such as financial aid and its intricacies.
(L) The application process took work, mainly because I chose to send applications to many universities, each requiring approximately 2-4 independent essays except the Common App essay, which is sent to every university. While the Common application makes it easy to apply to many universities at once, there are individual tasks to fulfill for different universities’ applications, like writing answers to various questions, uploading resumes, Portfolios, videos, etc.
How Long did it Take?
(A) Most of the applications are very similar. They all use the same platform for applications, and their questions are identical. That being said, however, I still had to write separate supplemental essays for each, describing my motivations for applying to a particular college.
(L) It takes a long time to get everything done, plus the financial aid portals and documentation which for me took almost the same time as the college application process.
What advice can you give to Future Senior students?:
(A) I wouldn’t call this process enjoyable, but it is exciting and nerve-racking in many ways. I advise the upcoming seniors to start the application process early, perhaps in September, to avoid stress because, honestly, there’s nothing to worry about!
(L) The advice I would give to anyone applying to universities in the US is to start the process as early as possible and hear opinions from many different experienced people during this time. The essays, an essential part of the application, need to be perfected by lots of thinking and revisions, which take time and huge amounts of effort.
Overall, this is a stressful time for the juniors of GZAAT and every academy student in the future. Students must start preparing for this moment a little earlier so they don’t have to rush at the last minute; that’s the primary advice both interviewers advised others to give. Good luck to them!
