One month into the spring semester, some Memorial seniors have their decisions for college already made, and others are still waiting to hear back from schools regarding admission or financial aid.
Senior Emma West applied to nine colleges and was accepted into all of them for kinesiology.
“I visited and toured six out of nine of them,” West said. “I’ve been reading a lot of the colleges’ websites with my parents and asking questions to people I know who go there a little bit. My top choices are OU and OSU.”
West has an older sister that currently attends OSU, and that has definitely played a role in her feelings toward it.
“I love the idea of getting to be with her in college, but I’m also trying to make sure that I love it for myself and can see myself going there,” West said.
While she has her favorites, West has two main factors that will ultimately go into her final decision.
“My biggest are definitely going to be the scholarship money I get from each and also the campus life,” West said.
Senior Joanna Chen applied to six colleges and hasn’t heard back from any of them yet.
“My top choice is Cornell,” Chen said. “The location’s fun and it’s a good school. Also the prestige, the quality education. It’s a very good engineering program.”
Similarly to West, Chen’s final decision will be primarily made by how much scholarship money she receives.
Some students, such as senior Evan Liang, have taken a less traditional route in applying to colleges. Liang used a program called QuestBridge, which he was introduced to by his counselors.
“QuestBridge is basically a program for lower-income, high-achieving students to get into selective colleges,” Liang said. “There’s a few stages to QuestBridge. So the first stage is whether you’re accepted into the program itself and then the second stage is matching or getting into a college.”
After completing the multiple stages of the application process, Liang matched with Northwestern University, where he will major in computer science and economics.
“I had some other schools in mind, but I’m definitely happy with Northwestern,” Liang said. “It’s a very nice school with a strong economics program, a strong computer science and a low student-to-teacher ratio.”
According to college and career counselor Kaitlyn Nolan, Memorial students apply to 3-5 schools on average.
“The most popular schools seem to trend every year,” Nolan said. “We always have lots of students apply to Vernon and Midwestern State because they are right in our own backyard and offer great programs for all different kinds of students. This year, it seems that Texas A&M and Texas State are super popular as well though. University of North Texas and Texas Tech are always up there in popularity because of their location.”
