Cheering on Seniors Through the Hectic College Application Season

Director of College Counseling Claire Fenton '93 explains why October is her favorite month, and how the College Counseling team supports and cheers on St. Stephen's seniors through the busy college application season.

When I say this out loud to other people who work in my profession, I get mostly shocked faces, with the occasional eye roll. For people who work in college admission counseling, on either side of the desk, October is a crazy month, and it has a number of nicknames, none of them positive.

But October for me represents many of my favorite things. It’s Halloween and all things pumpkin (don’t come at me if you’re one of those Pumpkin Spice Latte haters) and transitioning the flowerbeds from hardy summer survivors to cheerful fall colors. It’s newly cool mornings and slanting afternoon sun and clear cerulean skies without the big puffy summer clouds.

I realize that all those things sound like things outside my work that I love in October, but here’s the thing: I love my work in October, too. Because even though it’s crazy, it’s a truly wonderful time to be working with seniors. Many of the seniors have spent the last couple of months feeling stressed about college essays and applications. They can tell you all about the time spent putting off the dreaded essays followed by the moments of panic, about the calm feeling after a conference spent making a to-do list and checking things off of it. And after the worry and hard work in August and September, for many of them, October is the month of pressing the “submit” button. I’ve sat with lots of kids in my office over the years while they press the button, and it’s among my favorite moments to spend with kids, especially the first time they do it. And while the first admit might be more dramatic and more public than the first submission, the first submission feels almost like a deeper, if quieter, victory. Because it’s the time they realize that they encountered something that felt difficult and overwhelming at times, and they did it anyway. And that’s why our office actively celebrates both the submission and the admit, by signing the window and ringing the gong, respectively: because we want kids to be proud of both the journey and the outcome.

In my family, we call this “you can do hard things,” and we say it a lot. As a parent and an educator, there’s nothing quite like seeing kids face something with trepidation or self-doubt, put their heads down and push through, and feel that flush of success at having done it anyway. Win, lose, or draw, there’s a lot to be said for doing things you thought were too hard and having someone remind you just how great that is. With that experience in hand, the next hard thing might feel a tiny bit easier, or your confidence just a bit higher.

It’s easy to see the college process as a business of outcomes. Did you get in? Where will you be going? And, of course, there’s so much to celebrate when we finish the process and watch students make their first big decisions as young adults. But we also always emphasize the importance and richness of the journey. For all that we can focus on waiting for that first “yes” from a college, I always want to make sure we point out the thousand smaller things kids do that lead there, from the hardest physics problem to the ninth essay draft to the really careful self-reflection that makes it all possible.  

This October, I hope you have the distinct pleasure of seeing a senior hit that button. If you’re not a senior parent yet, know that you’ll have this to look forward to in a future October. And in the meantime, we can remind our kids that they can do hard things, and that we’re there to cheer them on throughout that process.