Weâre all familiar with the questions. Those well-intentioned, well-worn queries that never fail to surface at every family reunion, holiday party, or summer barbeque: Where are you applying? Whatâs your first choice? How many schools? Where did you get in? What were your SAT scores? The list goes on and on, and overzealous aunts are not the only guilty parties. Â
In the increasingly competitive high school setting, even your best friends can become your worst enemies when it comes to talking about college admissions. The ordeal of applying to and choosing a college is stressful enough without the added pressure of explaining and justifying the process to everyone you know. If youâre anything like me, you may find yourself frequently hemming and hawing, looking for a way to tactfully evade the question. In my experience, thereâs no perfect solution to the problem.Â
Your family and friends love you, and are naturally curious about this momentous event in your life, but youâre also more than justified in wanting to preserve your privacy until youâre ready to share the big news. So with this in mind, here are four tried-and-true methods of avoiding the pesky âcollege questions.â
1. The vague brush off
These are great for the more open-ended questions such as, âWhere are you applying?â or âWhatâs your first choice?â When faced with these, I would frequently give vaguely non-committal answers, like, âWell Iâm really looking at small liberal arts colleges, and I think I want to stay in New England,â or, âDefinitely a school with an active theatre program (or parasailing club, field hockey team, etc.).âÂ
Youâre still responding to the question, but without having to give away more information than youâre comfortable sharing. Consequently, these responses work well in all kinds of contexts, even with your dadâs friends from work who want to know everything.
2. The diversion
One of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me was to offer a distraction. The setting: an IHOP, fall of my senior year. I was out with a bunch of friends, most of whom were seniors, and the conversation had naturally turned to college applications. One girl turned to me and asked almost challengingly where I had applied early, at which point my boyfriend, knowing how uncomfortable I was talking about applications, jumped to his feet and shouted âI LOVE this song!â in reference to Billy Joelâs âIâm Movinâ Out,â which had just come on the radio. Â
The conversation then naturally transitioned into music, and the crisis was averted. I was beyond grateful. While this technique may not be appropriate for Sunday brunch with your aunts and uncles, itâs definitely a good one to use with your friends at school. If the conversation starts heading in that direction and youâre getting uncomfortable, divert! Bring up that great new song on the radio, that crazy thing you heard on the news, that cute new Instagram post from your crush, whatever works. And the odds are, other people will be grateful to change the subject, too.
3. The joke
For the comedians among us, another useful tactic is to joke your way out of the situation. When faced with a question you donât want to answer, respond with, âWhat, college? Nah, I decided thatâs too much work. Iâm going to go live off the grid in a tent and pursue my passion of making D&D themed pottery,â or some such quip (please note: no disrespect to tents, pottery, or D&D â you do you).
You do want to be aware of your audience for this technique, because you donât want to accidentally give grandma a heart attack, but if you’re chatting with your friends or your cool older cousin, this can be a fun way to diffuse and divert the conversation.
4. The polite decline
If all else fails and youâre really in a corner, there’s also nothing wrong with just telling someone politely that youâre not comfortable answering the question. âI remember once at a party, my dad asked the parent of one of my friends where they were looking for school,â recounts Caroline, a junior studying classics. âThe dad just said, âWe arenât talking about that,â and that was the end of the conversation. I remember thinking, wow, thatâs cool, I wish I had that confidence.â And while many of us, like Caroline, may not be comfortable being quite so abrupt, a simple, âIâm sorry, Iâm just not super ready to talk about it yet, but Iâll keep you posted!â is perfectly appropriate. And if the person really cares about you, theyâll respect your privacy. For the older generation especially, itâs easy to forget how stressful a time this is for you, and it doesnât hurt to remind them that you donât necessarily feel up to a deep chat about your pending future!
With the mounting pressure of test scores, grades, college visits and application deadlines, itâs easy for it to seem like the process is your whole world. But just as it is important to remember to take time to enjoy life outside of your applications, itâs equally important to set boundaries, even with friends and family. At the end of the day, no one is entitled to know any information about your college process that you arenât ready to share. There is certainly enough pressure surrounding the issue already without your having to dissect your various choices, successes, failures, hopes and dreams. The college application process is deeply personal, and looks different for everyone, and in the same way, different people are going to have differing levels of comfort when it comes to talking about it. So, if you find yourself in a position where you’re being asked a question youâre not comfortable answering, or feeling pressured to share information youâd rather keep private, just remember that itâs ok not to share. Trust me, everyone will be just as keen to talk about it later on when youâre ready to shout your choice from the rooftops!