I was enjoying my nice, relaxing summer going into senior year until August 1st came around. August 1st was the day that the Common Application opened, and I knew this meant it was time to decide what colleges I would be applying to. Because I was having such a great summer with all my friends, I decided that I did not want to go to school far away. I began to fill out applications to schools that were only two hours from home until my mom suggested that we go look at St. Lawrence University. I originally did not want to go because it meant giving up a weekend with my friends, but eventually I agreed after a lot of persuasion from my parents. On the drive up to school, I was shocked to see so many farms and open land. Growing up in the Boston area, this was a very uncommon thing to see. I also noticed that this school was about seven hours from home, which made me dislike the it before I even saw it.
When I got to St. Lawrence I did find the school to be really pretty and the people to be very nice, but I could not get over how far away and isolated the campus seemed to be. Because of this, I did not rank SLU as one of my top choices. When I got home from the visit, I filled out my application for St. Lawrence but continued to look at schools that were near a city and closer to home. Around Christmas time, my mom had me talk to some family friends who went to St. Lawrence who all told me wonderful things about it. They told me that despite the location, being isolated only makes the students love their school even more because there is always something to do on campus and there is a huge sense of community because of this. In the following months, I began to remember how nice the people at SLU were and how welcoming the campus was. The more I thought about St. Lawrence, the more I realized that this school was the right fit for me. When March came around and I got my acceptance letter in the mail, I told my parents that I wanted to go to St. Lawrence and they were thrilled.
I am now in my sophomore year here at SLU and I am confident to say that I made the right choice. St. Lawrence may be an isolated school that’s far away from my house and other urban areas but it only made me feel closer to the school and realize how tight-knit this community is. When I first started thinking about colleges, I was thinking more about the location of the school and not the community. However, throughout the college process, I learned that location is only a state of mind and how you believe you’ll do at the school is what really matters. In other words, St. Lawrence was the school that I believed was the best choice for me because of the positive vibes that this campus offered. This college was the school that I saw myself succeeding in the most (out of the other schools I was considering), which is what really matters in the end. If I could offer any high school senior advice on college decisions, it would be to choose a school that you see yourself fitting into the most and only consider its location as a small factor, not the deciding one. While applying to college can be a scary process, it’s important for people to choose the school they believe will shape them into the best version of themselves.