Your Junior year of High School in the United States is the most difficult time of your younger years of life. From the start of the year, where you have many new and difficult courses given to you, along with multiple college opportunities and potential internships, followed by the end of the year, where many of your older friends graduate and when you finally near adulthood-it’s all a major stress point. However, I personally have been able to (relatively) navigate the chaos of Junior year, and have already prepared for most of my college prospects for Senior year. I have built a long resume, have kept my grades (mostly) in check, and even plan on taking a Dual Enrollment course next year at my local college, along with my pre-planned arrangements for scholarship payments and housing on the two colleges I plan to focus on applying to. This article will serve as a short guide on how to prepare for (and manage) your coming College prospects, no matter your age or grade level. 

The first important step in preparing for College is deciding what type (or if you even want to) of college to attend. This attendance is mostly constricted by your academics and your financial situation. To be perfectly forward with you, attending an out-of-state institution is very expensive (compared to in-state). However, out-of-state institutions (depending on which state you live in) are often some of the best institutions in the country. These institutions are mostly concentrated in the highly populated areas of the Northeast and Southwest, with a few outliers mostly around the Gulf Coast region of the country (Florida, Louisiana, etc). If you do not live in these regions, and if you have a lacking financial situation, you may want to stay in-state or in-region for your college education. Some states have excellent state/public universities, like the University of Florida, Louisiana State University, Ohio State University, and many others. Speaking from a personal perspective, I’m lucky enough to live in South Florida, where there are many good state level colleges, like UF, FSU, FIU, etc, but you may not be so lucky. If this is the case, it would be recommended to try and focus on your academics. Individuals with amazing academic and personal histories are likely to win scholarships from Universities and outside donors, which can help lessen the burden (or entirely eliminate) the problem of college debt. To conclude with this point, you may not need (or want) to attend college, as many younger adults today are now choosing to not attend college. For my planned career (Journalism) I view college as necessary for my career, but it may not be the case for your career, so my final recommendation for this step is deciding whether or not college is required for your career.

The second step in preparing for college is creating an (at least) three to five year general plan for your future. The plan I have made centers around what I want to study in college, where I want to live, and who I wish to work/intern for in college. This plan should be very flexible, though, since circumstances and your plans can change rapidly, and your personal aspirations or plans change with these circumstances. You should, with this plan, consider where you want to live at the colleges you decide to apply for, what type of dorm/apartment you want to live in, and also consider local businesses or organizations you want to work/intern for. Since I plan to focus on attending a college in the Miami area, I’ve planned to work for local businesses and intern for local companies. The plan itself varies person-to-person, and your plan could be very detailed or not detailed at all. My plan is relatively sparse on details, since I expect my circumstances to change at any point, but yours could be very long and detailed.

The third step that I advise for preparing for college is…well, waiting. When you have a plan set in place, and have decided on your list of colleges to apply for/attend, all that is left to do is wait. Waiting and taking a short break before college is probably the best thing you could do for yourself when placed under so much stress for your Junior year. Senior year flies by for most people, and it’s your last year as a child-you won’t be a child for more than several months at that point, so savor your last days of childhood before entering the “real world”.