by Mac Paquette | sports editor

Senior Armand Chavez is up late once again, and feels he is unnecessarily worried about his college application process.  This is just one of many examples of current seniors feeling the differences in applying to college compared to their parents who most likely waited until their second semester to apply.

“The reason I think for the earlier application deadlines and pressure to apply early is because of the increased competitiveness among students, especially in NorthEast schools,” senior Armand Chavez said.

While the early applications have been a nuisance to some, they have been proven to be quite helpful for others, especially in terms of housing.

“I wanted to apply early because if I get accepted to the school I want to be at, I definitely want to be living somewhere I want to be at, and not have to settle for what’s available,” senior Rambod Aznavaleh said.

Although this has proven to be helpful to some students, it obviously raises a concern for the students who want to raise their ACT/SAT before applying to the colleges of their choice.

“It definitely is a problem for me, because I would like to raise my ACT score, before applying,” Chavez said.

This can certainly cause stress on many students, especially those who now have to apply in the middle of fall, and for that to be considered a “late” or “last minute”.

“It has become a stressful and even more strenuous process just because of the waiting for scores to come in, combined with some of my friends already getting accepted, it’s just going to be a long couple of months, but you just have to have the mindset that you actually aren’t ‘late’ applying,” senior Jackson Findley said.

However, there are other reasons for the early applying, including the increased amount of students nowadays who are applying to college.

“There has definitely been an increase over the past twenty to thirty years of high school students applying to colleges, with recent massive increase in students applying to two-year colleges” counselor Amy Dominguez-Ibarra said.

The increase in applications is likely due to many students and parents determining that the cost of classes at a two-year college are drastically cheaper than attending a similar class at a traditional four-year university.

“Cost is another variable that is being determined nowadays, and the bigger four-year universities are seeing this, giving themselves more time to make decisions, which in turn has resulted in earlier application deadlines,” Dominguez-Ibarra said.