The Application Process for prospective college students is a challenge. Don't believe me? Just search "university application process" on Twitter* and prepare for brutal insights from today's high school grads. The comment feed will scroll for as long as you have the tolerance to read.
Here are some comments that stood out:
*These comments are from frustrated high school students on Twitter and are not intended to be grammatically correct or free of spelling errors.
9 Tweets About the College Application Process
The application process was not all that bad a few decades ago when it was all paper based (dead trees, stamps and snail mail not withstanding). But based on what these up and coming college students shared, it sounds like this process has gone unexamined since it was brought online. Thankfully we have an opportunity to pause, listen, and plan a more thoughtful way to make the college application experience less difficult and less stressful for our next generation of leaders.
We want every generation to be better, and it's hard to reflect on what students are sharing about the experience and think that everything is OK.
If you need more proof, try taking your own University's application experience for a test drive, imagining that you've never been to your site before. Even simply locating the application becomes an exhausting exercise.
Or, if you want to learn more, feel free to check out these graded reviews we put together when we audited the online application experiences from 8 leading University Music Schools.