In the wake of College Board testing, I have been struck with the carnage: dozens of emails from universities that I’ve never heard of or considered setting foot in.

As someone who can only float between the two states of college decisions (completely ignoring the process as a whole, or spending hours researching schools and what I’d need to do to guarantee my admission and success there), I have mixed feelings about the flurry of digital brochures I’ve been receiving.

Many of them are out of state, and some are even private, so that puts a damper on the excitement of considering them in my decision process. 

Cost is always a factor of course, and my major alone hinders me from making enough money to pay off the debt incurred from attending these schools. So to choose an expensive, out of state school that I’ve never heard of isn’t necessarily in my best interest.

And then there are the schools I’m interested in learning about that have amazing programs and environments that I enjoy, such as the University of Oklahoma and UT Austin. Receiving emails from those schools always makes me smile, even if I know that they come from an automated system full of email addresses of students who have taken the PSAT. 

The influx of emails has definitely lit a fire under me, and it puts into perspective just how much time I have left before the opening line of those emails go from piquing my interest to causing massive waves of joy or depression. 

In less than a year, I will go from skirting around these emails to opening each one anxiously, and preparing to move into a new phase entirely, taking into consideration my criterion for a good school in my eyes.

And who knows, maybe the vision will change—maybe a small university in upstate New York will earn their newest member of the class of ‘27—-or maybe I’ll be right back where I started, in my room, anxiously opening emails.