First Acceptance Letter! Pros and Cons

So, as many of you already know I applied to the University of Pittsburgh and got in. This post is about the pros and cons of getting accepted this early to a school and the feelings that go along with it.

First of let me just say, it is the biggest feeling of relief in existence when you get into your first school. After working all that time on your essays and sending off the app, waiting several weeks, when you find out that you are accepted, you can't help but want to jump for joy. It truly is one of the best feelings one can experience, yet with an acceptance to a school this early, there are several downsides.

Outside of the reassurance that you are, in fact, going to college, a rolling admission school acceptance can bring on some very negative effects. The first of these, and probably the largest, is the amount of senioritis that hits at that very moment. Not only is the sigh(or scream) of relief about the relief of worrying about college, it is also about the relief of amount of work left to do in school. I will not lie I got my acceptance letter and the first thing I thought after, "I'M IN COLLEGE!!" was "I don't have any reason to do school work at all! I'm in college!" This is a bad thing. Just because you think it does not mean you have to act upon it. Even with an early acceptance you should still continue to work on your school work. This is because schools do check Mid-Year reports and often determine financial aid and merit based aid upon these grades. This brings me to my next con, financial aid. Now that you are in the school you feel like you are completely done. Yet, you still have to fill out the CSS and FAFSA. But the CSS isn't available until October and the FAFSA isn't available until February. So you can’t allow yourself to lose sight of the other deadlines that go along with getting into college. These are the two biggest things you need to keep in mind when it comes to early admission to schools.

On the positive side, not only are you in college, but it allows you to think more about your college list. Before Pitt, my list was 11 colleges long. It is now six. I dropped five schools all because I realized that I don't need that many, especially if I am already accepted. Once you are accepted to a school it allows you to realize that you don’t need to apply to 10 other schools, only the few others that you are genuinely interested in.

In closing, I hope all of you get to share this amazing feeling with me come December 15th! To those of you who have already been accepted to schools, congratulations! To those of you who are applying for their EA or ED school as they read this blog, good luck!
-Joey