Each year school-leavers struggle with stress, tiredness, lack of confidence and time to pass one of the most important milestones in their life. They spend days and nights studying, sit their exams, write their applications and live in an exhausting anticipation. They try to enter a college. Everybody agrees that this period is one of the most stressful experiences in life. But is it really necessary for the admission procedures to involve so much competition, which inevitably leads to stress?
On the one hand, we can hardly imagine a non-competitive admission procedure. The whole idea of entering a college presupposes certain selection: a future student must have the level of knowledge that would allow him/her cope with the program successfully. Certain skills like analysis, ability to schedule your work and be responsible for the result are also important. Not every school graduate will be able to become a good college or university student. And being a bad student will result in becoming a bad professional, which means a person will not be able to get a job; many years of his/her education will be wasted.
On the other hand, the admission procedures seem too competitive. The public opinion somehow makes it a make-it-or-break-it period in your life. Every school-leaver has a feeling that if he/she will not be admitted to college the same year he/she leaves school, their life will be ruined. They get stressed out and very often, as a result, do not get the grades they could have got if they had not been nervous.
In my opinion, the admission procedures can hardly be changed to become less competitive as this would mean that the quality of education will drop. However, school leavers can change their attitude and remember that there is always another chance to enter a college if one really wants to.