With the end of the 2025-2026 school year rapidly approaching, juniors and seniors are feeling the pressure. Students are filled with excitement and stress for what lies ahead and how they can prepare for what’s to come. When filling out applications, students want to put their best foot forward, but how exactly can they do this? We looked at how students in this generation are bulking up their resumes to best impress their future employers.
We turned to our very own Counseling Secretary, Christina Little, for how she prepares students to form their applications.
“I notice that some seniors will try to be a little bit more involved in extracurriculars. They’ll join more clubs or try to volunteer more, or even get a job. Things like that do beef up your applications,” said Little, “But really, you need to think about your entire high school career. I know it’s hard to see as a Freshman, but it really does add up. That’s what these schools are looking for.”
While this may look like a good thing, it can also add to the stress students are already feeling with their school years coming to an end.
“I think it adds to stress because already, scholarships are very difficult and time-consuming. The majority of them ask for essays and take a long time to fill out. At the same time, most kids are filling out multiple applications at the same time and that can be hard to balance,” said Little, “It’s even harder as teenagers you’re in this weird stage where you’re still a kid but you’re expected to act like an adult and figure out what you’re supposed to do for the rest of your life. When you think about it, say you still only did 20 applications, that is still a ton of information, essays, and questions. Adding all of this on top of senior year is a lot for students to handle.”
We also turned to one of the best, Jennifer Kucera-Short, our school counselor, for how she notices this stress taking a toll on students and their mental health.
“Junior and senior years are stressful enough, especially Senior year. With that being said, you definitely don’t want to get yourself into that position and if you have, you’ll notice that your applications may not be as good as the other candidates because its not as organized or has as much information,” says Kucera-Short, “To be the best candidate and to stick out, the best thing to do is to be organized and know where all of your things are. As I said, Senior year is a stressful time, and you have a lot of things to take care of: college applications, scholarship applications, the FAFSA, so many things that you have to think about. Being organized is something that will definitely help.”
Instead of trying to cram everything on top of each other, our counseling department shows us what committees are looking for the most.
“They are mostly looking at who you are as a student. This is your scholastic achievements, if you’ve done honors/AP courses, your GPA, and things like that. A lot of these scholarships are looking for the best of the best students,” said Little. “You’ll also notice that once the scholarship amount gets higher, the criteria get stricter. We have some scholarships that we offer that can range from a 2.5 GPA to a 3.5 GPA, and that can obviously differ from student to student.”
Kucera-Short also adds, “They look at your GPA and test scores, along with community service hours. A lot of scholarships either require or heavily recommend community service hours. That is anything that you do to be helpful when you aren’t getting paid,” says Kucera-Short, “This can be babysitting, dogsitting, it could even be more formal, such as volunteering at the hospital. Anything like that, keep track of it because it can be used as community service hours. They also look at leadership. This is clubs, sports teams, music groups, things like that that you participate in and/or take leadership in. These factors are ultimately what are going to catch their eyes when you’re applying.”
Whether you are closing out your junior or senior year, be mindful. It is not too late to succeed.
