How to Push Back Against Toxic College Application Culture: A High School Counselor’s Practical Tips
Last Tuesday, I locked my office door at 3:45 after the last bell, and was shoving my lesson plans into my bag when 17-year-old Mia knocked, her hood up, shoulders hunched. I told her to come in, and she collapsed onto the beat-up gray couch I’ve had since my first year as a counselor, grabbed the lukewarm lemonade I keep in a mini-fridge for kids who need to sit a minute. For five minutes she just twisted the beaded friendship bracelet on her wrist, then said, “I don’t know if I’m doing enough.”
Mia explained her friend group of six juniors had a group chat called “College Countdown” where they updated each other on every test, every new extracurricular, every school added to their list. One boy just picked up a second volunteer shift at the local hospital just so he could add it to his app, and someone joked that if you have less than 100 hours of community service, you don’t stand a chance anywhere good. Mia had been talking about dropping AP Bio for a month—she was pulling all-nighters, failing multiple choice tests, and hadn’t had a full night of sleep since September. But now she was scared if she dropped it, everyone would think she wasn’t “serious” about college, and admissions officers would throw her app out.
I’ve been doing this 12 years, and I see this almost every day now. It’s not just kids, either. That night I got a call from Mia’s mom, who apologized for pushing Mia to keep the class. She said she’d gone to a parent happy hour the weekend before, and three out of four moms there were listing off their kids’ reach schools and bragging about how many applications they were sending out. Her cousin’s son got into Stanford last year, and she’d caught herself comparing Mia’s list to his, even though Mia never wanted to go to a big-name school out East. She’d gotten pulled into the noise without even noticing it.
We talked through small, concrete changes that don’t require big, dramatic conversations or overhauls of your family’s life. The first thing I suggested was setting a hard cap on the number of applications, no exceptions. For most kids, that’s between 6 and 8. That’s enough for two safeties, three matches, and a couple of reaches. When Mia first came to me, she had 14 schools on her list, most added just because all her friends were applying there. We cut it down to 7. I see kids every year who apply to 15, 20, even 25 schools, because they think more applications equal better odds. But what actually happens is they rush their essays, they don’t put any heart into any of them, and they spend three months of senior year stressed out of their minds, missing soccer games and bonfires and lunch with friends, just to end up at a school that was on their original 6-school list anyway.
Next, I told them to try a 20-minute monthly reset at the kitchen table, no phones allowed. Instead of talking about what anyone else is doing, they write down two short lists: what do you actually enjoy doing with your time, and what do you want out of college. For Mia, that was being outside, working with plants, small class sizes, and being within a three-hour drive of home so she can visit her little sister’s soccer games. None of that required an Ivy League degree or five AP senior year classes. I told Mia and her mom that instead of asking “is this good enough for college?”, ask “is this good for me?” That shift in wording alone changes the whole conversation.
For the constant comparison that fuels the toxic culture, I suggested muting any account or group chat that makes you feel bad for 30 days as a trial. It’s not permanent, it’s just a break. A lot of kids push back at first, saying they don’t want to be rude, or they’ll miss out on important information. But most of them come back and say half the content is just bragging anyway, and they feel 100 pounds lighter after muting. Mia muted the college countdown chat right after our meeting, and she said she hasn’t thought about checking it once. I tell parents to do the same: mute those parent Instagram accounts and Facebook groups that are full of acceptance brags. Mia’s mom said she unfollowed three mom acquaintances after our call, and she hasn’t gotten a notification bragging about a kid’s 1500 SAT since.
The last small change I suggested was a simple rule: no college talk at dinner unless the kid brings it up first. That’s easy to enforce, and it takes the pressure off daily life. A lot of parents don’t realize they’re asking about applications or test scores every single night, and that makes the whole senior year feel like one big waiting period. Mia’s mom said after a week of the rule, they started talking about Mia’s work at the nature reserve again, and about the new rescue cat they got, and it was like they got their kid back for a little while before she leaves for college.
Last week Mia stopped by my office again to drop off a fern she propagated at the reserve for my desk. She’s sleeping seven hours a night now, her dual enrollment environmental class at the local community college is going well, and she’s already written three of her college essays about the work she does restoring native wildflowers. She said she still has bad days. Last Saturday she saw a post from a girl in her grade who got an early acceptance to Yale, and she sat on her bed for 10 minutes feeling like she was falling behind. But she closed Instagram, grabbed her work boots, and went to the reserve to pull invasive ivy, and by the end of the shift, the feeling was gone.
We still don’t know where she’ll get in, or where she’ll end up. Pushing back against this culture doesn’t take away the uncertainty, and it doesn’t guarantee a spot at any particular school. But it does give senior year back to the kid, which is the thing no one talks about being the actual point anyway.
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