Opinion | Confidence in your college decision

Kassidy Doyle, incoming freshman creative writing major

The college decision process was stressful, and that’s an understatement. 

As a high school senior, I applied to 10 different colleges, a range from Boston and Connecticut to Florida and California. Did I want the warm weather and beaches in California, or did I want the late city nights of Boston? Did I want to be half an hour from home, or a whole plane ride away? Making this decision felt like the hardest choice of my life.

What's so hard about the commitment process is that everyone has a different reason for the school they pick. Some people choose a college based on location, others based on academics and others based on sports. This ultimately makes it difficult to rely on anyone’s opinion but your own. Nonetheless, I would spend hours of my free time reading Reddit posts comparing each school, watching YouTube vlogs of students at each college and scrolling through Instagram pages of prospective students to see if I would fit in. 

There’s a moment when you realize this choice cannot be made by seeing why others picked a school or didn’t, but instead by the way you feel the moment you step on the campus. As cliche as it sounds, I felt comfortable the second I stepped on Chapman’s campus. I could imagine myself walking there, eating there and living there. 

Even though vloggers from schools in Boston or universities in Los Angeles made their city life look to die for, there’s no telling that would be my experience. What I knew at that moment I visited Chapman was that my experience was right there; the excitement I felt when I saw Philz Coffee down the street from campus or a pool by the freshman dorms. No edited video that only shows what they want you to see can compare to the feeling you have when you step foot on a campus. When it came down to it, I went with my gut. 

There’s no guarantee this decision will be the right one. Even at Chapman, I’m sure I'll have days in my dorm room where all I’ll want to do is stay in bed or nights where I’m stuck studying instead of going out. However, I’m confident the second I step foot on campus as an official freshman, the overwhelming joy will come back from when I first visited. In the end, after months of researching and visiting colleges, confidence in your own experience is the ultimate factor.