Students can find success at any college

I write this as I sit in a class called "college essay workshop." Here we just finished discussing the do's and don'ts of college essay writing. The college admissions process has become borderline disgusting.

It has reached the point that my parents graciously paid $285 for a summer school class on learning how to write a college admissions essay, something that I would have been able to learn on my own.

Yet somewhere in Boston, or New York, or even in Chicago, there are people paying triple what I am to get "essay coaches" and private tutors costing well over $100 an hour.

I feel as if I must compete with them, even though I can't. I keep reminding myself that I am more than where I go to college, despite it not seeming true. At my high school, Stevenson in Lincolnshire, if someone says they are going to Auburn or Kansas or even Iowa, some people respond with "oh, that's a great school" but inside, they think, "oh, that's a horrible school."

These schools have negative reputations despite being great in their own way. We must come to accept that there are hundreds of reasons for attending a school. For nearly everyone, including myself, we take into account the financial burden of each university.

I want to go to George Washington, or Northwestern or some prestigious Ivy League university to study Political Science. However, what I don't want to be doing is to be paying off debt well into my 30s.

I will attend a college, and wherever I go, I can be successful. This is true for all people wishing to attend college, and we must support our students' choices for where they go to college. From Harvard to College of Lake County, everyone can be successful.

Max Weiss

Buffalo Grove