In the past few months, fellow seniors and I forced ourselves to partake in a yearly event which consumes the lives of anyone so unfortunate to participate. Unlike our contemporary Asher Roth, we do not love college. Well, not the application process.

Overly complex and detailed, asking for every single unadulterated detail of your life leading up to the point of submission, college applications drain all saps of life from the poor victims of its torture. I am sick and tired of using the same cookie-cutter patterns with the same questions from university to university. Typical examples include: “Why are you applying?”; “Why our school?”; “For what reasons do you want to be admitted here?”.

“Because it’s a nice campus,” or “I like your programs and reputation” would be a simple, factual response for the “Average Joe”. But, oh no, not nearly enough for the admissions review boards at these universities. They are not looking for average; they are looking for exceptional, which in their books, or rubric rather, means someone who can slop down a verbose, mostly cliche paragraph with little to no grammatical errors and a few ego boosts for the reader sprinkled in. Which happens to be a grossly inefficient way of judging students. It provides the reader with the same paragraph/essay to read constantly until they have scythed through several thousand applicants. At least with a short, simple answer they could increase their efficiency by over 9000 percent, though the percentage may be a tad less exaggerated.

Applications would be less of a torture sentence were it not for the length. I have filled out about four applications and still have more to complete, if I do not break my laptop in frustration beforehand. In fact, if I receive any other type of form for the remainder of my life which essentially asks, “Please tell us about your life and do not leave out any juicy details,” I may or may not fall off of the deep end. Luckily, I know how to swim.

Hopefully in the very,very near future, college applications will be less frustrating and terrible. But, as it stands, I hate college applications.