<p>I didn’t understand what college actually was until 6th grade or so. I thought it was a required extension of high school, and I was really surprised when I learned that it wasn’t mandatory and that you actually go and live there. I used to want to be a veterinarian when I was four or five and my parents said I would have to go to college for a long time. I imagined that it involved watching someone do a job and writing everything they did down on Post-It notes. Then you’d stick them around in your workplace so you wouldn’t forget what to do.</p>
<p>End of 8th grade.</p>
<p>Two minutes before the deadline.</p>
<p>I got a hand-me-down admissions guidebook when I was in 6th grade… thanks to my older brother ._____. It’s stayed dusty on the shelf ever since, until this last summer (senior now.)</p>
<p>7th grade…But I kept changing my mind and I didn’t find the college I wanna go to until this September…</p>
<p>I didn’t really care until halfway through junior year, and didn’t start doing things to prepare for college apps until the end of the summer between my junior and senior years. Yikes, I’m a slacker.</p>
<p>Sophomore year. I think that was also the time I discovered the US News rankings.</p>
<p>Like mid-junior year. I think until then I was kind of in denial that the time to go to college would ever actually arrive…</p>
<p>It’s been in the back of my head making me try to do well since classes first started to go on my transcript in 8th grade, but now in my junior year I’m starting to look at colleges.</p>
<p>June of junior head haha</p>
<p>*year woopss</p>
<p>I first got interested in it in 9th grade, when I (briefly) wanted to be a doctor, and I started learning about what it takes to get into a good college. I’ve been focused on it on-and-off since sophomore year. I joined CC beginning of junior year.</p>
<p>Freshmen year, I think. I lurked on the CC for a while before joining. I got really interested after taking the PSAT and getting college mail for the first time.</p>