Seniors are in the thick of the college process right now, which means a lot of important decisions are being made.  By now, most seniors have decided where they’re going to apply early decision or early action.  How did they arrive at their final choices?  Here’s a list of things to consider when deciding where to apply early, from most important to least important:

1: Parties.  First and foremost, one must research how wild the parties are at said college or university.  Some SHS seniors choose to go on guided tours of the campus —  these are utterly useless and should be avoided, as they mostly cover the educational aspects of the institution.  Other seniors take a far more logical approach, utilizing the common tactic of embarking on a “college visit” which consists of performing a variety of scandalous activities while pretending to consider the academic opportunities offered by the college.

2: Workload.  Your classes should be as easy as possible.  This will help ensure that you have ample time to get rowdy with the squad.  If you challenge yourself intellectually at any point during your four years of fun, you are doing something wrong.  

3: Food.  There should be a variety of good restaurants near campus.  In addition, the food offered by the cafeterias should be tasty.  For example, on a recent college tour, my tour guide talked at length about the school’s omelette day, which occurs every Wednesday and apparently attracts huge numbers of students to the cafeterias.  He also mentioned the college’s incredible salad bars, which was of less interest to me, but still worth noting.  At a separate college visit, I learned that omelettes are a regular item on the cafeteria menu; one does not need to wait until Wednesday to consume an omelette.  Needless to say, I pulled my application from the first college and applied to the second instead.

4: Acquaintances.  Last but not least, find every person from SHS that is also applying to the school.  You’ll want at least a dozen SHS students applying to your first choice as well, so you all can form a little Scarsdale community at the college and hang out together for four years.  If you do this right, you’ll never have to feel like you left Scarsdale at all!

Honorable Mentions: Academic opportunities and quality of professors.