I want to win the gift card 
In all seriousness though, i just finished applying to colleges and honestly this has been one of the MOST stressful periods of my life so far. My guidance counselor was ABSOLUTELY NO HELP whatsoever. My parents have never been to college nor do I have an older sibling so basically during this entire process I had to do everything myself, which was the worst since I had no clue what I was doing (I did everything, resumes, applications, essays, scholarships, etc., last minute and was so so late on my financial aid deadlines). I wished that there had been some sort of guidance to help me with the process that would have elevated some of the stress. DO NOT DO EVERYTHING LAST MINUTE AND ACTUALLY DO RESEARCH.
I also agree with the ECs stuff early posters have mentioned. I barely had any ECs that I was even interested in and didn’t have any notable leadership positions. I have friends who were in a club and ran for leadership positions just so that they could put it on their resumes even though they had never actually participated in club activities beforehand. Everyone became obsessed with improving their resumes and ECs that even I (a pretty big underachiever in terms of ECs) started to worry about it too. On the same note, this applies to most of the courses I took in high school too, most of them being of no interest to me. I wanted to drop down to a lower level English but my guidance counselor advised me not too because it “would look too weird on my application” (I really hate English).
Also, why is applying so god damn expensive? You have the application fees then you have to pay to send SAT/ACT scores and pay for the CSS profile (the irony). The amount of money I’ve spent just applying is ridiculous.
Unrelated but I hate how EVERYBODY just won’t SHUT UP about colleges during this time period. The last few months I’ve only heard “where did you apply to”, “what are you majoring in”, “did you hear back from any colleges yet”, and “where are you going.” It literally became everyone’s default topic of conversation and I was so sick of talking about colleges. Everyone is just so OBSESSED with colleges.
Colleges also need to stop emailing me. I don’t care if you’ve extended the application deadline or increased your scholarship money. STOP EMAILING ME.
Sorry this was so long and slightly unrelated. I just wanted to rant about the admissions process tbh.