I’ve heard the same vent from both my kids. The college application process is stressful, perhaps unnecessarily so. The first thing to realize is that big college is a marketing machine, much like the other “bigs” out there. They want you to “fall in love” with your “ideal school” and make lots of friends and have the “college experience”. Actually, the purpose of college is education. For a very few, education is an end in it’s own right, but for most of us, it leads to a paying career.
You are right that many people cruise through high school and don’t carry your workload. As in life, you don’t know their situation. They may have a talent that will carry them through. Maybe they have a trust fund? Maybe they will marry well. Maybe they have a sporting skill. In any event, if none of those apply to you then you need a paying job.
There is no way to guarantee that you will make more money than your neighboring slacker. But you owe it to yourself to do the best you can for yourself. Just because you both go the same college does not mean you will both have the same outcomes. All that work is like a bank account that is stored away.
(Note about bank accounts - you never know what is in anyone’s account. Ignore the big spenders around you and promise yourself you will save and invest 20% of everything you earn.)
Colleges reject brilliant kids all the time. Colleges are poorly placed to judge your merit and you should not let them. The only thing they are capable of is manipulating statistics in order to rise up or stay at the top of the rankings. Most definitely you should aim as high as you like and your family can comfortably afford, but there is no shame in getting an excellent education from a school that is not high in the rankings.
One final thought on having a family. As a junior it can seem as if your whole life is at your desk. Most of your life will not be like that. Everything difficult has ebbs and flows, busy times and down times. There will be time to live your life, have a family, travel, cook, whatever. Just keep working, do your best (you owe it to yourself) and look for the kernel of sunshine that will appear sometime in senior year.
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