If you don’t know how to change a tire or curl your hair or even make a soufflé, you can YouTube it.
So, it stands to reason, if you don’t know how to apply for college, you would turn to the video-sharing website for the answers you seek.
What started as a trend of college-bound teens sharing their college decision letters has grown into a way for teens to broadcast their experiences and advice throughout the process.
Teen Vogue recently interviewed several of these YouTube vloggers about their growing channels.
“No one from my school had gone to Stanford before, so I did not feel like I had access to adequate resources from my high school,” Katherine Waissbluth, now a sophomore at Stanford University (CA), told the magazine. “I turned to the internet for help.”
She now has nearly 50,000 subscribers with whom she shares tips on everything from the Common App and application essays to dorm life.
In addition to tips based on his own application process, Joshua Ocampo, a sophomore at Dartmouth College (NH), focuses on the stress surrounding the college application process. He offers vlogs on staying sane through your senior year and how to deal with fear in the college process.
“I’m here to fight the toxicity of the college application process and to help folks survive it,” he told Teen Vogue.
YouTube itself is trying to capitalize on this trend and capture the college-bound teen audience. The company recently partnered with Michelle Obama to create A Student’s Guide to Your First Year of College and worked with the Princeton Review to create College Admission 101.
Ashley Dobson is NACAC’s senior communications manager for content and social media. You can reach her at adobson@nacacnet.org.
Sad that this in another article that actually feeds the frenzy placing such importance on elite institutions, rather than focusing on student best-fit practices and mental health well-being.