College. When senior Ashley Wenger hears this word, the first thing that comes to mind is the excitement of gaining independence, meeting new people and preparing for her future career. As seniors mentally prepare themselves for the year to come, they sometimes forget to consider the process of actually receiving the acceptance letter.

“I’m still waiting to see if I’ll get into all the colleges I applied to,” Wenger said.

Wenger isn’t the only one waiting on her letters of acceptance.

“More and more people are now applying to four-year colleges,” guidance clerk Dixie Thompson said. “So now there’s more people trying to get their things together.”

With the technology of today, most colleges are asking for students to apply online instead of sending their applications through the mail. But submitting multiple forms electronically can result in glitches.

“Personally, I think that it would be easier to receive all of a student’s transcripts, scores, letters of recommendation and everything else in one envelope,” Thompson said. “But colleges don’t want that. They want everything electronically sent.”

However, some colleges including the Florida Institute of Technology require some of their applicants’ information to be mailed in.

“If there’s a glitch in the system, we always have our hard files we can look at,” FIT Admissions Recruiter Allison Glunt said. “We have a system online that tracks what a student has submitted and what they haven’t. Also we have hard copies of everything so that we can pull a file and check exactly what it is they are missing.”

Guidance counselor Dina McMillan understands the college application process because she used to work for the admissions office at Barry University.

“State universities have more of a clear, minimal ideal student,” McMillan said. “Whereas private universities are more liberal in their decisions because less people are applying, so it’s not as competitive.”

When students don’t immediately receive feedback on their applications, they worry about the college preparing to deny them acceptance.

“The thing is that kids get anxious and think that their colleges can get everything in a week,” Thompson said. “But it really doesn’t work that way.”