What Are Seniors' Plans for College?

By: Levon Grigoryan '25

As the 2024 school year is nearing its end, seniors will have to pursue an interest in the world outside of SOCES. The question that is often asked is “What's next?” What are SOCES seniors planning to do with the rest of their lives to continue their education?  

Well, there are a ton of options! One popular option among most seniors across the nation is doing General Ed courses for 2 years in community college, and then transferring over to a university. This option allows students to save money, while still staying local after high school. Hakop Dischian is a SOCES senior who wants to attend Santa Monica College. After, if things go well, she hopes to transfer to a larger University. This may also be an option for those who struggled throughout high school, perhaps over COVID, and have lower chances of getting accepted into a 4-year college. 

On the other hand, some students really pushed through high school with lots of extracurriculars and straight A’s giving them many more options to choose from. Leili Sami has done very well in high school and applied to multiple schools. Her options include the school she is prioritizing, which is USC, and just in case, some safety schools that she applied to were in Oregon, Indiana, Arizona, Boulder, Hawaii, and a couple of CSU’s. 

Luckily, her hard work and dedication paid off and she was accepted to her dream school, USC. “It always felt like the right school for me! I loved the campus and everybody I met on the tour was the kind of person I wanted to be around. And, it has unique connections and opportunities I couldn’t find at other schools for my future career,” says Leili Sami. 

For some students, their colleges and Universities may not have responded yet, such as Kristine Aleksanyan who has applied to 13 different schools. Those schools include UCLA, UCSD, UC Berkeley, UCSB, CSUN, CSU, Cal Poly Pomona, CSU Poly Slo, Stanford, Harvard, Pepperdine, and LMU. Her priority or dream school to get into is UCLA however she has not gotten a letter from the university yet, as most universities send out admission letters later in mid-March. Let's wish all of our Seniors the best of luck with college and other opportunities!