Unsuspecting Senior Haunted by Endless Supps

After exhaustive researching, soul-searching, touring, and asking provocative questions about what you want in a school, senior Susie Lee had finally completed and finalized her college list. She brought it eagerly to her college counselor, who, after a few meaningless clicks on Naviance and a few mumbled “mmhms” and “oh yeahs,” approved her list, much to Susie’s relief. Her counselor then told her to get started on her various supplements.

Susie paused. Had she heard right? Supplements, plural? Her college counselor could not possibly mean to say that each college had a completely different set of essays to write, each of which was quirky and different and required hours of writing and asking family members to describe you in five and a half words? Turns out that, yes, that was what they wanted.

That night, Susie clicked open her Common App account, added her 14 colleges to her dashboard, and was astounded to find that she had exactly 345 supplemental 250-word essays to write. Her palms began to sweat.

College A wanted her to write about her favorite book quote and how she had used it to shape herself into a woman. College B wanted to know her favorite sport that required a mouthguard that wasn’t boxing. College C wanted her to compare herself to a blanket in the form of an original sonnet that was also a haiku. College D wanted to know her favorite recording. What does that even mean?

The next day Susie went to school, and the supplements followed. They swirled around her head in all her classes as shape-shifting piles of paper, rejection letters, and tour guides who walked backwards even though it wasn’t necessary and looked dangerous. She struggled to focus in her math class through the sound of the essay questions: “Explain why you believe cereal is a soup” and “What would you do if you had 27 hours in a day but also had no legs?” and “Describe a moment when you felt like you wanted to kill a man with your bare hands. How did you handle that? What did you learn?” On top of this was the endless stream of why us, why us, why us, why us, WHY US and us, why?, which, as Susie had learned, could not be answered with a simple, “The trees on campus are pretty, and you guys have an ice cream machine, and I saw the most beautiful boy in the world while visiting this summer.”

The most terrifying part of Halloween for Susie was that after October 31 is November 1, and if you know, you know. Susie spent the last weeks of October with her head buried in her laptop, so she didn’t even need makeup to look like a zombie for Halloween! When she clicked submit on her apps, she felt a rush as her body purged itself of the demons. She exhaled.

Now for regular decision!