Senior Will Crawford, a future history major, waits in anticipation to find out if Princeton University will accept, hold, or decline his early action application.

“My second choice would be Washington and Lee, which is something that I’ll be happy with, and when it comes down to it, I’ll probably be happier at Washington and Lee than at Princeton anyway,” Crawford said. “I will probably find out about Princeton early December sometime.”

The students at Darlington often credit their successes to influential teachers they have had.

“I think Mr. Schmidt probably influenced me a lot,” said Crawford, “because I had him my first two years here and he gave me a foundation for what college classes are supposed to be like and kind of opened my mind to some other new ways of thinking.”

High school seniors nationwide struggle to start the rest of their lives by making important, life-changing decisions. Here at Darlington, the seniors were surveyed about their college applications, revealing that many were applying early decision and/or early action to their dream schools.

Many students are often confused about early admission, early decision, and early action.

“First of all, there is no such thing as early submission,” said Mr. Sam Moss, the Dean of College Guidance. “There is either early action or early decision.” Early decision means that an applicant will commit to the school to which they apply if his or her funds allow it and in early action, students apply earlier and receive an acceptance notification earlier than if he or she had applied normally in order to practically decide where to enroll sooner.

Senior Gracen Wilson’s dream school is the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), where she aspires to major in nursing. She has already been accepted and will begin in the fall of 2016.

“I toured other schools,” Wilson said, “but when I toured Ole Miss, I just felt like I was at home.”

“The only advice I can give is to find a place that suits you and a place that’s, you know, what you’re looking for, not just what somebody else wants, because it’s really about you because you’re the one who’s going to be doing it for four years. So, don’t try and suit your parents or a teacher or anything like that.”