Hello, next President of the USA,

I am a freshman at a high school, in the bay area. I am also a student that is currently taking AVID, a class where they prepare you for things concerning college, like what college to go to, what classes to take to get your job that you want, etc. Although it may seems that I am a bit young to be thinking about college, it is something that really concerns me for quite sometime, and has been on my mind more and more as time goes by. Due to the fact that I am now in high school and that I want to have a successful life in the future.

While I have been in AVID and an AVID student for a few months now, it got me thinking about what college to go to, if I am even qualified to attend the school, and if I can afford to attend that school. One of the top schools I want to go to is UCLA, but I’ve heard that the school has a low acceptance rate, since it is hard to get accepted. My cousin attends UCLA, but before she attended the college her mom made her take many extra classes and paid for them, and now she attends the school, lives in one of the dorms with her friends. I am afraid I won't be able to afford to do those things too.While she was in high school, she applied to like 12 or so great colleges, including UCLA and she got accepted to all of those she applied for. She could afford to live there and she met the requirements to be accepted to that school. Many people are feeling what I am feeling too, we are stressed that we can’t afford to take these extra classes, like my cousin did, and can’t go to their dream college and live there or close to it.

According to The Princeton Review's 2016 College Hopes & Worries Survey “the company's 13th annual survey of college applicants and their parents nearly three out of four (72%) of the over 10,000 respondents this year reported high levels of stress about their applications.“ In this quote made by the website princetonreview.com is basically saying that based on a survey that many students and parents took said they’re having stressed because they’re worried that their children’s application can’t be accepted, since they didn’t reach the academic standards. Another quote is from Princetonreview.com, “Concerns about how they will afford the colleges they get in to contribute heavily to that stress.” Princetonreview.com’s point is that most of that stress is on if the students can afford to go to their dream college creates most of the stress. I know from one of my teachers , that you have to pay for you to take college classes, so you can get college credit and not take the college class in college and take it now. I and others are afraid we can’t afford these types of classes and because if we fail the class we wasted our money, waste more money to take the class again and we wasted our summer on these classes, when we should be doing other fun things.

So my requests are that you must make that action to create more scholarships, so that students like me can actually go to our dream schools, if we can’t afford too. You must lower the cost of living and going to the popular schools. You should have more people help others get to their dream school, academically by having more college classes and great teachers teaching them. You must lower the cost for college classes to college credits for high students like me. So that people of this country can contribute to make you and others proud of our country and to make it better than it’s now.

Citation for image above: http://yescollege.com/guides/get-into-your-dream-school/

Citation for image above: www.studentaid.ed.gov.