At the end of my senior year of high school, I was scrambling to make the decision that a lot of my fellow classmates had made months ago, some of them even as early as the beginning of the year! I was deciding where I wanted to go to college and all the way up until the May 1 deadline, I was torn between leaving home or staying home for college.

I knew that I wanted to move to New York City since my freshman year of high school, so I thought that when the time came for me to choose my college it would be easy. I was between a college in New York and a college that I would have been able to commute to from home. When I was a freshman, this decision seemed like a no-brainer. I knew that I wanted to leave home, so I thought that the decision would be easy. I could not have been more wrong. I couldn't make up my mind, and I was so stressed for most of my senior year of high school because of it.

I suppose that there were a few things that I didn't account for when I decided that my dream would be to pack my bags and head to the Big Apple. Some of these things included financial aid, what my parents wanted for me, transportation, etc. Everyone tells you that you should attend your dream college, but no one really tells you how hard it is until you're halfway through your senior year of high school and filling out 11 applications to schools in towns you've never even heard of because “having a safety school or two is a good idea.”

I ended up applying to around 11 schools, most of which were not in the city or even state that I wanted to go to. For some reason, I thought that applying to all these schools would be a good idea, but when it came down to it, it really didn't matter if I got accepted to even half of those because once I got accepted, I didn't even consider them further. I should have applied to only schools that I was sincerely interested in because after all, you can only attend one.

Now, I am in my second semester of college at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy located in New York City, and I couldn't be happier. In the end, I chose the school that I really wanted to go to but choosing it was such a scary and stressful event. If I could give one piece of advice to someone who is thinking about leaving home for college, it would be to really commit to it and start looking into what it takes to get to where you want to be as early as possible, only apply to colleges that will truly make you happy because the rest of them will just waste your time and cause unnecessary stress.