Choosing what you want for your future is like making choices for an ice cream sundae. First, you have to choose the ice cream. This is like deciding whether you want to go to a college, take a gap year, go into a job or to the military. That important choice is the base for the rest of your decisions. Next, you choose the kind of sundae you want: hot fudge or banana split? Do you want to be living in a cold climate or warm one? Are you going to a college in the north or south? It may sound silly to think about comparing decisions about your future with ice cream, but it is the same concept on a larger scale. If you don’t pick the right combinations for you, then the end result could turn out terrible and you might wish you had made different choices. The only difference is that with a sundae you can throw it away and start over. It is harder to do that with your future.

Have you considered what your options are after high school? Many choose the college adventure, which may include studying at a college in the U.S. or abroad. Specialized job training after high school is another option. A gap year is another option. But if you take a gap year, how will you spend it? Joining the military is another choice. A career in the military is a goal in itself for many, but some enlist to earn support for college through military educational aid programs. According to Northeast University, over 50 percent of military veterans nationally go on to college to expand their knowledge.

“The idea of going into the military interested me because it was something different from the usual path,” said senior Gloria Okocha.

The last choice is to start looking for a job. If you work, will you move out of mom and dad’s basement and find a place of your own or will you stay home? If you stay home, what happens to the money you earn at work? Will you pay your parents rent, save money or spend it?

Each choice offers you a lot more freedom, but there are risks to choosing the wrong one. If you decide to take a gap year for the wrong reasons, such as following your friends or to fulfill your passion for bird watching/trainspotting/celebrity-stalking then it could end up as 365 days of wasted time. Some good reasons to take a gap year would be if you wanted to earn some money for college, to work on your foreign language skills in another country, or even just to put school on pause and have time to consider all your options and discover what you are really most passionate about. No gap year is cheap and as the price of attending college increases each year, so you might be thinking about going straight into a job that only requires a high school diploma. One thing to think about is that most of those jobs are low-paying, with only a few that pay well above minimum wage. College, on the other hand, is one of the most popular choices of the WJ graduating class. While nationally less than 63 percent of graduating seniors go to college each year, 88 percent of the WJ graduating class goes off to college.

Lisa Sorensen, a guidance counselor at WJ, said “there are three key factors to consider: location, size, and student to teacher ratio.” When discussing location for example she asks students “what kind of things  are important to you, because you will be living at college. What does your environment look like? Do you want to see cows or do you want to see buildings?”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, people with a college degree tend to earn $1.3 million more in a lifetime than people who just stop their educational career at the end of high school, but college isn’t the only route to a good career. Some trades, such as plumbing or electrical work, pay very well. But, because most students who graduate WJ go to college, the emphasis is on choosing the right one.

“Colleges are looking for indicators of success, meaning your GPA and test scores. They are also looking for things that will make you an interesting member of their community; that is where extracurriculars come in and that is where your thoughts come out in essays,”  said counselor Dennis Reynolds.

Around this time of year, seniors are busy with stressful college applications. Many seniors are pressured to make their application stand out from the thousand’s of other applicants. Applying to a college of your choice can either make you or break you, students never know if all their hard work will pay off for them.

Senior Katell Anane has clarified her priorities for choosing a school.

“I want to study finance, but not be too far from home, so probably [the University of] Maryland, Frostburg, or Baltimore. I’m mainly focused on the best education each college can offer me,” Anane said.

“I’m looking for colleges for cinematography and screen writing. I looked at the major directors out there such as, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and looked at the kind of stuff they went into and that gave me a foundation to build off of for my future. Three schools I applied to were, NYU, Vassar [College], and USC, all schools for cinematography,” said senior Joyce Mbogba.

Both Anane and Mbogba chose the same path of going to college; they chose different toppings by choosing different majors to study in. Other WJ students choose to base their future on one of the post high school paths they find more intriguing. No matter what path a student chooses they should consider what is important to them in life. Do they want to make a lot of money? Do they want to do a job they love but not make as much money in? It’s all about the individual student and which choices they make. There are many factors to consider, and a goal destination is a great place to start. You then only have to worry about finding the right path to your perfect future.