Your freshman year of college is an exciting time, but it may also be an emotionally taxing one. You may be affected by a number of potential stressors, including the following:
- living away from home for the first time,
- lingering stress from high school,
- worry over the economy—what it means for your family’s finances and your post-graduation job prospects—and
- internal pressure to succeed.
Unfortunately, the current college freshman class has rated its emotional health at record-low levels.
In a survey of more than 200,000 freshman students, only 51.9 percent rated their mental health as above average. This is the lowest percentage in the 25-year history of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s annual Freshman Survey.
The results were even worse for female students. Only 45.9 percent—versus 59.1 percent of male students—rated their emotional health as above average.
It is part of this blog’s mission to de-stress the road to college whenever possible. In the future, I plan to post entries that put the application process and its stressors in perspective. Keep an eye out for these posts alongside the test-taking tips.
In the meantime, I’d like to share a helpful post from The New York Times college admissions blog, The Choice. It provides some questions to ask as you research the mental health services offered at the colleges on your list.
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