It's No Shortcut, but QuestBridge May Be an Alternate Route to College A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail regarding the status of my application to the QuestBridge college application and scholarship program. I opened it up and hoped for the best. Getting in, after all, would mark the beginning of my college application process. I discovered over the summer that QuestBridge offers full four-year scholarships - including tuition, room and board - to "high-achieving low-income students." That phrase drew me in. And the rewards were also appealing. A benefit of becoming a finalist is that, not only do you get fee waivers from all partner schools that you decide to apply to, but your application is forwarded to those that you choose, allowing you to slip in more essays, which could provide a better picture of what kind of a person you are. This is where the real college application process began - applying to QuestBridge. A student who becomes a finalist has two choices. The first is a binding option. Choosing this route means that, out of the schools that QuestBridge has partnerships with, a student finalist must rank up to eight as his top schools. If you choose to rank colleges, you must submit all applications as though you were applying early decision, which means I would have to meet the Nov. 1 early admission deadlines for those schools. I could have finished the applications on time, but there is only a two-week difference between ranking the colleges and sending in the applications, which doesn't allow for much time to polish up them up (unless you started working on the applications before ranking them). I hadn't started earlier. Actually, my list of colleges was still incomplete, and I didn't want to rush simply to get the process over with. My parents have always told me, if you're going to do something, do it right. Besides, I've never liked the binding aspect of anything. Being forced to go to a school would mean I'd have no choice. If a school matched me, I'd go there, but my problem was that I only knew the schools superficially. I'd never visited any of them, so I was afraid at the thought of loving a school based on what I read online, only to dislike it after I arrived on campus. Instead of applying via the program's National College Math -- the binding decision -- I chose the QuestBridge Regular Decision process. If chosen as a finalist, I wouldn't be ranking any schools. I'd simply use their forwarding option to send my application to the schools I wanted to attend. I started writing my application essays in mid-August. By the time I was finished, I had lost count of the number of rewrites I had made. The week before the application's deadline turned into a labor camp, where all of my time was directed at homework, club work or fixing essays. Though sometimes I like think that teachers conspire to test a student's breaking point, I realized that managing time was in fact that most vital part of the college process. Even as I labored, I learned. The worst part about the whole process was pressing the submit button. It's in that instant, when the mouse hovers over the button and turns into a hand, that my mind flooded with mistakes from the past, making me question whether they were corrected. After double, triple, and even quadruple checking everything, I pressed the button. On Oct. 22, I received an e-mail regarding the status of my application. I was disappointed. The decision wasn't in the e-mail; I had to log in to find out. The anticipation was making me nervous. I logged in and clicked "View Status Update." And then, I saw it: We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a finalist for the 2012 QuestBridge National College Match. A sense of relief came flooding in, as did the sudden realization that this was only the beginning. Mr. Espinoza, a student at Topeka High School in Kansas, is one of eight high school seniors around the world blogging about their college searches for The Choice. To comment on what he has written here, please use the comment box below.