When kids are younger in high school or middle school, they don’t see the difficulties that teens in senior year have. Many kids think that senior year would be this magical moment.
Seeing certain shows and movies like “High School Musical” and “Cobra Kai” also drive many to believe that senior year is a fantastic time where everyone just has a great time and easily gets into an awesome college without dealing with any of the stress.
But, many have come to realize that these movies don’t show the work it took for those characters to get to the moment they are in.
Viewers often just jump to certain conclusions because that is the plot line they have set. These movies come up with a reality that is really unlikely in today’s world.
In reality, many kids face numerous difficulties and a ton of stress since there is a lot to complete, whether it’s college applications, school work, extracurriculars, sports, etc. According to CollegeData, applications and writing essays take up more than 50% of time for seniors, 12% of students reported feeling stress from outside school activities like sports, and 11% found themselves stressed from schoolwork.
In “Cobra Kai” one of the main characters, Miguel Diaz is seen always working on karate and we never really see him doing anything academic-related or anything related to college applications. In fact, it seems like he is always training.
It gets even better for him when then he magically gets into Stanford while putting in seemingly no work at school besides him practicing karate. In the 6th season, Miguel is in his senior year, and we hear word about him applying, but not about working on the application itself.
Stanford’s acceptance rate is 3.9% and in reality, if someone like Miguel were to apply, they would likely not get waitlisted and instead have a better chance at being deferred due to the competition of other students applying.
After watching Cobra Kai, many thought that if characters like Miguel can easily get into Stanford without dealing with any college problems it would be an easy step in life.
This year, students are not only facing stress from college apps, but are also having difficulty balancing extracurriculars and schoolwork. That just goes to show that you can’t judge life based on movies, as they don’t depict what reality actually is.