To the High School Senior Struggling to Make a Decision
- Liz Stapp
- Apr 16
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 16
o High School Seniors Struggling to Make a Decision...
It’s go time. High school seniors, including mine, need to make their final college decisions by May 1. And I’ve never seen more young people feel so overwhelmed. Anxious. Frozen. The fear of making the wrong choice has become paralyzing.
After fifteen years of teaching at the college level, I can say without hesitation that the single greatest challenge facing today’s students isn’t academic performance or time management. It’s the simple, profound act of making a decision and owning it and its results.
Again and again, I’ve watched smart, capable young adults spiral into paralysis over everything from choosing a major to replying to a text message. They’re not lazy. They’re not entitled. They’re afraid. In a world that moves quickly and rewards clarity, that hesitation becomes academically, professionally, and personally costly.
So what’s going on?
Why are today’s students so stuck?
Why Decision-Making Feels So Hard Right Now
1. You’ve Been Trained to Optimize, Not Decide
From the time you were a kindergartener, you’ve been taught to look for the one “right” answer. The perfect path. The best possible outcome. But adult life? It doesn’t work that way. Most decisions don’t have a single best choice. They involve trade-offs. Uncertainty. Risk.
Take Mia*. She had a near-perfect high school GPA and two great college offers: one nearby that was fun, exciting, and familiar. The other was across the country and offered her a considerable scholarship. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t stop worrying about what she’d lose by choosing either one.
Here was the problem: no matter how much she tried to land on the one right answer, there wasn’t one. There were just two different futures. Each had pros and cons. That’s real life. And the sooner you accept that “good enough” can be great, the more confident you’ll feel moving forward.
2. You’re Drowning in Options
Choice is supposed to be freedom. But too many choices? That’s overwhelming. You’ve got hundreds of majors to pick from. Dozens of schools. Career paths that didn’t even exist ten years ago. And social media turns every choice into a public event. It’s not just “Where are you going to college?” Instead, it’s “Will your announcement look impressive on Instagram?”
It’s no wonder people freeze. How do you pick a major from 50+ options when you’ve never taken a college class? Even worse, how do you choose anything when you're under constant scrutiny?
3. You Fear Regret More Than Failure
You’re not afraid of working hard. Most of you are used to giving 110%. But you’ve been told your choices will define your entire future. So instead of viewing decisions as a process, you see them as irreversible. Like the stakes are life or death. Regret looms larger than failure. And that move feels dangerous.
As I have often reminded my own two children, there are only two decisions that cannot be undone:
The decision to have and raise a child, and
The decision to take your own life.
While these are rather stark and heavy examples, they emphasize the point. Almost everything else can be undone or changed. If you make a choice you later regret, you get to choose something different moving forward. And let’s unpack regret for a minute. It’s a pretty stupid emotion when you think about it. It keeps you living in the past or the perceived mistake you made. Try replacing “regret” with “reflection and redirection.” Reflect on what you did, what you did and didn’t like about the situation, and redirect things from there.
4. You Don’t Trust Your Gut Anymore
The little voice inside you that knows what feels right (or intuition) has been drowned out by the noise. Noise from well-meaning adults, from your parents (guilty as charged!), from TikTok, from college rankings, from classmates posting highlight reels.
You second-guess yourself because you’ve been trained to value outside opinions more than your own. You’re refreshing Reddit threads or polling strangers instead of taking five minutes to sit quietly and ask: What do I want? So when you hear this noise, try to decipher which voice is yours. Quiet all of the rest.
Here’s the truth: It’s okay not to know everything. But learning how to make decisions, especially the messy, imperfect ones, is one of the most important skills you’ll ever develop.
Let’s talk about how.
Experts Who Explain How We Choose (And How to Choose Better)
If you truly want to live a life of purpose and meaning, you need to begin living life more intentionally. This starts by actually making a decision rather than allowing indecision to control the result.
Below are some experts who will help you start.
Why these experts? Because they understand how humans really work. Not how we should decide in theory, but how we actually do. They’ve spent decades studying why we hesitate, stumble, overthink, or give in. Their work helps explain what’s going on inside your brain and how to work with it instead of against it.
1. Daniel Kahneman
How You’re Wired:
Your brain runs two systems. One is fast and emotional. The other is slow and analytical. The fast one usually wins, especially under pressure.
What Trips You Up:
Anchoring: The first number or idea you hear usually sticks and wins. If one college was always your "dream school," you may be ignoring new options that may actually serve you better.
Availability Bias: If something’s easy to picture, it feels more likely. That doesn’t mean it's the best choice.
Loss Aversion: You fear losing more than you crave winning. Taking risks is hard, but it’s what usually pays off the most. If you live in fear of failure, you’re more likely to choose the safe, potentially less optimal choice.
How to Do Better:
Take a break. Sleep on it.
Write it out. Force your brain into slow thinking.
Imagine what someone else would do in your place.
2. Dan Ariely
How You’re Wired:
People aren’t as rational or honest as they think. We tell ourselves stories to feel better about iffy choices.
What Trips You Up:
"Everyone does it."
"I earned this."
“It’s not cheating.”
How to Do Better:
Define your values before you're tempted. Define and commit to certain acts or behaviors before the emotions and chaos of the situation present themselves.
Tell someone your decision to stay accountable.
Build habits and friendships that support who you want to be.
3. Jonathan Haidt
How You’re Wired:
You lead with emotion far more than logic. Typically, your logic only comes in later to justify what you already feel or are emotionally prone to do.
What Trips You Up:
Groupthink. We default too often to the group surrounding us. Look at your group more carefully before doing this. Does each member of the group know you better than you do? Do they know what your values are? Do they care whether you can live with the results of your decisions?
Making snap moral judgments.
How to Do Better:
Ask why you feel so strongly.
Constantly evaluate yourself and the values of your group. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Are they good people? Are they kind? Thoughtful? Honest? Guess what? If they aren’t, you’ll become less good, kind, thoughtful, and honest over time.
Talk to people who respectfully disagree with you. Ask them earnestly to explain their thought process without interrupting or arguing.
Use moral values—fairness, care, liberty, for example—as a checklist. Decide what values are the most important to you. Go from there.
4. Cass Sunstein (and Richard Thaler)
How You’re Wired:
The setup matters. How choices are framed affects how you choose.
What Trips You Up:
Choosing the default without thinking.
Getting lost in too many options.
How to Do Better:
Rewrite the choices in your own words.
Pick your top 3 and compare.
Set personal defaults ahead of time.
5. Gerd Gigerenzer
How You’re Wired:
In complex situations, your gut can be smarter than overthinking things as long as it’s informed by experience.
What Trips You Up:
Analysis paralysis.
Endless research.
How to Do Better:
Ask: “Will this matter in five years?”
If you know your stuff, trust your instincts.
Choose “good enough” and move on.
6. Herbert Simon
How You’re Wired:
You don’t need the best decision. You need a satisfying one that meets your core needs. You won't know what's best at the time.
What Trips You Up:
Trying to be perfect in other people’s eyes.
Getting mentally exhausted by too many choices.
How to Do Better:
Set a decision deadline.
Identify your non-negotiables. Stop once they’re met.
Accept “good enough” as a win.
Remember: It’s your head and your head alone that hits the pillow each night. All those people you’re trying to impress won’t be there to live in the aftermath of your choices. And truth be told, most of “those people” are
1) not paying any attention to what you’re doing
2) don’t exist or
3) are rooting for you to fail, no matter what you do.
Don’t live your life around pleasing them.
7. Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson
How You’re Wired:
You’ll do almost anything to avoid admitting you were wrong, including doubling down on a poor choice.
What Trips You Up:
Justifying bad calls to protect your ego.
Fear of judgment.
How to Do Better:
Say, “I’ve changed my mind” or "I've made a mistake" out loud and often. Practice this.
Track your decisions over time. Do you see a pattern?
Seek reasons your current choice might be wrong before finalizing it. Compare it to previous results.
A Decision-Making Framework You Can Use
Below is a decision-making framework you can use to help you begin making your own decisions. Try it with something small. A club. A summer job. A class schedule.
The more you use this, the more second nature it becomes.
✅ Step 1: Recognize the Decision
What exactly are you deciding? Is it just a school? Or is it something larger?
Write it down.
Can you pause, or is this time-sensitive?
✅ Step 2: Define Your Must-Haves and Dealbreakers
What matters most to you? What will matter most to you in 5 years?
What are you unwilling to compromise on?
What are you flexible about?
Are you willing to be ok with "good enough"?
✅ Step 3: Watch for Bias and Emotion
What emotions are showing up? Are you worried about disappointing people? Consider the cost of disappointing yourself first.
Are you trying to justify a gut decision with logic?
Are you choosing from your ego or your values?
Would you give a friend the same advice?
✅ Step 4: Get Another Perspective
Who sees things differently, but neutrally?
Ask someone older or outside the situation to weigh in. Do you have a teacher who knows you well? A grandparent?
Let someone challenge your thinking. Remain neutral. Don’t jump to defensiveness. Just listen.
✅ Step 5: Narrow It Down
Eliminate options until only two or three remain.
Once you’ve eliminated an option or made a decision, keep going. The number one rule in negotiations is to close the discussion on items agreed upon. Keep moving forward towards resolution.
Gut check: Which one feels right today? Why? Is it your voice answering this question?
✅ Step 6: Think Long-Term
Will this make sense a few months or a year from now? Is it possible that you may change? Or that the things you fear will have failed to materialize? Perhaps you’re scared to choose a school because you don’t know anyone there. In three months, that will no longer be true. Can you deal with this discomfort knowing that it will soon end?
Does this reflect your values?
Even if it fails, what will you gain?
✅ Step 7: Decide and Reflect
Make the call.
Record the outcome and write down your reasons.
If it flops? Learn and adjust. No shame in that.
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