Adolescents' experience of a life-framing decision

High school students participating in a year-long longitudinal study of the college decision-making process described their experiences in open-ended essays, and rated their reactions to the process on several different Likert scales. Students' certainty in the decision and readiness to make a decision rose over time. As the process continued, students repel-red increasing satisfaction with the information they had obtained and more comfort with the process itself: However overall levels of reported enjoyment of the process were low to moderate, and overall ratings of the stressfulness of the decision remained high. Students gave evidence of seeing this decision as a life-framing one.