For many seniors, opening up Instagram on Jan. 7 to see a brightly colored post sporting the name of a college and a picture of a fellow classmate was something they’ve been looking forward to for months.  Upon the arrival of college decisions, the Lane Tech Student Council (STUCO) Board has created a tradition that many other schools have as well: showing off their students’ prospective colleges. 

The first post on @championsdecisions25_ was the first of many colorful logos, nostalgic baby photos and lists of extracurriculars. Above the posts is a story collection with easy access to “Midwest,” “Chicago” and “East Coast” alongside others, all sporting Lane students. The form to submit your own decision is linked above, and it’s easily navigable, understandable and informative. 

However, the decisions posting hasn’t been without criticism for class president Grier Burke and senator Sonali Jain, both of whom spoke about how the decisions posts have been going. 

The criticism was mainly surrounding the placement of the college logo and name. Currently, the logo is on the second page, along with the baby picture and list of extracurriculars and the name of the college is on the front. This differs from the ‘24 decisions page, which displayed the logo on the front page and a simplistic design on the second. 

“I can understand why people might want the emblem on the front so it’s easier to identify. But I thought the name of the school is pretty important,” said Grier Burke, senior class president. 

However, some students disagree with the common criticism. 

“I don’t know the emblems of every school. I need them to state it,” senior Emilia Touw senior. Most emblems don’t directly state the name of the college, but they can have more color and creative design than most logos. 

“But I mean, I’m always going to listen to them. I always listen to what the people say,” Burke said in regards to the criticism, although she did add that STUCO needs to stay confident in their choices for artistic design. 

 People who applied early action or early decision are starting to get results back now, but most students who applied regularly have to wait until spring for most universities to either accept, reject, defer or waitlist them. 

“We get busy again, around like March,” Jain said. As college decisions continue to roll in, there is no doubt that STUCO will have a lot to handle considering the significant size of the 2025 class. Touw herself suspects to get her decisions back in early spring, and plans to submit her own decision around then.

“STUCO is going to be working really hard to get all the posts out in a timely manner. But with 1000 students, it seems pretty difficult,” Touw said. 

Despite criticism and complications due to the number of submissions, the decisions page is accumulating hundreds of likes and comments from friends expressing support. 

“I want to be proud of where I’m going. It’s interesting to see where other people are going, so I want to give people that ability to be interested,” Touw said. 

Out of the 24 submissions in the form, according to Burke, only 15 are up so far. But more are to come.

“There’s hard work going on behind the scenes,” Burke said.