Waiting for Clemson

It's the last semester of her senior year, and Berkeley High School student Stephanie Hill is starting to come to grips with the reality that this is the end of high school.

Lots of rites of passage are ahead: her final powderpuff football game, her prom, her graduation.

As a member of the school's yearbook staff, she has been working on pages with senior photos and quotes, and designing ads for the Class of 2012. She is working with a friend on ways to include every member of the 200-plus class in the senior video.

She filled out paperwork to receive her honors diploma and has done some research on scholarships, although she has yet to apply for any.

Her mom, Margaret Hill, is quick to remind her that she needs to get on it, but Steffi, as she is called, wants to wait to first hear from her top, and only, college choice: Clemson University.

Prom

Steffi has been dating the same guy, Evan Hammond, for more than three years.

Evan goes to St. John's Christian Academy, so the couple will attend Berkeley's prom on April 21 at the Charleston Air Force Base and St. John's the following weekend at Embassy Suites in North Charleston.

In early January, she went shopping with friends and found her dream dress at Genealogy in Mount Pleasant.

It's a long, flowing orange number, with a strapless sweetheart neckline and swirls of beading on the bodice. It was $400, which she split with her mother. The dress is on layaway.

Steffi plans to wear it to both proms, and maybe even for a local beauty pageant or two in the future. That's what she did with last year's dress.

Friends also are starting to make plans for prom weekend. They are looking into limousines and a beach house rental for the weekend.

"I would hope we'll go to Folly," she says. "Myrtle Beach is such a tourist beach and Isle of Palms is kind of boring, so Folly is kind of in between. Everybody gets a beach house at Folly."

Steffi would like her mom and stepfather to chaperon, which they have agreed to do if Steffi and her stepbrother, Zach, also a senior at Berkeley, split the house. The two teens have different sets of friends, but think they can work it out.

"In past years, I've gone with my sister and a big group of friends," Steffi says. Her sister, Ashley, graduated from Berkeley last year.

College

She hopes to hear in the next couple of weeks whether she has been accepted into the Clemson Class of 2016.

"I don't know why Clemson takes until Feb. 15 to notify people," says Margaret Hill. "It's so nerve-racking."

Clemson is the only college to which Steffi applied, and she submitted her application in September, well ahead of the Dec. 1 deadline. The college's website says it will send out admissions decisions the week of Feb. 15 for students who apply by then.

Several of her classmates have already heard from the University of South Carolina, Wofford, Presbyterian and other schools. Some have even heard from Clemson.

Ranked 13th in her class at Berkeley, Steffi thinks that Clemson is either notifying students in order of their ranking or by their intended major. Kids ahead of her have heard, but most of them applied to the College of Engineering and Science. Steffi applied in graphic design.

At Berkeley, she is an honors student taking advanced placement and dual credit classes. She's in the National Honor Society.

But she is worried that her SAT score might hurt her application because she feels it's not high enough. She calls herself a bad test-taker. Her mother reminds her that if she doesn't get in Clemson, it's not too late to apply elsewhere.

But Steffi is adamant. If she isn't accepted at Clemson, she hopes she will make the Bridge to Clemson program. An invitation-only program, it allows students to attend class at Tri-County Technical College in the Upstate for a year and provides them with advising and support services.

Students who meet the requirements, which include 30 hours of credit and a 2.5 grade-point average, can transfer to Clemson their sophomore year.

"I'd rather go to the Bridge program than somewhere else," she says.

Her older sister, Ashley, attended the Bridge program last semester before deciding to pursue a nursing degree locally instead.

The idea of receiving word from Clemson is driving home the fact that Steffi will soon be going away.

"I'm not looking forward to change," she said. "I don't really want to go away, but at the same time I do. I'll miss here, but I want to have fun while I'm there."

Reach Brenda Rindge at 937-5713.