Hi there. I’m Kristina Semos, college process and test prep expert. Today’s post brings a special message of support (and some important practical advice) for my American LGBTQ+ high schoolers….and for their loved ones.
It’s time for some real talk. A lot of queer and trans students might be feeling scared right now with all of the political changes happening in the United States. I’m in the LGBTQ+ community myself, and I’m right there with you.
In addition to changes taking place at the federal level, depending on where you live, you might not feel safe or supported in the specific town, city, or state in which you live, either.
What I’m going to do today is share my own personal story about how attending university out of state served as my own personal escape hatch from my not-so-queer-friendly hometown. Then, I’m going to help you brainstorm right here, right now, some ideas about what YOU can do to stabilize or improve your situation in a chaotic legal and social climate that’s shifting every day or even every hour. Potentially, some of the most meaningful planning you can do to protect yourself involves choices you make around college.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. Video version of this article
2. My story: leaving my home state for college as an LGBTQ+ person
3. How to improve your college application as a queer or trans student
A. Grades
4. Choosing a college as a queer applicant
A. DEI changes and queer groups on campus
B. Most queer-friendly regions in the U.S.
5. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
Moving Out of State for College as an LGBTQ+ Person: my story
Sometimes, when the future seems uncertain, it’s helpful to hear a concrete story about how someone else successfully navigated a similar situation. I’m hoping that sharing my own background will offer you a useful perspective.
I graduated from high school in the year 2000. That means I completed freshman through senior year in the ‘90s—so, unless you’re a parent reading this, before you were born! During that time, I was out to myself and my friends as a lesbian, but not to my parents, and not to the people at the Greek church our family attended. Not only were the ‘90s a different era, I was also growing up in Dallas, Texas.
This was a place and time where, for me personally, I did not feel like I could fully be myself. I did, of course, try to find my community—fellow lesbians I could talk to and be friends with. But I had a particular disadvantage in that quest: my father was a local politician in Dallas, and so, when I was out and about, people would often look at me and recognize me as Chris Semos's daughter. I couldn’t just anonymously explore queer culture. Many weekends, I'd venture out, just to realize, “Great, my plans to covertly go to the queer bookstore or coffee shop are foiled yet again.”
I was around 16 when it fully dawned on me that I needed to leave Texas, because I could not operate freely there—could not do what I needed to do to figure out who I was. My mental target became the northeastern U.S. I was particularly psyched about Brown. If Brown wouldn’t take me, then I would settle for somewhere in Massachusetts.
I knew I already had things going for me, in my goal of leaving Texas. As a sophomore, my grades had always been strong. However, with my new dream in mind, I made it my freaking JOB to make myself an exceptionally appealing candidate to the (often very competitive) colleges in New England.
So by junior year, I was the crazy person who was taking eight AP classes, with an A+ average in them. I entered, and excelled at, many math competitions. I put my nose to the grindstone with standardized tests, and it paid off: I knocked it out of the park with the SAT and the (now-discontinued) SAT II subject tests. I felt I needed all those achievements on my record if I was going to guarantee my spot at a top college in the Northeast, 2,000+ miles away from where I felt like I could not be myself.
And guess what?
I got into Brown (Early Decision)—and MIT (Early Action). Before my family and I left for vacation during my senior year winter break, I already knew that I’d been accepted to Brown ED—which, of course, is binding. I had a stack of half-completed applications to a bunch of other colleges on the Eastern Seaboard, but I got to leave them at home while we went on holiday because I was already IN, baby. I was moving far away from here.
What I’d done was to use college to change my place of residence in a very big, very real way. Once at Brown, it was so much easier to find my queer community, among whom I made lifelong friends. And I've been living on the East Coast ever since. These days, I live in the New York City area; I technically live in Jersey, but I can practically see Manhattan from my house. My story is a happy example of what can happen if you need to leave where you are, and choose to use college as a launching-pad to do so.
I can hear a potential objection, here: “But Kristina, this all happened twenty-five years ago. Things are different now.” And you’re right! However, I would still say that the strategies I used to deal with my situation have a lot in common with the strategies you can use to deal with today’s different, yet related, situation.
Another caveat is that I'm pretty femme-presenting, and thus straight-passing. So, did I feel physically in danger walking the streets of Dallas, Texas? No. My hometown wasn't necessarily a safety threat for me, but it was a threat to my spiritual wholeness, to my ability to be true to myself. “People know my family,” I thought again and again. “And so I can’t fully be myself here. I must leave.”
How to Improve Your College Application as an LGBTQ+ Student
Now let's talk about YOU. Maybe you’re trans. Maybe you're non-binary. Maybe you’re gay. Maybe you don't want to define yourself in those terms yet (or ever), but you do know you're not a cis-gendered heterosexual person.
And let’s say you don't feel that you’re safe where you are. Maybe you're having trouble accessing medical care that you need in your town/city/state. Or maybe you’re scared you’ll be bullied. Or maybe, much like me back in the day, you’re simply not sure you can find like-minded people that you can share all parts of yourself with.
If I were in your position now, seeing the way laws and rules are changing every day in the U.S., here is what I would do. There are so many things not in our control, but some things ARE within your control.
Are Grades Important for Your Applications?
I would, for starters, take my grades very seriously if I were a queer person in high school right now. I would be signing up for the most ambitious academic classes in school that I could. I would be working HARD on my studies because they can literally be your ticket to a different place—a different region of the States, or even a different country.
Do I Have to Take a Standardized Test?
A lot of schools these days have gone Test Optional, at least for the moment. However, if I were a queer/trans high-schooler looking to get out of dodge for college, I would still take a standardized test. In 2025, the beauty is that—unlike back in 2000—colleges no longer care if you take the SAT or the ACT. It’s all same to admissions committees. Choosing between the exams is just a matter of figuring out which one shows off your strengths better (and you can take my free quiz right now if you need help determining that!).
The reason I would still take one of these two exams is that you—more so than a straight, cis-gendered applicant who might have wider geographic choice of schools that they could safely/happily attend—do not want to arbitrarily limit your college choices.
Hit the books hard for these tests, whether or not you have a private tutor or class to help you along. There are many free resources available to you in your test prep journey, including this weekly blog and my YouTube channel. You want to get the highest score you’re capable of. (This is something I can help with if we work together one-on-one.)
Why Extracurriculars Matter to Your Application
Another key tactic for LGBTQ+ students right now is to keep up with all of your high school extracurriculars and interests. These are not only going to bolster your college application (and thus your chances of moving somewhere that’s a better fit for you). They are also going to help you nurture your true self, keep your spirits high, and potentially find people you connect with, even in high school.
So, if sports are your thing, great! Get to swimming/kicking/running. If you’re a musical theater person, explore that with your whole heart. If you’re fascinated by veterinary care and want to pursue a summer project where you save the turtles in the community pond, let’s do it!
Choosing a University as a Queer Applicant
When it comes time to draft your college list, the queer or trans students among you who are looking to move somewhere else for higher education will need to consider your list a bit more carefully than your straight, cis classmates. That means researching which states have laws that protect and support you, including offering access to whichever kinds of affirming medical care and mental healthcare you need. Often, that translates to states that are bluer than where you currently live.
Ask yourself: what type of cities, states, and schools might have more people like you that you can befriend? Where will you find your community?
DEI Changes and Queer Groups on Campus
Now here's where things get a little tricky. Based on country-wide developments in just the past couple of weeks before this article was released, it seems that anything that rings of DEI in educational institutions risks getting punished, changed, or nixed by the federal government. I don't know exactly what's going to happen; though I’m an expert in education, I can't predict the political future.
But it is possible that certain elements of college that you’re looking forward to—say, LGBTQ+ clubs or organizations—may not appear on some of your target schools’ websites at the moment. Though these organizations can be crucial for helping queer students find each other, so many rules are changing right now that these activities might not be permitted to receive funding or formal support from some schools anymore.
My hunch is that this would definitely be the case with public colleges and universities because they receive a lot of federal funding. So, is the solution to set your sights on private colleges (and do your best to get financial aid/a scholarship, if private tuition is prohibitive for you)?
Well, here's the thing. Many private colleges and universities ALSO get grants/funding from the federal government. And some of them might not want to make enemies with anyone high up in the government by hosting visibly DEI-related groups or activities on campus. Defying that rule, in their minds, might make them vulnerable to getting their federal funding cut for, say, research or whatever they might still be getting funding for. So private colleges—perhaps especially small liberal arts colleges, due to their small size—might not be as stringent in nixing LGBTQ+ groups…but unfortunately they may still be affected.
Though this is admittedly bummer news, I don’t want you to lose hope. I am confident that students on campus will definitely figure out ways to gather and congregate and hang out and learn what they want to learn together, even if their activities are not funded by the university for the time being.
On the right campus, you can still find your people. And here’s how to make sure you end up on the right campus to begin with.
What I would do is visit the colleges on your list and be sure to talk to some actual students, not just the admissions staff leading your tour. I would ask those real students, “What's the political climate like here on campus? How diverse is this place; how inclusive and accepting is it?" And I would also take a careful look around campus to see whether there are people who look/seem/sound similar to you in the ways that matter to you.
The best regions in the U.S. to be a gay college student
So we’ve talked about geography in passing throughout this post—but let’s talk about it directly, now. I’ve mentioned that certain states might have laws that protect and support you as a queer person. Often, these states are on the West Coast and in the Northeast. If you weren’t considering these locations in your college search before, now might be the time to do so (if you don’t want to stay in your home region, that is).
Going abroad for college as an American
Another possibility for you to consider is one I’ve noticed growing in popularity amongst my one-on-one students. With my test prep tutoring packages, our first session consists of what I called an “Ace the Test: Game Plan™.” I use that meeting to figure out, “Where does this individual want to go to school? What are the standardized testing requirements for those schools? How high does this client’s SAT/ACT score need to be to open the doors to their dream schools? Which test will best display this particular student’s strengths, and which specific pieces of content and strategy will help them attain their target score?”
What I’ve noticed over the past two or three years is that during this first meeting, more of my high schoolers have started coming to me with a list of American universities…as WELL as many universities in countries that are English-speaking but outside the U.S.: Scotland, England, Ireland, Canada, etc.
In the latter case, my next step is to look up for the student: Ok, if you're an American student applying to those non-American schools, then what are the testing requirements? Quite a few of my clients have gone on to apply to and get into excellent universities outside of the U.S. Whether they choose to go or not is up to them, but it can’t hurt to have the option, right?
(By the way, I just kicked off a new blog post series on testing requirements for U.S. students applying to these international schools—check out my first entry on admissions at the top eight Canadian colleges here.)
I'm bringing this option up so that you don’t overlook schools abroad if that's something that sounds fun and like it might provide a sense of ease and safety for you.
Conclusion
So that’s my advice on how LGBTQ+ students can potentially use college as a ladder to climb out of somewhere they don’t feel safe or happy.
If you’re too early in your college process to be making a specific school list yet, you can still help your future-applicant self out by taking your grades seriously beginning now. I would also study hard for a standardized test and commit hard to extracurriculars I really cared about.
For those who would like more personalized help with any step of the college process, I offer a range of application consulting and test prep services.
And in the meantime, honestly, please hang in there. Okay? I do believe that things will get better, for you and for all of us. To again return to my own life as an example, I now have a great community. I sing in the largest LGBTQ+ choir in the country. I have a wife. I have a family. I have surrounded myself with people whom I love and who love me. And you can find all that, too. If you're not finding it where you are right now, college might hold the key.
