Your 4-Month College Application Journey (Backwards!)

Today I want to talk about the four-month journey that will be your college application project. Yes, it will take four months. Underestimate it and procrastinate about it at your peril. I have done this for so many years, and every year I see students and parents make the same mistakes, and I want to help you avoid some of them.

So first, we’re going to work backwards. You can be accepted to colleges in December and January, but only if you apply early. A lot of colleges give you opportunities to apply early, including rolling admissions, Early Action, and Early Decision. There are even some schools that have what’s called priority deadlines, which means if you don’t apply by that deadline, though they’ll continue considering you for admissions beyond then, they won’t consider you for scholarships beyond then. So you want to treat those priority deadlines the same as early action and early decision and get it all done early.

Now, most of those early deadlines are November 1st. Though sure, a few might be October 15th or November 15th. November 1st is the big date you want to circle on your calendar in red.

And for you to make all of those deadlines, you have to understand you’re not the only person working on your college applications. Your guidance counselor also has to submit things like your transcripts and your letters of recommendation, and they’re not going to do it the minute you walk into their office. So you have to give them enough time to do their part. Help them help you. And that’s why you want to get your part of the project done no later than October 1st. Finished, done, kaput.

And that is the end of your four-month project. It’s going to go June, July, August, September, and done.

Let’s break these four months into 2 two-month segments. Most of the big work is going to get done starting August 1st. August and September: that’s the big stuff. August 1st is when most college applications open, including the Common App, which is accepted by over a thousand colleges in America. Many other college applications follow suit. Some open sooner, some open later, but that’s the big date, again, you can circle on your calendar in red.

Now, there are things you’re going to have to do at that point, including school-specific applications, school-specific parts of the Common Application, and that includes school-specific application essays.

To think about that, let’s break colleges down into three categories/three tiers. There are highly competitive colleges, there are competitive colleges, and there are non-competitive colleges.

A non-competitive college accepts over 70% of the students who apply. They’re just thrilled that you’re thinking about them, so they’re trying to remove barriers, and they’re unlikely to assign school-specific application essays. If they’re on the Common App, they’re going to get the Common App essay. Awesome.

Then there are competitive colleges. Competitive colleges accept more than 30% but fewer than 70% of the students who apply. Very often, they assign an extra essay just for that college. It could be one of the common essays like: Why this college? Why this major? How is diversity important to you? How have you helped your community? What’s an activity that’s been meaningful to you throughout high school? Or it could be something unique for that school. They’re making sure that you’re not turning in something you’ve written for a different college and just changed the school name and sent to them.

Then there are highly competitive colleges. Highly competitive colleges accept fewer than 30% of the students who apply. In some cases fewer than 20%, fewer than 10%, even fewer than 5% of the students who apply. Because they have to weed out a tremendous amount of highly qualified students to select just the ones they want, where getting into those schools can kind of be like winning the lottery, right? Because they’re turning away so many eligible students, getting in is like winning the lottery.

These schools very often assign an extra 3, 5, 8, 12 extra writing supplements. Some big old essays: 200, 500 words. Some short responses, you know, 50 words, 100 words. These schools are assigning so many extra essays both to differentiate between the highly qualified students and to kind of create a self-selecting pool of applicants. Because they know that the kind of student who would look at 3, 5, 12 extra essays and say, “Never mind, I’m not going to get in there anyway,” if they’re not willing to do the work on the application, they’re probably not willing to do the work of this academically rigorous education once they get accepted. So hey, problem solved. Now they don’t have to read those essays from students who weren’t going to cut it there anyway.

You want to trim your list down by August 1st. August 1st again is when the applications open, and to know which of those essays to write, you have to have your list. So you want to make a list that includes about 5 to 10 colleges, where about 25% can be safety schools, 50% can be fit schools, and about 25% can be reach schools. You have a mix. You’ve got some slam dunk schools, you’ve got some competitive schools, and you’ve got some, you know, might as well be in it to win it. Look, everybody who wins the lottery got a ticket first, right? But it’s a bad financial plan to put all of your money into lottery tickets, and it’s a bad college admissions plan to only apply to lottery ticket schools.

So in June and July, what can you do? Well, we know in March what the Common App essay prompt will be, and you can start working on writing your one Common App essay. Get some stuff down. Think about your story. Don’t commit to it yet. Don’t lock in “This will be the Common App essay” until you know what the school-specific application supplemental essays are. Because if you decide, “This will be my Common App essay,” and then you realize this actually makes a really good answer to multiple of these schools’ extra essays, now you’ve written way too much, maybe, and you don’t have anything for your Common App.

So get a few different ideas down. Draft a few different things. Prewrite it.

Some other prewriting you can do in June and July is for those common essay topics like again: Why This College? Why This Major? Things like your most meaningful activity, how you’ve helped your community, how is diversity important to you.

This is an enormous project. You don’t want to put the beginnings of this, the June and July part of this, off until August or September. Because once the school year hits, you’re going to have school, you’re going to have homework, you’re going to have sports, you’re going to have social commitments and homecoming and all the things that make senior year so busy.

So again: June, July, August, wrap it up in September, October 1st is when you want to have it finished. Get going, and if you have questions, call us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.