The college application season is nothing short of a stressful experience, to say the least. High school seniors can find it difficult to keep track of their numerous deadlines without implementing the proper mediums to stay organized. To avoid falling victim to the easily overwhelming admissions process, adolescents should prioritize a set amount of deadlines and strategies to optimize their journey to educational opportunities.
Time management struggles with deadlines can easily become overwhelming. Following these strategies will help all feel satisfied and exhilarated when anticipating the “celebrate” notification on the Common Application after submitting, where an academic burden is finally released from one’s shoulders.
1. Create a Google Spreadsheet with Important Application Deadlines
It can be difficult to remember all of your relevant timelines when applying to college. Each college structures its admissions process differently, whether that be through early action, early decision, regular decision, or rolling admission. In a sense, some schools may have unique deadlines with a different spin to distinguish themselves from their competitors.
Early decision, typically the most restrictive type, is a binding agreement in which the applicant legally agrees to attend the university with no exceptions if accepted. Although some students violate their binding contracts through loopholes, the consensus is that early decisions may not be the right choice if a family is still weighing financial aid options.
A happy medium between early decision and regular decision is early action. This is an application cohort where students can submit their application early to demonstrate interest without having to commit immediately or initiate their primary deposit upon acceptance.
Unfortunately, early action rounds appear to be less popular among universities, as there is a loss of interested students who ultimately withdraw their applications each year if admitted to their number-one choice university via early decision.
Instead, many admissions officers and university officials prefer regular decision, which is the stereotypical application round that most students are automatically defaultly sorted into if not considering early admission rounds. Some may choose to submit all of their applications in regular decision if they wish to dedicate an increased amount of time to refining their smaller details from their application, such as their supplemental essay ideas or activity section updates.
Students should know that delaying their submission to the regular decision deadline will not result in an application disadvantage when read by a university’s admissions board. In a sense, it may be beneficial to refine the application with more time.
2. Meet with a Teacher in the Writing Center
The Pascack Hills Writing Center is open five days a week during the entire lunch period for students who need assistance with studying for an English test, editing an academic paper, and, most of all, receiving advice from language arts teachers who can provide expert knowledge and examples to improve admissions essays.
The tutoring cohort follows a rotating schedule, where a different teacher is available each day for one-on-one assistance in an extra-help-type fashion. The Writing Center is held in the school’s media center, and students can show up any time during their lunch period to seek extra help to improve their writing skills and techniques before their deadlines arrive.
Try to schedule an appointment a week in advance to check availability and maximize your chances of receiving the most beneficial advice immediately.
3. Speak with a friend who is writing a completely different essay
The brainstorming sessions of the writing process are the most relevant to setting your ideas into motion after your first draft. Without establishing a series of events, readers may find it difficult to follow your sequence of thoughts. To achieve this clarity in one’s writing, prospective college students should try to convince their closest friends or acquainted peers to read their work before they begin to make edits.
Sometimes, younger readers may be more applicable to advising since they are constantly experiencing similar, yet different, life experiences in the same generation as their peers. Moreover, this commonality consisting of various demographic similarities makes it easier for them to understand what the author is trying to convey when it comes to delivering the overall message in their essay, potentially allowing for more valuable credibility and accuracy in their critiques.
4. Schedule an information session with one of your top colleges in the Hills Conference Room
High school students may never get to experience the campus atmosphere at their dream school permanently, but junior and senior students can take three excused days off for college visitation opportunities, as institutions far from the Northeast region of the United States are not conveniently accessible during a one day trip.
To gain more knowledge about admissions policies and campus life from a university level without touring the campus, many schools have attempted to expand their influence to the high school level by sending an admissions representative to speak to interested students.
Choosing to attend one of these events incorporates both demonstrated interest with the chance to speak to an admissions officer to learn more about them and how you can get accepted into the school. By asking detailed questions that go beyond the surface-level aspects of where they work, the student can gain better insight into how they allocate time to impact their college campus life and post-college. By interacting with your admissions counselor, possibly, when your admissions file is read, they may already know what to expect and remember your small encounter months before.
College admissions is a complex process for all high school seniors from letters of recommendation requests to frequent trips to the guidance department, and obsessing over supplemental essays is not the ideal. However, implementing the ideal steps early in senior year is the stepping stone to developing a competitive approach to college applications when it comes to preparing for the unexpected. Learning to roll with the punches and any type of curveball demonstrates both resilience and adaptability, which are imperative for success in college and future occupational endeavors.
