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Early Applications Push Admissions Cycle Earlier in Junior Year
For high school juniors, college might seem like a long way off. Yet with early admissions programs continuing to report record applications (with due dates as early as November 1st of senior year), the timeline for students to begin evaluating colleges is creeping earlier into junior year. While students can visit colleges in the summer, it is not an ideal time as there are few students on campus and classes are not always in session, making it difficult to get an accurate feel for the campus. That leaves school vacations in February, March and April as priority times for visiting. And before families can schedule visits, they need a plan. That is why January is the best time for students to develop an initial college list.
The College List: A Prerequisite to College Visits While there are many factors to consider in creating a college list, here are five points to contemplate so you can establish criteria for your college search:
1. Academic Environment Students should think about how they learn best. One way to get at this is to think about favorite teachers and what it is about their style that worked particularly well for you. Students can make a list of their most important academic experiences during high school, including their favorite assignments, projects, courses and units of study to identify clues. This can include learning experiences outside of school.
2. Social and Cultural Environment What do you enjoy about your high school and the community in which you live? What would you change if you could? By reflecting on current experiences, including extracurricular activities, peer groups and the importance of factors such as religious life and diversity, students can determine what kind of campus identity and culture they are seeking.
Jocie, a senior at Newton North High School, gave a lot of thought both to what she enjoyed and didn't like about her high school experience. In high school she was actively involved with social justice and sustainability initiatives. "It was important to me to find colleges where students cared about current events, social justice issues and politics."
3. Academic Offerings
If students have begun to think about careers and college majors, they should learn more by visiting career websites and identifying colleges that offer related programs. A good place to begin is the government site for the Bureau and Labor Statistics which offers a link to the Occupational Outlook Handbook with descriptions of a wide range of careers.
4. Paying for College Before creating a college list, student should talk with their parents about how the family plans to pay for college and if there are financial limitations. Families can estimate if they are eligible for financial aid by using an online calculator such as the one found at www.finAid.com, a site with a myriad of information about financial aid, scholarships and other resources.
5. Admissions Selectivity What does your transcript look like and how are you expecting to do on the SAT or ACT? Your grades, course selections and test scores factor into which colleges end up on your list. Please don't confuse selectivity with quality. Colleges can be hard to get into, but easy to stay in, or not very hard to get into, but challenging and rewarding once on campus. Just because a college is popular among your classmates doesn't mean it's right for you. And remember that if you don't fare well on standardized tests, there are many colleges with test optional policies.
High school seniors who have recently been through the process caution against being too much of a stickler about the criteria for your college search because you might end up eliminating some really great options.
"Think about the factors that you need in your college, but don't treat them as a checklist," said Joe, a senior from Brookline. "When you learn about a college that is potentially interesting, think about all its characteristics in context. You don't want to say, it has to be in the city and it has to be larger than 2,000 students or I won't consider it."
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The Life of an Application: What Happens After You Hit "Send"
To the aspiring student, the moment in which you click "submit" to send one or more applications to the colleges and universities of your choosing is the momentous culmination of an arduous and invested application process. But in reality, that moment is merely the beginning of a larger, complex process that results in an admission decision.
Submitting an application really means that you make the application available for a school to download. Days, weeks or, depending on how early your application is submitted, months can pass before a school does anything with it. You can expect to receive confirmation that your application is received, and you can expect to receive notification that your applicant file is complete -- both usually via email. Other than that, no news is often good news until you receive your decision letter.
But while you, as an applicant, are pining with anticipation for your admission decision, what's happening to your application? The truth is, it's doing a lot of waiting too. Think about this: you submit your application, your school submits your transcript and letters of recommendation -- sometimes online and sometimes in the mail; sometimes together and sometimes separate -- and your standardized test scores are sent by the College Board or the ACT. There are a lot of pieces of information coming from a lot of different sources in a lot of different formats, and they all need to be married together before your application can be reviewed.
Based on personal experience*, colleges and universities do a remarkable job of correctly matching all of the information and completing applicant files. Once all that matching is finished, the application waits no longer. Finally, it undergoes a review process, and that can mean a lot of different things at different institutions.
Most if not all processes begin with an application review -- an admission officer sits down and reads your application. At a few schools, a decision is made and the process stops. But at most, the first review is just the first step. Commonly, an application undergoes a second review -- either a second reading by a different admission officer, or a review by an admission committee.
Many rolling admission institutions - schools that accept and review applications, and release admission decisions throughout the admission cycle - use two readings or one reading and a committee discussion to make admission decisions. Typically, they have smaller applicant pools and are able to return decisions quickly, though some larger universities, like the University of Pittsburgh, practice rolling admission too. Highly selective schools typically read an application twice -- sometimes thrice -- and make tough decisions on applicants in a committee setting. The entire review process at such schools can take several months.
Through the long process, colleges and universities continue to gather information on their applicants, receiving midyear grades and new standardized testing results. These new pieces of information are used to influence admission decisions and evaluate decisions already made. No decision is final until the admission letter is delivered to the applicant. It's important for you to continue to work hard and do well -- you want to be sure that any new information a school receives about you is good information.
As an applicant, it's natural to wonder why you must wait so long to learn the outcome of your higher learning pursuit. Hopefully, this provided explanation offers some insight as to what is happening behind the scenes. The best thing you can do while waiting for your admission decisions is not worry about them. If you've applied to enough schools and the right types of schools for you, you're going to have options and they're going to be good options. Enjoy your final year of high school -- it goes by faster than you can imagine.
*Josh Henry was an Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Admission at the College of William & Mary for three years and reviewed well over 7,000 applications for admission.
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These Tests, They Are A-Changin': AP Tests to Emphasize Creativity and Deeper Learning
"Theater" and "photosynthesis" are not two concepts that you would usually associate with one another, but it is exactly that sort of creative, out-of-the-box thinking that the College Board hopes its new A.P. curriculum will encourage in students. According to the New York Times, the College Board will release new curriculum standards for the 2013 A.P. biology and U.S. history exams next month. The changes will be in effect for the 2012-2013 school year.
To read the the rest of the article, please visit our blog.
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Thinking Ahead to the SAT and ACT
What is the difference between the SAT and the ACT? Do I need to take both tests? Now that you've gotten your PSAT scores back, you might not be certain what your next steps should be. Luckily, several articles on our blog can offer some guidance and next steps for juniors who are contemplating which test to take and when to take it.
" Testing 1, 2, 3: The ACT Versus the SAT" " Taking the SAT: Crafting a Long-Term Plan" |
Juniors: It's Time to Start Planning for College
Educational Advocates offers a range of services to support you through the college admission and application process. We help you identify high quality, affordable options that you may not discover on your own and provide structure and organization to relieve families of the unnecessary stress of the application process. We conduct an affordability review to help you determine how to pay for school, guide you in establishing criteria for the college search, research and develop a college list tailored to your needs, advise student athletes through the recruitment process and much more. Call us at 617-734-3700 for more details.
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Educational Advocates
College Consulting Corp.
1622A Beacon Street, Suite 203
Brookline, MA 02446
617-734-3700
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Newsletter editorial staff:
Joan Casey
Josh Henry
Terri Suico
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