It’s August. The weather is still hot, the water is still warm, the smell of barbecue is still in the air. For most people, summer is not over by a long shot. Still, August is the month when back to school in on the horizon. More than 80% of US students in grades K-12 go back to school in August; most colleges start the fall semester in late August or early September. Rising high school seniors have college application deadlines looming on the horizon, and I’m already hearing from panicked students that they’re worried that they’ve fallen behind.
Relax! Even if you haven’t started yet, you’re not behind. However, it’s not a bad idea to try to figure out a timeline for your applications – what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it – before you plunge back into the hectic school year. From that perspective, what should you make sure to get done in August?
- Make a tentative timeline/schedule/calendar – whatever you want to call it. Accept that things can and will go wrong, so try to give yourself two or three times the amount of time you think you’ll need for each task. Worst case scenario: you submit your applications early and get to relax for the rest of your senior year.
- Decide which colleges you’re applying to. If you haven’t finalized your list yet, you should do that now. Note that you can always add colleges later (or even delete them), but having a clear idea of your application list means you can determine the deadlines and map out when you need to complete your essays.
- Have a Rough Draft of the Common App essay. Again, not being finished with your Common App essay at this point isn’t a dealbreaker, but by this point you should definitely have some ideas of what you’re going to write about and how to structure the essay!
Ideally you will have your college list and rough draft done by the middle of the month. At that point, you can:
- Collect the supplemental essay prompts for the colleges you are applying to and start mulling over the topics.
- Create a ‘brag sheet’ – a brief list of your accomplishment you can give to teachers and mentors when you ask them for recommendations
- Organize your extracurricular activities and start filling out the Common App.
If you get to the end of the month and you’ve completed the above, you’ll be in a great position to submit your college applications with the minimum amount of stress and panic.
Strike the Write Note 