The High School Junior’s Introduction to the College Admissions Process
Summer is almost here and senior year looms in the distance. What should you expect? What can you prepare for now? Let Comet help you start the application process on the right foot. Read on for essential resources, ideas, and our best advice to help you stay calm, cool and collected as you prepare for college applications.
When should I get started on my college applications?
In general we advise our students to get started in March of their junior year.
Why? A lot of the nitty gritty details of the college admissions process depend on the colleges and deadlines you select. The colleges and deadlines you select depend on your grades, test scores, and interests. The earlier you start to put all of this together and understand how each factor affects the others, the sooner you can get organized.
The more organized you are, the further ahead you can plan to avoid stressful situations...like having to choose between studying for your SAT, writing your Purdue essay, or learning how to cook the TikTok famous feta pasta. We want you to live your life!
So let’s prepare.
Ugh, study for the SAT? Do I have to?
While the testing landscape has been changing a lot recently, there is a lot still up in the air for the Class of 2022. Many colleges and scholarship programs were test optional for the class of 2021 and have already announced that same policy for this year. Others...have not.
In order to be prepared to apply to any and every college you love, we recommend you take the SAT or ACT at least once before senior year. If you’re not happy with the score, you can test through the fall of senior year and still submit those scores for consideration.
You can choose which colleges receive your scores, so pro tip: don’t have scores automatically sent anywhere. Once you build your list, you can check to see If your score is above or below the average for the school you’re applying to. If you have a score that’s below the average, you don’t need to submit the score and your application will be evaluated without it and without penalty.
Test optional also means that if you don’t feel safe or comfortable taking an SAT or ACT right now, that’s okay! Colleges understand, and there are other meaningful ways to build up your academic profile.
Decide to take the test? Need help preparing? There are some great free resources out there, but Khan Academy is our favorite.
What else can I do to improve my academic profile at this point?
Junior year grades are the first thing colleges are going to see. Work hard this year to make sure you are showing them your best work. If you got a C in first semester, try to bring it to a B this semester to show you are resilient and adaptable.
You should also plan your senior year carefully. If you took 3 honors classes this year, try to take 3 or more honors classes next year. The difficulty of your schedule is called “rigor”, and colleges want to make sure you’re taking full advantage of the courses offered to you each year. You want to show them you’re climbing the mountain, not camping out.
If you’re not feeling confident with your current grades, there are other ways to prove your readiness. The AP exams are a great way to show you can succeed at the college level. Even if you don’t think you’ll do well, take the test -- submission of AP scores is ultimately optional, and if you pass you get some cheap college credit to take with you.
If you’re trying to get a last minute GPA boost, community college classes are your new best friend! Registration for summer classes usually starts in April, so visit the Schedule of Classes and the instructions for K-12 or dual enrollment to get going on your application. Taking these classes shows your preparedness for college work and demonstrates your interest in a given subject. Speaking of which…
What if I don’t know what I want to study?
Like every other counselor you’ve ever met, we recommend you take a career or personality test! Sorry. But don’t let it tell you what to do! The test is identifying your personality traits and matching those with careers where people have similar personality traits. If you’re a good leader, the test might suggest you join the army or start a business. If you’re a good communicator, it could suggest politics or teaching.
Instead of researching all of these disparate recommendations, think about how your strengths and achievements line up with the suggested career. The test might tell you you’d be a good teacher, but if you’ve never so much as tutored your little brother you may not have much to say on your application. But if it tells you to try politics and you’ve got three years of Model U.N. and your favorite background channel is MSNBC, then you’ve landed on something worth exploring.
Outside of career and personality tests, you can take a look back at your resume. How do all the pieces add up together? If I was part of a poetry club, won prizes for my short stories, and took Shakespeare as my elective, it would be weird if I applied as a chemical engineering major. If you can land on a “genre” -- like life sciences or social sciences -- that’s a great place to start. Remember, you’re not committing to something for the rest of your life. You’re choosing something you’d like to study, and if it doesn’t work out you can join the 33% of college students who change their major.
How do I explore majors and careers?
There are a few places to start, depending on how your brain works.
Do you have some things you’re interested in, but you’re not really sure where they can take you? Try Road Trip Nation, where your interests will connect you to profiles of people who share those interests. You can read about their career journeys, why they chose their path, and what their daily lives are like. You might be surprised what’s possible!
Got a “genre” of major and career in mind? Take a look at CollegeBoard’s Big Future Major and Career Search or California Career Zone to find majors that fall under your genre of interest. You can read about the classes you would likely have to take as part of that major, and find other relevant majors to explore.
Already know what you want to major in? You can see what career pathways might be potential options for you on Career Match. Or work backwards: pick a career from the Occupational Outlook Handbook that interests you and see how to get there.
Just wanna make a bunch of money? Just want a meaningful job? There are a bajillion studies and articles on Payscale.com to help you.
Love a particular college but not sure what you want to study? Start with what the college offers to narrow down the field.
These majors are really competitive, and I feel like all my friends have done more than me. What if my resume doesn’t stand out?
Listen up: colleges don’t want you to know everything already. They want to teach you! You’re not expected to conduct research and win the science fair and ace the Academic Decathlon in order to get into college. Would that be cool? Of course. Colleges want the bright, shiny Mathlete. But if a college accepts every shiny Mathlete who applies, the campus is quickly going to become a pretty uninteresting place.
Colleges want students who have varying interests, and who have demonstrated those interests in different and compelling ways. Love astronomy because your dad used to take you camping? Love chemistry because you had to learn it to win the local bake off? Love neuroscience because you watched a documentary yesterday? WONDERFUL. Go explore that interest more in whatever ways are available to you this summer and show colleges that you are infinitely curious and excited to learn everything you can.
But my friend’s neighbor’s older brother had a 4.56 GPA and he won the Nobel Peace Prize and he still got rejected from Stanford!
So what!? You are a different person. Colleges don’t want you to be just like John across the street because John is John and they already have a John. They want a new and interesting addition to their campus who looks at things in a different way and follows their own path to the fullest. Do you.
Ok. I’ve got my grades up, my tests are planned, I’m pursuing all my interests to the fullest, and I picked my major. How do I put all of that together?
With a college list!
You know (or you can closely estimate) what your GPA and test scores are going to be when you apply. Now we need to find a list of colleges that are reasonable for you on an academic basis and offer the things you want to study.
You can enter your profile into a site like Naviance or Niche and get some options to sort through. Then, you can narrow the list by location, size, graduation rate, or financial aid. College Score Card is a good resource to find all that information.
With all the amazing colleges out there, you may need to narrow it down further. Think of questions to ask about each college. Do they have a Quidditch team? How is the food? Where is the closest airport? Do they offer housing for all four years? How much does it snow? Start crossing colleges off based on your own criteria.
Once you have a list of 10-20 colleges that you like, attend their webinars, read their blogs, follow their social media, and (fingers crossed) visit their campuses. You’ll need to express to these colleges at some point why you chose to apply and why you think you’re the best fit. Do your research now! Trust us, you won’t want to be slogging through an application in the fall to a college that you don’t even really like all that much.
College list: check! What now?
Finalizing your college list opens the door for you to get started on a lot of smaller tasks that will get overwhelming if you push them to the fall.
First, you need to select your deadlines. Will you apply early action or early decision? Is there a priority or scholarship deadline? If your grades and tests are not in good shape and you think you could use the fall to improve your profile, applying regular is probably your best option. If you think you might tank senior year and you’ve got a dream college in mind, apply early.
Pro tip: split your college so that you have some safer applications due in November. It will feel really good to get positive results back in December so you can relax! Be sure to follow the rules of the application deadline you choose.
With your deadlines selected, it’s time to get organized! Compile the requirements for your colleges. Will you need to send your transcripts? How many essays will you need to write? Which teachers do you need to ask for recommendations? Does the college want a resume? Create a document or spreadsheet to keep track of everything. Use the colleges’ own websites to collect this information at the source.
Okay, this looks like a whole lot of work….
Once you see the scope and timeline of everything you need to do to apply to colleges, it will feel overwhelming. We know it’s a lot! But the good news is that a lot of colleges have overlapping requirements. For example, a lot of colleges use the Common Application, which means you’ll only need to fill it out once. Woohoo!
Still seems like a lot? Tackle some of the big items now. If you need two letters of recommendation from teachers, go ask those teachers for their help. If you need to write three essays, get started on brainstorming ideas. Accomplish as much as you can in the summer, you won’t regret it.
Any tips for this stuff?
Of course!
Your teachers are going to appreciate it if you ask them early for their help. Try to ask teachers who you’ve known for a long time or who at least know you as something other than “that kid”.
Many high schools use platforms like Naviance and Parchment to make it easy for students to manage transcript orders and letters of rec requests online. See what your high school offers to help you!
Before you start on essays, double check that the college has updated their prompts for your application year. We don’t want to see your face when you realize you spent 16 hours writing an essay for no reason....
Essays seem to be a big part of this. What should I be doing to create memorable essays?
Our three biggest tips for you? Be vulnerable, be authentic, and personalize your essays for each school.
Vulnerable: Write about something that you wouldn’t normally brag about. Stay away from your resume unless you’re specifically asked to talk about an activity. Instead tell stories from your activities and your life that illustrate interesting facets of your personality.
Authentic: Don't try to be funny if you’re not funny! Don’t try to copy the Costco essay you saw online! Be yourself and talk like yourself; it will be much easier to build a connection with the reader that way.
Personalize: you’d be surprised, but people still forget to find/replace the name of the college when they copy their essay over to another college’s application. Be mindful that colleges read these essays all the time, and they can tell when you haven't taken the time to really get to know them.
Check out our Comet Bootcamp posts for more detailed advice for the most common types of essays.
Isn’t there another thing I need to do? Something about money?
Yup! You don’t need to worry about applying for financial aid until the fall, but you can go ahead and gather the documents you’ll need.
You can also start looking into merit-based scholarships. Depending on the level of competition, some scholarships set their application deadlines early in senior year to make room for multiple rounds of consideration. It’s a good idea to be prepared if you plan to apply. There are tons of scholarship search engines out there, so sign up for your favorite.
Phew! Is that it?
There will be small details to fill in when you get to senior year, but for now that’s all the big stuff you need to have on your radar.
Ultimately, we hope you’ll take away the idea of researching and planning ahead to alleviate some of your senior stress. That way, you can really focus on the exciting thing here: going to college to start a whole new chapter in your life. We know you’ll do great.
