Happy Thanksgiving. So many of our students are waiting to hear from early action, decision, or notification colleges, as are students who applied for Posse and Questbridge Scholarships. Sadly, all of them will not get admitted, and they need to have other applications ready to go. If they don’t, they will have a horrible holiday vacation, and drag you into it. So please, share these tips to get students working on their other applications now!!!
I’m so proud of you for applying early action, decision, or notification to a college. In this brutally horrible waiting period before you hear your fate, please prepare other applications. Several public, rolling, and scholarship applications are due before you find out, and you must submit them. Other applications should be ready to go before you find out.
If you hear that are deferred or argh—rejected, there is nothing worse than spending your winter vacation completing last minute applications because you didn’t have them ready to go. That’s going to sabotage your family vacation plans and test fate.
So here are some tips to guide you from mid-November to mid-December.
- Look at your college list, and make sure you have a range of colleges that you will be willing to attend, if your early college should opt not to accept you right away or at all.
- Please, prepare applications for at least 50 to 100% of those colleges between now and mid-December.
- Submit the applications that you must apply to before you find out from your early college. For example, the University of California and Penn State apps are due November 30. Other colleges have scholarship deadlines that you must meet before you find out as well. Don’t avoid these applications even if they require additional essays or recommendations.
- Recycle and revitalize essays that you wrote for other applications. Just make sure not to put the wrong college’s name in the wrong place. Create new endings that relate to the particular prompts you are answering.
- Prepare applications for several other colleges on your list that have regular deadlines. It’s bad karma not to. It’s going to ruin your family vacation, if you don’t and you get deferred or rejected, you will have a horrible vacation.
- Look through your supplemental essay requirements and find out ways to write additional essays that push your core qualities. Don’t try to squeeze too much into one essay, so view each additional essay as an opportunity to share another one of y9our core qualities.
- See if another college on your list has Early Decision 2. More and more colleges are adding this new option. You apply in January and find out in mid-February. You then must pull out your other applications if you are accepted. The plusses are your fall grades count and you can show your progression through your most challenging courses. Of course you only do this for a college that truly thrills you.
- Keep your fall grades up. You never know if your early action or early decision college will ask to see your fall grades. If you get deferred, that college will want to see your fall grades. If you get rejected, you are back to the beginning and need to show your fall efforts to the other colleges on your list.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you will hear good news in less than a month. But if you don’t, I promise you will find other even better colleges that want you and where you’ll be incredibly happy!!!
