Sending emails to strangers. At colleges. Asking for appointments.

Here’s one more reason why the college admissions process is so complicated for high school students:  at some point, after years of only emailing friends, family, and familiar teachers, your parents may insist that you sit down right now and send an email to strangers.

Right now, because this has likely been discussed a number of times over the past few weeks.

Mod Squad Mia, glad she doesn’t have to write emails.

Right now, because you need to request an appointment with someone in the department of interest while you’re visiting the college.

Right now, because the college visit is next week.

Yes, I know it would have been better if you had written last week, but it will be better if you write tonight instead of putting it off any longer.

No, you don’t know the specific person to ask — you need to look up the department and make your best guess.

Yes, it may be a different title in each department.

Yes, you may send a similar email to any number of people, but each needs to be sent to an individual, not to a group list.

Yes, it may happen that you don’t end up with any meetings.

Yes, you may end up meeting with someone in a department that ends up not being of interest to you.

Yes, you do need to write a few good things about yourself and what sort of student you are.

Yes, I do think you can figure out a way to say those good things without sounding like a braggart.

No, we will not write these for you, but we will read your drafts.

Yes, you can copy these and edit them to use again.

Yes, you do need also to write the Dean of Admissions who has sent you multiple emails, even though she has sent those emails to thousands of students. You can let her know you will be visiting and ask her advice about how best to spend your time while on campus.

Yes, you will have to do this again.

Yes, it gets easier with every email you write.

Just like this college thing gets a bit easier the second time around.

Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?

 

It’s testing season: AP Exam weeks.

All high school students in the US taking an Advanced Placement [AP] course will be taking the College Board AP Exam for that course sometime this week or next. Right now, when this is scheduled to post, thousands of students across the country are working their way through the AP Chem exam.

The 2013 AP Exam schedule.

In our household, AP exams mean the past few weeks have been filled with drills (notes painstakingly detailed by Mod Squad Julie, drilled by M.S. Dad*), mock exams, and study sessions with classmates.

Many of the AP teachers have offered review sessions on Saturdays, giving away their own weekend time to help their students.

High school students and their parents tend to have a love-hate (or even hate-hate) relationship with APs. For students aiming for a selective college, if their high school offers AP courses, they’re a necessity. Most admissions officers will cite the importance of students taking the toughest course load available to them.

Students and their parents may stress about how well the student will do.  Students and their parents may stress about how many AP courses the student needs to take.

• See College Connection’s Escape from the Planet of the APs for a Q&A on how many to take.
• See the UNC University Gazette’s Study finds that more AP classes may not be better, which suggests that UNC says five is enough.

This year, for the first time, our high school’s guidance department offered an introductory session on APs for parents, providing an opportunity for questions prior to next year’s course registrations. Kudos to the counselors for that.

There’s much more to be said about APs, the cost, the opportunity cost, whether credit should be provided — more on all of that to come.

For now, good luck to the students taking APs this week and next. M.S. Julie has two exams this week and one next Wednesday. And with that, the highest stress points of her junior year will be behind her. I think.

* Note added to clarify:  any and all drilling for these and other exams is instigated by M.S. Julie, not either of her parents! We have been known to recommend reviewing to her brothers, but Julie is the one, so far, who takes advantage of the opportunity.

Related articles

• AP Exams are Here – Time to Bust a Move!
• AP Exam Distractions
• What Happens When? The College Admissions Calendar.

May 1st = National College Decision Day

If you (or your student) is a senior, you don’t need any help identifying the import of May 1st — the day most colleges across the country require a decision and a deposit from accepted students. From the other side of the desk, it’s also the day admission officers take a deep breath and look at their reports to see how well their offers yielded acceptances.

A few students will have made their commitment a long time ago. Early Decision applicants sign a commitment to accept an early offer. Recruited athletes operate on their own timetable.

But the majority of HS senior households have spent a good part of the past month looking at a variety of financial aid offers, revisiting schools during admitted day programs (aka “yield events”), and thinking through the choices the senior faces.

If you’re in that position, and the decision is going down to the wire, here’s counsel from a few different sources.

If you’re reading this to prepare for a decision to be made in the future, it may be useful to think about what you or your student will face.

Old Main, Augustana College. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1.  Questions that really matter when making a final college choice, by W. Kent Barnds, Augustana College. Barnds is VP of Enrollment, Communication, and Planning for a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. He provides a number of questions related to the college experience; here are a few:

Will smaller classes benefit me in the field I wish to study?
Do faculty member in every major fieldwork one-on-one with students? What are some examples that the college I am considering can provide?
Will faculty members make time to talk with students about their future goals and career plans? Who advises students to make sure they take all of the required courses to ensure on-time graduation?

2.  Tip Sheet: Making the Final College Decision, is by Brennan Barnard, director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in New Hampshire, writing for the NYT’s The Choice blog. He wrote, “For many students, the college choice represents the first time that they have had to make a weighty decision.” Here are a couple of his considerations:

After the Facts, Go With Your Gut

The balance between critical analysis and gut instinct is a tricky one. Thoughtful decision-making involves an assessment of the facts and outcomes, while allowing for knowledge of self to guide your final choice.

Yes, it may be necessary to consider cost of attendance and distance from home. After these, considerations, however, quiet your mind from overanalyzing and fixating on the external. This will allow you to truly listen to what you know to be the right decision.

3.  Seeking Your Questions on Making the Final College Decision offers five posts of Q&As, including comparing financial offers, with answers by Mark Kantrowitz and Marie Bigham writing for the NYT’s The Choice. Here’s one of the questions facing many families:

Private University vs. State Institution

Q. My son’s top choice happens to be the most expensive (private) school. Even though it has the best offer of aid, the out-of-pocket cost would still be $40,000 to $45,000 a year. As a middle-class mother (not rich, not poor), how do we compare that with a state school where the overall cost would be $25,000 a year? I think the experience, education and connections would be superior at the expensive private school, and my son would be more likely to graduate in four years. But is it worth $80,000 more over four years?  — CA mom

I am a big fan of Kantrowitz’s clear and sometimes blunt reports on colleges and financial aid. You can learn a lot at his FinAid website. The response to the above question is lengthy and nuanced; I recommend reading it in full at the link. However, this brief calculus from the answer is worth remembering:

Total student loan debt at graduation should be less than the borrower’s expected annual starting salary, and ideally a lot less. If total debt is less than annual income, the borrower will be able to repay the student loans in 10 years or less.

Last year MS Pete made his commitment a day before the deadline. Once the decision was made, he could focus on enjoying the rest of his senior year. As Brennan Barnard wrote:

Send the check, buy the sweatshirt and celebrate the future

Even if it was not your first choice when you applied, invest yourself in your college as though you mean it. Try to remain open and trust that the universe will take care of the rest.

As always, good luck to the HS senior students and their families!

Related articles

• Students ‘baffled’ and ‘dumbfounded’ by 2013 college admissions decisions
• More colleges are putting college applicants on mid-year acceptance for enrollment

Q&A: Son is a HS freshman — Where to begin?

A friend and parent of a high school freshman recently wrote:

Q.  I googled a college-related question a few days ago and by chance stumbled upon your Dr. StrangeCollege blog!
In the time it took me to find an answer to my question (partially from your blog and other online sources), I discovered that I am alarmingly overwhelmed by my complete and utter lack of preparedness. Clearly, I should start reading something about college, since L. is now in high school. I found it strangely comforting to think that I could go back and read your blog from the beginning. I feel calmer already!
Do you, in fact, have someplace that you recommend us poor, frightened, slightly nauseous newbie parents start learning about the whole process? Books? Websites?

A.  I have a lifelong habit of looking to books when I have a question. Here are a couple I would recommend for an overview:

1. The College Solution, a Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price (2nd ed.), Lynn O’Shaugnessy.

O’Shaugnessy has a website with the same name as the book; she also blogs for CBS Money Watch. While her focus is financial, she writes succinctly and with a good deal of common sense about most college-related topics. It’s a good quick introduction.

What’s fascinating is the motivation behind a school’s decision on which applicants capture a price break and which don’t. I can’t delve into this topic without at least mentioning this fact: Private and public colleges and universities routinely employ in-house enrollment managers or hire consultants who devise ways for colleges to use their institutional cash as strategically as possible to assemble their freshman classes. Typically this means helping institutions leverage their own revenue to attract the kind of teenagers they covet. Enrollment management practices have turned financial aid from primarily a utilitarian way to help disadvantaged students into a powerful tool to attract high-achieving students and the wealthy.

2. Crazy U., One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College, Andrew Ferguson.

Ferguson is a journalist and magazine editor, but this is his story of the eighteen months from his son’s junior HS year through to leaving for college. He writes beautifully about the emotions involved (for parents and child), tells very funny stories (especially about the things parents say to each other), and digs deeply into areas you’ll probably want to know about, like college rankings, standardized testing, etc. This is what it looks like to parents today. You’ll laugh; you’ll cry. We made Mod Squad Pete read this one and it’s time for me to put it on M.S. Julie’s reading shelf.

It wasn’t until Christmas was upon us that I realized why he’d been so calm about writing his essays. He hadn’t been writing them.

“It won’t take long,” he said, after I pointed out that he hadn’t much time left. He had logic on his side, as he often did — inadvertently. It wouldn’t take him much time to get it done because there simply wasn’t much time to get it done. QED. By mid-January, when the last of the essays was sent off and all creation seemed to relax with a sudden release of held breath, a mother told me that she and her daughter had put in three solid months of work on the essays, “every day after school and weekends.”

“We did three months of work too,” I said, ” in twelve days.”

You might start here.

If/when you want to read more about things your son could be doing right now, you might look at Elizabeth Wissner-Gross’s two books. Her sons were both skilled and interested in a math/science track, so there’s an emphasis on STEM competitions, but there are plenty of gems in both books. I like these for cherry-picking tips related to a child’s specific interests:

What High Schools Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know), Create a Long-Term Plan for your 7th to 10th Grader for Getting into the Top Colleges

Keep in mind that grades are the currency by which opportunities are bought in today’s meritocracy. No matter how many after-school activities or advanced level courses your child has on his résumé, no most-competitive college or selective summer program will be impressed if your kid earns less-than-top grades.

What Colleges Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know), 272 Secrets for Getting Your Kid into the Top Schools

The important picture to keep in mind is that admissions officers read hundreds of applications, and sameness is detrimental.

This might be the time for a few readers of this blog to call me out as an obsessive. Accepted. Especially when I admit that these are merely the books one might read to get ready to read about the specifics of selection, application, essay-writing, and financial aid. Recommended reading for those topics still to come.

This is also probably a good time to reiterate a few beliefs I hold:

1. What the kid brings to college in motivation, study habits, and acquisition of real-life skills will make much more of a difference than getting into a top-ranked college (especially when the rankings are based upon such ridiculous criteria as college administrators ranking each other).
2. There is a college for every student — if college makes sense for the student. “Only 2% of institutions accept less than 25% of their applicants. Those 60 elite schools (out of 2,421) educate just 3% of the nation’s full-time undergrads who are attending four-year institutions.” That from Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s blog here.
3. Start thinking about finances — and what your family thinks makes sense to pay for a BA or BS — now. Talk about it with your student when he or she is still building the long list of colleges, before winnowing that down to a short list.

Good luck, newbie parent, to you and your student!

Related articles

• Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?
• College Rankings Aren’t Meaningless; They’re Just Misleading
• Temporary College Drop-Out

On Recruiting Underprivileged Students

I recently quoted Kevin Carey, writing in 2010 for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He concluded Real College-Acceptance Rates are Higher Than You Think with this:

And of course it’s always worth noting that the vast majority of college students don’t go to a selective college at all and they’re the ones we should be worrying about.

Click for larger view. Via the New York Times.

David Leonhardt’s Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Pure, from the front page of the March 17th New York Times, provided current data supporting Carey’s assertion that most low-income students with high test scores don’t even apply to the selective schools.

The colleges that most low-income students attend have fewer resources and lower graduation rates than selective colleges, and many students who attend a local college do not graduate. Those who do graduate can miss out on the career opportunities that top colleges offer.

The new study is beginning to receive attention among scholars and college officials because it is more comprehensive than other research on college choices. The study suggests that the problems, and the opportunities, for low-income students are larger than previously thought.

. . .

If they make it to top colleges, high-achieving, low-income students tend to thrive there, the paper found. Based on the most recent data, 89 percent of such students at selective colleges had graduated or were on pace to do so, compared with only 50 percent of top low-income students at nonselective colleges.

It’s difficult for the colleges to recruit the high-achieving, under-privileged student, many of whom would be first-generation college students.

Matthew Yglesias has written a couple of Slate Moneybox columns about this recently. First, from Smart, Poor Kids Are Applying to the Wrong Colleges:

High-income, high-achieving students generally do what you’d expect. Most of their applications are to schools where the median admissions test score is similar to what they got. But they apply to some reach schools and most to a safety school. Generally they apply to the local flagship state university campus, which is sometimes a match and sometimes a reach depending on the state.

Low-income students are very different. Fully 53 percent of them apply to zero schools whose median SAT or ACT scores are similar to their own. Many of these smart, poor kids apply only to a single unselective school. Only a very small percentage of these kids—8 percent of them, the authors estimate—act the same as high-achievement kids from prosperous families by applying to selective schools, including some reaches and safeties.

Then, from How Smart Poor Kids Get Screwed by the College Admissions Process:

The problem really does seem to quite literally be that most low-income kids and their families are not well-informed about the situation. They don’t know personally what kind of SAT or ACT scores are good enough to go to a selective college, they don’t know which selective colleges are appropriate for someone with their test scores to apply to, they don’t know the strategic logic of “safety schools” and “reaches”, they don’t know about need-blind admissions policies, and they don’t have any social acquaintances who can inform this. Isn’t this what school guidance counselors are supposed to be for? Indeed it is! But they’re seemingly not doing a very good job, nor are the recruiting arms of selective schools.

When selective colleges are fielding many more applications than they can ever accept, and when many colleges need to ensure they have a number of full-freight applicants, and when a number of colleges have had to abandon need-blind admissions, how much time or effort can or will they truly put into recruiting the high-achieving, low-income students?

Related articles

• Presidents in denial on use of race-based admissions preferences (essay)
• HISPANIC EDUCATION: Affirmative Action Ban Results in Underrepresentation in Sciences, Engineering

College rejection letters, how colleges boost their rankings, and funny math.

Via sunnyydoodles.tumblr.com; outdated since Stanford charged $90 in 2012.

Only a few more days and college admission departments will send a boat load of letters (or push email “send” buttons) to reject millions of applicants.

Colleges will accept a few, too, but the real news to be trumpeted across the land in early April will be how many students they rejected.

From last year see, Ivy League colleges post record low acceptance rates, via Money.cnn.com:

Your odds of getting into some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges are shrinking.

The country’s eight Ivy League institutions finished sending out their admission decisions to applicants late Thursday. And many of the elite schools — including Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth and Cornell — are reporting that they accepted record low percentages of applicants for the upcoming school year.

As colleges send out more rejections they can also reduce their selectivity rates — the percentage of applications accepted out of those received — and help boost their rankings in US News & World Report and other popular  lists.

The story that doesn’t often make the front pages in admission season, though, is what goes into the calculations of the acceptance rates. The Common App has made it much easier to apply to more colleges, as long as Mom and Dad are willing to pay the application fees (up to $90 or more, each). Just because an elite school — say, Harvard with 34,302 applicants in 2012 or UC-Berkeley with 61,702 — receives more and more applicants each year, does that mean they receive proportionately more that are qualified?

Valerie Strauss wrote in the Washington Post last year, in Some 2012 college admissions rates hit new lows:

More kids who don’t have a prayer of getting into some of these schools apply anyway, but schools still get to brag that they have a record number of applications. As a result, some admissions counselors note that the percentage of kids who have a real shot at getting into some of these schools doesn’t go up much — if at all — from year to year.

Yet the reduction in acceptance rates remains the juicier story — and the story that helps support the narrative that students (and their parents) need to do anything to get into college, no matter the cost, retention rates, graduation rates, resulting debt load, or the job outlook.

Here are a couple more perspectives on the acceptance rate math. I’m quoting a paragraph or two, but the essays aren’t that long and — if you like this sort of thing — interesting.

Kevin Carey, in Stalking the True College Acceptance Rate for The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote about the fifteen minutes it might take to screen applications into piles for Yes, No, and Maybe.

There are inevitably a lot of easy “No” decisions, because a substantial number of students treat elite college applications like a $90 lottery ticket. Such unqualified applicants don’t change the odds of qualified students being accepted. There could be 10,000 “No’s”, 100,000, it doesn’t matter. It only matters how many “Yes” and “Maybe” applicants apply (and how many legacies, athletes, Hollywood ingenues, and senator’s sons…).

. . .

From the student’s perspective, there’s no difference between applying to five elite colleges and being accepted at one and applying to 10 elite colleges and being accepted at one. You can only go to one. But the student who applies to 10 colleges drives institutional acceptance rates down, even though he or she doesn’t change the number that actually matters: the total ratio of high-quality applicants (not applications) to high-quality spots.

In another piece, from 2010, Carey cited Chad Aldeman, who suggests in The Quick and The Ed that we Switch College Admissions to a Single Lottery:

Now consider for a second that you are a high school junior and you see these rates. It’s becoming easier than ever to apply for multiple schools, so what is your rational course of action?

You’re going to apply for tons of schools, thinking that at least one will let you in. And the next year, when the acceptance rates go even lower (they’ve been falling for years), students will apply to even more schools. The chances of any one student getting into any one school will become smaller and smaller, even as the number of spaces at those schools keeps pace with demographic changes. The spaces themselves are not becoming more scarce; it’s the admissions craze that’s making them look that way.

Back to the 2010 article by Kevin Carey, for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He outlined the math in Real College-Acceptance Rates are Higher Than You Think, then put the acceptance rates into perspective with his last paragraph:

And of course it’s always worth noting that the vast majority of college students don’t go to a selective college at all and they’re the ones we should be worrying about.

More on that — in this week’s news — to come.

Related articles

• And the letters are gone!
• From the NACAC Study: What is NO LONGER Important in College Admission

Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?

I wrote recently about a number of deadlines our household faced this winter. (You can read about it here.) While these were not (yet) college deadlines, they were similar to the Common Application and other admission applications in their make-up, each requiring student information, essays, transcripts, and teacher recommendations.

Via xkcd.com

On deadline day for a summer lab internship, Mod Squad Julie asked why the application needed to be so complicated. I’m not sure it needed to be — but it certainly was. I’ve been thinking about that since, especially since she will be working on college applications later this year.

1.  Every application is different. The actual interface for each admission, financial aid, and scholarship application is determined by the individual colleges and other entities. The Common App provides some streamlining, but most colleges offering the Common App also require their own supplementary forms. Some are available via the Common App; some are only available via the college website. Like it or not, each interface requires its own learning curve.

2.  Deadlines and requirements are not always clear. Some colleges do this well, providing a complete timeline for applicants. On other websites, the admission deadlines are separate from the financial aid deadlines, which are also separate from the supplementary submission deadlines for arts or other specialty programs.

3.  Most applications have multiple, moving parts. M.S. Julie’s summer program application is a great example of this. A new program offered through UVa required the following:

• Fillable pdf application form to be downloaded, completed, saved, and emailed back.
• Teacher recommendation letter to be downloaded by the teacher, completed, saved, and emailed back.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part I, to be completed online via the University’s SIS.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part II, to be printed, completed by parents and mailed in paper form.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part II, to be printed, completed by HS guidance or Principal and mailed with transcript in paper form.

This combination of online form submission, pdfs to be emailed, and paper forms to be mailed makes my head spin. I understand how this happened — a new program requests information specific to it and additional to the standard summer application the University already requires. The administrators were very helpful when we contacted them with questions. I’m just saying, this was complicated.

4.  Deadlines.  Julie has fine-tuned her ability to perform triage on a multitude of school and extracurricular schedule demands. Adding essay-writing and the many steps required to build an application makes the deadline dance even more interesting. Or, complicated.

5.  High stakes raise the stress level. A high level of interest in gaining entrance — to a college or summer program — raises the stakes for providing every bit of information the application requires and writing the best responses to the essay prompts or questions.

We’ve had a lovely break since M.S. Pete wrote applications in the fall of 2011. It’s time to get back into the game and this was good practice for both Julie and me.

Related articles

• Senior Year is Approaching – Time to Step It Up!

Q&A: Does a college look at what type of diploma my student earned?

January and February are prime time for high school guidance counselors, parents, and students to meet and discuss course selections for registration. A number of friends wrote with questions about courses and choices. Here’s one.

Q.  Do you know if universities pay attention to whether a high school student is going for the regular Virginia diploma vs. the advanced one? Would having almost all, but not quite all, of the required credits for the advanced diploma be sufficient?

For non-Virginia readers:  rising 9th graders are asked to select which diploma they hope to achieve. The advanced diploma requires four years of Math, Lab Science, History/Social Science (rather than three), and three years of a Foreign Language (rather than two). There are other smaller differences (and you can read all about them here if you wish; heaven help you), but those are the key factors.

A.  The short answer:  I doubt they pay specific attention to whether or not the student hit every target on the Advanced Studies diploma, but they probably pay close attention to whether or not the student hit every target on their own list — which, for selective schools, will be very similar to the Advanced Studies list.

For the second question, about having almost all of the requirements — that would likely not be sufficient for a super-selective school, but would be sufficient for other schools. That’s where the standard disclaimer, “it depends,” comes into play. A student who did not get accepted to a school that only takes 15% of applicants could be a star at a school that accepts 45%.

Now, a few thoughts and questions for you as further information (which may or may not be useful).

1.  Does your high school include which type of diploma the student achieved — or attempted — on their HS transcript? Our high school’s transcript changes in response to changes in policy, so it has the potential to be different for almost every graduating class.

Western’s profile is online in the Counseling Dept. files.

Mod Squad Pete’s and M.S. Julie’s transcripts have a note at the top that says, “Student has completed the Early College Scholar Program agreement.” I think that refers to their signing off with the guidance counselor that they were going after the Advanced Diploma.

Also, find your school profile. This accompanies the student’s transcript when it’s sent to colleges. I would assume it is similar to our HS profile, which provides the context for the student’s experience, listing the grading scale, size of school, National Merit and SAT results for the school, class ranks, AP Exam results, and graduation requirements (both standard and advanced). You should be able to pull a copy of this from your school’s website. Your HS counselors should be able to give you a copy of a sample transcript. Admission staff certainly looks at each student within the context of his or her own school and how the course list compares to courses taken by other students in the school.

This is all so you can see, ahead of time, exactly how the colleges would see the information you’re asking about.

2.  Next, look at colleges to which your daughter may wish to apply. Every college must make reams of admission data public when they submit it to the government. Many, many websites provide that data in easily-searchable formats for students and parents to see. (This is also the source for the college guidebooks.) One of my favorites is CollegeData (owned by a bank, but offering an excellent format of search results) but there are loads to choose from.

Take UVa for example. They specify the courses they look for on the HS transcript, as in how many math, science, English, foreign language, etc. You can see that here, broken down by “required” and “recommended.” They also publish the priority of student data — which is most important to them and which is less so — lower on that same page. See Selection of Students and Factors: top on UVa’s list is rigor of HS record.

***

Now, a question for readers of this blog:  Do students in others states have to choose a type of diploma or state a college-oriented goal in some way? Please let me know in comments.

Related articles

• Iowa’s high school grads not always ready for next step
• Bill would require college credit in high school
• Improving the state of education

3 reasons to apply to college early. Get one done.

I chatted with my brother last week. His older son — we’ll call him Starsky — is a senior in a small high school in the rural Midwest. Starsky is still working on his longish list of colleges, still visiting a few, and recently developed a plan for what he might like to study in college.

Mod Squad Pete and Starsky in August. Pretty sure they weren’t talking about college applications.

All this is great.

Then I asked, “Is he applying anywhere early? Not early decision, since he’s still working on where he wants to apply, but early action.” My brother said, “Not yet.”

I did not scream over the telephone, but I’m sure I strongly suggested that Starsky consider applying somewhere early.

(Both my brother and I would agree that I obsess about these things more than he does. I’m sure his approach is healthier. [Cue the emails from friends reminding me of this blog's tagline.])

Truth be told, Starsky is an excellent student, a superb athlete, and an all-around great kid — he’ll do well wherever he decides to go to college and the school will be fortunate to have him.

However — and Starsky, I’m talking to you now — here are three reasons why you should apply to at least one college via early action:

1.  Get one done now, so you have that great sense of accomplishment. Most students and parents have heard war stories from other families about missed deadlines, computers or websites crashing, lost recommendation letters, late night stressed-out arguments, and more. It’s not insurmountable, it’s just tough. There’s a huge difference in how it feels to be almost done with an application and how it feels after you’ve clicked on “submit.” That high can take you through however many more applications you plan to complete.

2.  Get one done now, so you’ve seen and completed the Common Application interface through to the end. The Common App has made it much easier to apply to a number of colleges, but no one working their way through it the first time would call it easy. It requires your full attention:

• Many colleges require supplementary applications and many of those require supplementary essays.
• Some elements need to be written separately, then cut-and-pasted into the interface. Other pieces need to be uploaded.
• Some colleges require the fee paid prior to submission, others vice versa.
• Printing the App for proofreading leads to confusion: not all colleges require every question the application provides. However, the printed App includes those questions, showing them unanswered.

Completing the Common App all the way through one time will make all the subsequent applications much easier. Plus, now’s the time to figure out how to submit different versions or how to correct something for another college.

3.  Get one done now, because early action provides early responses. It’s difficult to describe the feeling you will get when you receive that first acceptance. It doesn’t matter so much which college it is — that’s when you know you will go to college. Receiving an acceptance in December is worth busting your gut in October. Plus it makes the January 1st to April 1st wait for regular action responses that much easier to take.

If you think I’m being hard on you, Starsky, just text your cousin, Mod Squad Pete. He’ll tell you this is nothing compared to having to live with my “encouragements” day in, day out.

Related articles

• HS students: 4 questions about getting ready for college applications
• Applying for College: Choosing Early Decision vs Early Action
• The Uncommon Common App
• How to Know if You Should Apply to College Early

HS students: 4 questions about getting ready for college applications

While it seems like school just started — with Back to School night last week — our HS calendar points out a couple of college-related dates for juniors and seniors.

1.  Have you started thinking about it at all? Next week our school’s Counseling Department will offer College Planning Night for parents, with break-out sessions depending on the student’s class year. There’s really only time for general information, but if a family is just getting started in the process it’s a good place to begin. Each family / student will need to determine for themselves how deeply they want to dig into the details.

From collegeboard.org

2.  Will you take the PSAT? Next month Mod Squad Julie (11th grade) and all other juniors and sophomores at her school will take the PSAT. Sophomores take it for practice, to get a sense of what the SAT is like, and to get an idea of which areas of the test they may need to work on. Juniors take it for prep for the SAT too, but for them it is also the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarships — this could be truly significant for their access to selective colleges as well as merit funding.

3.  Will you take the SAT this fall? Seniors are likely to be taking the SAT in early October — if you need to do that and you haven’t registered for it yet, run to CollegeBoard’s site for late registration — so final scores can be reported for Early Acceptance or Early Decision deadlines. Tests taken on October 6th will report scores beginning October 25th.

4.  Have you drafted any essays? This is probably one of the stickiest pieces of the college application process. Well, essays and the short answer Common App question and dealing with the Common App user interface and, yes, deciding which colleges to apply to — they’re all sticky. But the one that seems to take the longest for many seniors is to write well and eloquently about one’s self for the personal essay. If you — or your student — haven’t started essay drafts yet, now would be the time to do that. Today.

And just think, this time next year, you could have this all behind you, living the college life, tweeting something like:

M.S. Pete tweet, Sept 2012.

Related articles

• 4 Summer Tasks for College Prep.
• The 6 Steps Juniors Need to be Doing Right Now.