Advice for Seniors (from a Current College Freshman)

Nicole Matura, Staff Writer
September 1, 2017

 

  • Finish your standardized testing as soon as possible: The best favor you can do yourself is to be done with your SAT or ACT ahead of time. Yes, it’s painful and mind torturing, but finishing it the earlier, the better. It’s even better if you can get it done over the summer before school starts because then you won’t have to worry about your exam prep overlapping with your school work or college applications. It’s extremely hard to balance all three of those things if they overlap.

 

  • Get your wallet ready for fees, fees, and more fees. College Board would literally charge you for breathing if they could, so make sure your parents are aware of the cost of this process, It costs $45 to take the SAT each time ($57 with the essay), $12 to send your scores to your schools, and it could cost up to $80 per school just to apply. If you are eligible for a fee waiver make sure you see Mrs. Blackwell, the financial aid advisor.

 

  • Don’t leave filling out your common application and writing/editing your college essay for last minute: The common application will consume a good amount of your life and it’s not like an english assignment that you can just cruise through the night before. Your college essay also should take thought and effort and should be revised by a teacher more than once.

 

  • Create a list of safety, target, and reach schools and do not be too confident while doing this: Even if you have good grades, good test scores, a long list of extracurriculars, or a combination of all of these, you don’t know what a college is going to heavily focus on in the admissions process. College admissions advisors go through thousands of applications and their decisions are sometimes even shocking to guidance counselors. Always have your safeties and keep them into consideration.

 

  • Visit a bunch of schools you’re interested in early: You can’t really tell if you’re going to like a school until you visit it. Also you should visit schools early because if you end up disliking a school after you visit it, you can easily take it off your list and dodge paying that application fee.

 

  • Ask two of your teachers that you know well to write you a letter of recommendation as well as your guidance counselor, if you haven’t done so already: Teachers and counselors are really busy and you don’t want them to have to write a recommendation last minute because you asked very late. If you have requested a teacher recommendation and they haven’t written it by the end of November, keep reminding them.

 

  • Keep your grades up: You still need to send mid and final year reports from senior year to your schools so keep your grades up in school because your acceptance into a college can be revoked.

 

  • Don’t stress: The college process is made out to be so much more stressful than it should be. All you really need to do is keep up with all the deadlines of the process.In the end your admission decision is in the hands of the admission officers of the schools you applied to. You will end up where you are supposed to end up.