Your College Application Timeline

Our best advice for improving your college admissions results: Don't procrastinate!

College applications can be overwhelming. There's so much to do. The stakes feel so high. The process is new and unknown, as is the life change that follows it.

Procrastination is a common stress response. Junior year is busy and so is the summer that follows it. It's easy to think: I'll get to that later.

BUT, guess what? Senior year is even busier. Applying to college during senior year is like adding another class to an already-rigorous schedule. Seniors are taking harder classes than ever and often taking on more responsibility as leaders in their extracurricular activities and jobs.

So it's important to get a solid amount of work done before senior year even starts!

What should your schedule look like?

As with everything in college admissions (and in life), different people will have different advice. Ours looks like this:

• Junior Year - April & May: (1) work on your resume (we recommend using a template that includes your time commitment so you can easily populate your activity list); (2) work on a preliminary college list, including a balance of reach, target, and likely schools; (3) find and work on a brainstorming questionnaires to begin thinking about your Common App Personal Statement (CAPS)

• Junior Year - May & June: (1) review your brainstorming questionnaire and resume to identify a topic for your CAPS (check out our podcast episodes Strategizing Your Essays, Brainstorming College Essay Topics, and Deciding on Personal Essay Topics for more tips on this); (2) check out previous year's supplemental essay prompts for the schools you're applying to so that you can ensure you're not using all of your best supplemental essay material in your CAPS (check out our podcast episode Deciding on Supplemental Essay Topics for more tips on this); (3) outline your CAPS

• Senior summer (i.e., after junior year) - June: (1) draft your CAPS (check out our podcast episode Crafting the CAPS for more tips on this)

• Senior summer - July: (1) get input on your CAPS draft from trusted people. This will likely include family members but try also to get input with college experience — ideally more experience than simply current college student (one success can be an outlier). Teachers, counselors, people with admissions office experience, and people who regularly support students writing college applications will have a better perspective on what stands out from the crowd; (2) start drafting your why major and why school essays (we love starting with a longer one like Michigan, UW, or UChicago because then you can shave down your intro — keeping just the best parts — for why essays with shorter word counts)

• July 31 - finalize your CAPS and stop working on it. (You should go back to it later, but have a strong draft that you'd feel good about if you submitted it now.)

• Senior summer - August: (1) draft your supplemental essays for all of your early schools. We recommend starting with a target school, rather than a dream school, because you'll get better at writing these as you go but be sure to prioritize schools with rolling admissions; (2) use your resume to populate your activities list, doing some research or getting advice about which activities to choose and which order to put them in; (3) consider which teachers you'll ask to write your recommendations.

• August 31 - finish supplemental essays for early schools.

• Keep track of rolling admissions dates and submit to those schools ASAP.

• Senior fall - September: (1) share your CAPS and early school supplements with your school counseling office (if applicable) and English teacher (and any other teacher that you'd like input from); (2) collect feedback and revisit your essays to see if you want to make any revisions, remembering that the essays are yours and that there is no single right answer; (3) request recommendations from your teachers; (4) begin repurposing your early school supplements for your regular decision schools OR rework your essays for UC schools if applicable.

• Senior fall - October: (1) complete your early school applications in the Common App (or other platform) and review and proofread (do not do this in a single sitting – come back to it with fresh eyes); (2) submit applications with Nov 1 deadlines before Oct 15 so you know it's off your plate (if you're nervous, submit your first application with a friend or family member present!); (3) rework your essays for your regular decision schools (do not wait to hear about EDs before starting this — you will have a miserable winter break if you end up getting deferred).

• Senior fall - November: (1) rework your essays for your regular decision schools (do not wait to hear about EDs before starting this — you will have a miserable winter break if you end up getting deferred).

• Senior fall - December: (1) continue reworking your essays and (2) submit RD applications (or stop because you got in ED and you're done!!)