For many Park seniors, the college application season of Aug. 1 through Feb. 15 is extremely stressful. Juggling school, extracurriculars and a social life is hard enough, so finishing extra essays and meeting deadlines can feel impossible. Senior year is a weird mix of being sentimental, having as much fun as possible and also thinking about your future. In my experience, time management and organization are key to successfully submitting all of one’s college applications.

To be frank, Park does little to nothing to help seniors apply to college. For the amount of Naviance work we are forced to do in Park Connections, you’d think that they would help us navigate Common App and applications — but they don’t. I have had to send many emails to various school faculty to figure out how to get letters of recommendation and transcripts uploaded. Especially with the class of 2024 having a new senior counselor this year, getting a counselor letter of recommendation (which many colleges require) in a timely manner was not easy. This caused the process to take a lot longer than I had thought it would. Because of some of these unforeseen obstacles, starting early is very important.

I have been developing my college list for years, so I was submitting my first applications in July. It’s always good to apply as early as possible to schools with rolling admission, as you are likely to get more merit aid. Since the Common App opened Aug. 1, I was done with my general essay by the middle of the month. I tried to get as much done before school started, as I knew it would be a lot more difficult to stay on track once I had to focus on schoolwork as well. When I was working on applications during school, I tried to set aside a few hours on weekends to just sit down and write my essays. With the early action deadline being Nov. 1, I think a lot of students underestimated how quickly they’d have to complete everything. Many of my friends were cramming for last-minute supplemental essays throughout Halloweekend, a time when high schoolers want to be having fun with their friends. 

Another thing I did that has helped me keep up with the entire college process is combining college applications with scholarship applications. By this I mean that I had a list of due dates for both early action deadlines and individual school scholarship deadlines. Most colleges will automatically award students with merit aid based on their GPA, but many also have scholarships that students can apply for through the college’s website. Some of the scholarships that I applied to had early deadlines, so I had to prioritize them over other applications. Although it is a lot more work to complete applications for scholarships at each separate school, it’s worth it in the end to try to get as much aid as possible. 

Now that the Nov. 1 deadline has passed, there are a few different positions seniors could be in. If you’ve applied to all of your intended schools already, you can sit back and wait for your decisions to begin rolling in in December. If you are applying regular decision, you have time, but like I mentioned it’s best to start early. You could also be in a situation like mine, where you have applied to all of the schools on your list that have early action, and now have to finish your applications for the ones that only have early decision and regular decision. In short, early action is a non-binding early application, whereas early decision is binding, so if you get in, you have to go. All of the Ivy league colleges are like this, so my Ivy applications aren’t due until around January/February. My plan for tackling these applications is to utilize my upcoming long weekends. Although it’s not preferable to be working during holidays, I will be using my free time during fall and winter breaks to work on my supplemental essays. One can also view the next few months as a time to shop around for ‘extra’ colleges. If there are any schools that I am just now learning about or I just feel like adding them to my Common App, I have time to look over their requirements and decide if I want to apply. Especially for applications without fees, I really don’t see a reason not to apply to more schools during the regular decision period. 

People say that you are supposed to make the most of your senior year. I think the best way to do this is to start the college application process early and stay organized, so you can get the bulk of it out of the way and focus on having fun!