Ep. 35 // Meet Each College Application Deadline

0:00:01.6 S1: Meet Each college application deadline, that is our end goal. What I want to talk to you about today is how do we make sure that we’re meeting those deadlines and sharing that your completed application is going to be reviewed, that you’re not going to feel stress and pressure at the very end, and that you know all of the next steps that you’re going to take… As we get closer to August in the beginning of each school year, we want to make sure that we think about how to meet those deadlines with ease, so think about what’s going to be required for the application, how do you navigate the next couple of months and getting everything done on time. Today we’re going to talk through multiple parts of the process, making sure that you are on top of things, that you’re tracking those deadlines and that you are in a great place. Hey there, my name is Courtney, and I’m the founder of confused to college ready. I am so glad that you have chosen to listen to our podcast. Today’s episode is number 36, which is hard to believe, but I am super excited to share with you the other thing that I want to make sure that you know about is our free beta training that is coming up for our course and our coaching…

0:01:13.9 S1: Our group coaching program that we’re going to be opening up, this is for any parent or students that are in high school, and that you are looking at, what do I need to do with my career? What do I need to do with college? You’ll find more information if you go to our Facebook page at confused to ready, you also will find them more information if you go to our website confused, to college ready dot com.

0:01:41.6 S1: c2cr beta app app, TCR beta app, and there is an application that you can complete at that link to be able to join us, we would love to have you… It’s going to be a great time, we’re going to cover a ton of information, we’re going to give people an opportunity for some free coaching and different things. Also, if you have not already, we would love if you would share our podcast with other people so that they can learn about it, and if it has been helpful to you, please leave us a review because we want to make sure that other people are able to find us and be able to have an easier time with navigating that college admissions process and go from being confused to truly college-ready.

0:02:29.9 S1: Okay, so let’s dive in. When the students that I have worked with in the past, when they track their application deadlines, they really feel like they are prepared as they go into the school year, and they enjoy their senior year a whole lot more.

0:02:44.4 S1: In fact, some of the students that I work with, when they get a lot of their application done over the summer, they are really able to enjoy more in their senior year, they’re able to do more with friends, they are able to do more as far as having scholarship searches, all of those different pieces, so I really want you to think about how you can make sure you’re using your time wisely over the summer, and I will link any of our relevant podcast episodes below because we have talked about some of these things, and I just want to make sure that we kind of bring it all together for our seniors to… And your parents as we navigate the next few months, so I think the first step is really going to be finalizing that college list, so you’ve gone on Campus visits or take in virtual visits, if you’re unable to get their in person, you know what your colleges are… If you are going into senior year and you’re not sure about those things, there is still time, so I don’t want you to really stress about that part either, and you can go back to some of our previous episodes about How to find the right college, you can go back to some of our episodes about looking at college visits and doing all of those pieces, you just are going to need to do it in a much quicker time frame then our students in their sophomore and junior year.

0:04:08.4 S1: So when we look at senior year, we’re looking at finalizing that college list, so you want to know where you’re applying, you want to be able to go to episode 13, where we talk about tracking those deadlines in our system, on tracking and staying… Episode 12 talks about different organization strategies, and you want to be able to know what those deadlines are, you want to work on your application where you’re getting your demographics and everything entered, you want to be able to focus on your essay, having as many parts of that student portion of the application done as possible before the school year is done, being able to talk with your counselor and follow your school policies and procedures about getting your transcripts finalized, and again, remember those transcripts probably are not going to be ready until maybe even into the mid-September, some of it depends on when your school… When your school opens, and if your school is one that it doesn’t open until September, you’re going to have to give it at least after Labor Day, you’re going to have to give it a couple of weeks for new students to enroll and transcripts to be ready to go. So give it some time and talk with the admissions officers if there are any tight deadlines that you’re concerned about, I want you to make sure that with essays, with letters of recommendation, that you’re having that communication really early and that you’re using that spreadsheet to track your deadlines to make sure that you know when and how to balance your time, you don’t need to apply to 50 colleges by any means, we want to apply the ones that are going to be that best fit within that college list, so I want you to take that spreadsheet that we talk about in Episode 13, As soon as you turn each piece of the application in, as soon as essays are submitted, letters of recommendation, go in, mark that off on the spreadsheet that you know this is when it happened, you know this is when it was submitted I also would encourage you to make sure that you are following up in an email thanking your recommender, thinking your counselor for their help, they work hard, and they have a lot of students that they’re working with and trying to make sure that everything is done.

0:06:27.5 S1: The other thing that does though, once things are completed, you’ve got that written, that written note saying, Hey, I know that this was done on this date, and so then if for some reason you… You’ve communicated with the college and they told you, yes, that you could have… That something had been accepted or that it had been completed and added into your application package, you’re telling them thank you, but you also have that documentation and you’re not going to lose anything when maybe something doesn’t show up or it doesn’t get added into your application on time. So that’s another… To be patient with the process of getting all of your material submitted, so think about the fact that if your school has 200 students and 100 students are applying, so say that half of those students are going to college, and 100 students are applying to three colleges each if you times that by the number of high schools across the United States, think about the number of potential and prospective applicants that are going to every single college, and you need to make sure that you’re patient with the colleges, getting the information in an email or in their portal, and then being able to make sure that they get it added into the right student account, so be patient, check emails, that’s why you want to double-check your portal to make sure that things are being submitted and that you’re following up with the correct people, but hang in there, we know that it’s a really long process, but the more that you do things ahead of time and that you’re on top of things, the easier it’s going to be to make sure that you’re meeting those application deadlines, if you decide to apply early action then to some of your schools and later on, decide that you want to apply to another college, even though it’s a regular decision, you still want to follow this process to make sure that you get everything submitted that You need to…

0:08:32.3 S1: Once you have everything submitted, it doesn’t change whether it’s early action or regular decision or early decision, you need to have everything in by the deadline for it to count. So I hope this has been helpful. We really want to make sure that you are meeting your college deadlines in our course and in our group coaching, we actually are going to go into a lot more detail, and I’m actually going to give you some templates that will help you with tracking those deadlines with knowing who you need to talk to, who to communicate with, some sample emails of what you can send to different people… Just as a thank you, you want to personalize that it’s a template, it’s not a copy and paste kind of thing, but it is some examples of what you can say and do, but we want to make this go as quickly and smoothly as possible for you, so that when you start getting some of those admissions acceptances and things, you’re able to know what the right path is for you. So I hope this has been helpful. Please don’t forget to join our Facebook group, it is confused to college ready dot com, 4-C-2-C beta beta app, take care.