Juniors, Start Your Engines: College Applications Begin Now

By now, Seniors have received their College acceptance letters, are making decisions, and have collectively called in sick with senioritis. Juniors still in the throes of finals and A.P. exams imagine that SAT/ACT prep and college applications loom far off into the future. They think they have plenty of time. They don't. Putting off essay writing and testing to the Fall of senior year is a costly mistake. Here's why. This year, The Common Application, the non-profit organization that hosts the most widely used application tool to over 700 Colleges and Universities in the United States, announced the 2017-2018 essay prompts on February 2. A new rival to the Common Application, The Coalition Application (Coalition for Access, Affordability,and Success), a consortium organized by more than 90 Ivy League, public flagship universities, and selective liberal arts colleges, announced their essay prompts shortly thereafter. As the application pool becomes ever more globally competitive, with the United Sates the #1 destination worldwide for higher education, students are applying to more schools than ever before. For Gen Xers, applying to five schools was enough. But The New York Times and Forbes found that millennials and their younger siblings are applying to a bare minimum of 10 colleges and more than a quarter are applying to 20 and more. As the applicant pool becomes larger and more competitive, it is harder for students to stand out and challenging for admissions committees to make decisions. The whole reason The Coalition Application emerged was because the Common Application had become, well, too common, and failed to allow colleges to tailor applications to their individual needs and to provide pathways for underrepresented and first generation college applicants to demonstrate their college readiness. This has resulted in the expansion of Supplemental Essays required in addition to the main application essay found on the Common or Coalition application. Selective colleges and universities rely on these essays to help distinguish candidates, and their topics are challenging, such as: "What is the greatest invention of all time" or "Identify a social problem you want to solve and why in 15 words or less." Such questions require thoughtful, creative, and quirky responses that reveal the student's unique perspective and ideas. But the math is staggering: a student applying to 10 schools will need to write around 15 essays; students applying to 15 schools, around 23, 20 schools or more, more than 30 essays total. This range will vary depending on where the student applies, but most selective Liberal Arts Colleges and Universities require at least two supplemental essays (MIT requires 5!). In my work as a college coach, I often receive frantic calls by parents of Seniors in October; they've loaded their schools into Naviance and suddenly realize the enormous volume of writing—sophisticated, polished, best-writing-of-your-life— their student has to accomplish while simultaneously taking SAT's, AP's or IB's, and participating in Fall sports and activities. It's a disaster. Their high school counselor can not keep up with the volume and is not available late in the evening on a random Thursday or a Sunday afternoon when their student is finally ready to write. This creates a tornado of stress and conflict in families, with parents shifting into nagging overdrive and overwhelmed students careening from denial to manic anxiety. The student's essays often suffer from poor quality as they burn out trying to write multiple essays a week on top of their school work. An entire lifetime of academic preparation and achievement can fall apart at this crucial juncture. It doesn't have to be this way. Juniors should begin brainstorming and writing their essays NOW and craft a summer plan that includes test prep and essay writing. Ask your teen to set a self-directed writing schedule for the late Spring and summer months with check-in points (and rewards!) for accountability. They should aim to complete a draft of the Common or Coalition main essay and the supplementary essays for their top three choices of college or university. This works out to about one essay a week. Just like Boston's marathon runners will pace themselves carefully next week so they don't give out on Heartbreak Hill, so too should Juniors pace their essay writing to hit their stride Senior year.