Is end of HS junior year the new deadline for getting college application materials ready?

Applying to College
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Is end of high school junior year the new deadline for getting college application materials ready for students aiming for more selective colleges?

Many colleges are now much more difficult to get admitted to, get admitted to popular majors at, or get scholarship money from in regular decision or late rolling, compared to early decision, early action, or early rolling. Students looking at Questbridge face a particularly early deadline.

So a student wanting to maximize chances of admission and scholarships should have the following done by the end of high school junior year:

  • Any needed or desired standardized testing.
  • Teacher and counselor recommendation requests to be completed by the earliest deadline.
  • Preview of application essay prompts in order to work on them over summer.
  • Parent financial planning to determine what is affordable in order to inform application lists, particularly if early decision is used.
  • Parent financial accounting needed for financial aid forms.
  • Any college visits if needed by the student to decide whether to apply.
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I think the only item on your list is for parents to have figured out what they can afford.

The rest- urban legends! For every kid who writes their essays over the summer I’ll introduce you to ten who are doing them at the last minute!

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God, I hope not. I have a junior that is only now starting to think of where he might be interested in going. He hasn’t done any standardized testing beyond the PSAT although I’m planning for this Spring - if a second sitting is necessary, it would be later summer/early fall.

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Yes, lots students (and parents) do these things at last minute, or miss the early deadlines, resulting in likely fewer desired outcomes.

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It sure FEELS like this right now. But lots of kids do just apply RD. There is a frenzy now, but many kids on here have applied to 6-8 schools already and they can only attend one. So I hope this becomes more apparent with time, that applying RD is still a thing. The scholarship deadlines are unfortunate, and I wish that were not the case. My S has a school on his RD list that has a 12/1 deadline for scholarships. He won’t know yet about his ED and EA schools by then, and there is a supplement for this school. So I am hoping to even get him to apply to this school that might be a great fit (we have not visited but it sounds great). Right now he is still recovering from the early deadline so I can’t even mention this now.

I do think testing should ideally be done by the end of junior year so that you can choose schools appropriate for your test scores, or decide to go TO. And the financial piece ASAP too.

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Agree on the forward creeping timeline….a few examples:

All second semester juniors should ask two core subject teachers for LoRs before summer break. Many HSs/HS teachers are placing limits on the number of LoRs they will write. I have had multiple students over the last several years who asked junior year teachers in fall semester of senior year to write LoRs and they were told no.

Another issue that can be significant for some students who want to apply early is that HS GC offices don’t operate fully (some not at all) over the summer. Some colleges open their own apps in July, like Alabama, and while there isn’t necessarily a benefit to apply on the early side of EA/priority deadlines, students should be able to submit then if they want to and have the HS supply the required supporting materials.

There are an increasing number of EA deadlines of 10/15.

One of the most problematic early apps is Wake Forest ED. They do rolling ED admission, and it’s important to get that app in ASAP (as soon as app opens on 8/1) for several reasons including ability to sign up for an interview (they fill up quickly), give oneself the best chance for acceptance before the ED admits reach the target #, and learn a decision before other schools’ ED deadlines (so if denied by WFU, a student can apply ED 1 elsewhere).

For most students though, they do have time to take tests and/or visit colleges in the Summer and Fall of senior year.

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Yes, it’s useful to get a lot of things moved along before the the fall term of senior year, when classes, activities, athletics, etc. get underway. Also the Common App opens on August 1, and some schools with rolling admissions will start reviewing applications right from the start.

FAFSA opens on October 1. Depending on the school, you might also need to think about the demands of a CSS.

But count back from the deadlines and think of everything that needs to be in place. You’ve listed a lot of them.

By the end of junior year, the student should have a set of standardized tests in hand. This can inform a decision to hold, practice and try again, or think about a test-optional strategy. There are testing opportunities in the summer. That’s not a lot of time to prep, but it’s better than trying to fit it in once fall term of senior year is underway.

It’s a very good idea for students ask for teacher recommendations before the end of junior year. It gives the teachers more time to write thoughtfully and provides them with enough notice to plan their workload.

A strong, close-to-final draft of the Common App essay by the start of senior year (or earlier for some rolling admissions schools) gives more time to refine for submission, or to ask for a guidance counselor’s or teacher’s feedback.

Getting all the demographic info into the Common App soon after it opens helps check a box, and writing out an activities list in Google Docs or Word will help make it stronger within the proscribed character counts when it comes time to commit it to the App.

Having a clear application strategy that isn’t under continuous re-thinking and is supported by a good understanding and balance of reach, target and likely/safety schools is valuable to reducing last-minute stress. But to achieve that, junior year should have already been put to good use researching and/or visiting schools. That research will also come in handy if any schools on the student’s list require supplemental essays.

So, reduce stress and avoid time compression by understanding the workload in advance, planning it out counting back from the deadlines, having a strategy that the students, parents and the guidance office are aligned on, and being fair to the people you are depending on to help you, namely teachers and the guidance office.

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None of my kids would have launched an effective search (or ended up where they ended up) if they did these things junior year.

They had PSAT scores and taken the SAT once so they knew aprox. where they stood. We had the budget talk and had run every conceivable scenario. They had visited a few colleges because we were in the area visiting family or on vacation so they knew “this is what a rural campus feels like” or “BU has Commonwealth Avenue running through it- you either love it or hate it” but none of these were official visits, tours, etc.

But that’s it. There’s a lot of change senior year! One of my kids who spent junior high and HS saying “No way am I going close to home” ended up an hour away, accessible by public transportation and a quick walk from the train.

We all have a part to plan in ending the madness!

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D20 school had them ask for teacher recs in spring of junior year. I think it was good to make the students go ahead and do it plus allowed the teachers who wanted to work on them over the summer to have the time. Or if certain teachers get too many requests the students are not scrambling in the fall for another rec.

Other than financial piece, I think the rest can wait as long as you are managing deadlines and know what is involved. The idea kids must start working on their essays and apps junior year seems extreme and unnecessary. I think planning to do it late summer/early fall senior year is good - before the workload gets too hard, too many fun senior events, flu season. Plus kids might still be figuring out what they want in a school. Spring of junior year is a long time before they actually start college unless they know what they want.

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That was the timeline at our D’s HS (spearheaded by the guidance counselors) 6 years ago, so not sure how “new” that really is. What was new this year was they brought in all the seniors to school on 8/1, with their laptops, and they all worked on the common app together so if there were questions/issues, the GCs were there to answer questions.

This is a HS where most students are chasing merit and there are a lots of rolling admissions schools in the area that kids target. The earlier those submissions are in, the quicker the replies and the higher the merit awards.

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I do think it was helpful to have the tests and school visits in junior year. It didn’t feel rushed or stressed. Senior year has been a lot of work, so I’m glad for my kids they’re not also dealing with sat tests and college visits. We’ve gone back for some second visits, but the list was narrowed down earlier. It was also nice to have a smaller list to delve into the schools a little deeper. So do what you can on the early side to make senior year a little less full of to-do lists. Just my thoughts.

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Exactly! Same at our school and the other ones I know well(private): everything on the OP’s list is encouraged to be done by the end of junior year, OR a plan for over the summer before senior year. It is not new here–at least 3 yrs old, but I do not know further back. Tours were harder to do as early as the school suggests (summer before junior and during junior)with the 2023s, but the pre-senior summer used to be meant to be for filling out the list or making the ED/REA decision, not the bulk of tours. This year many of us were “behind” due to schools not being open for real tours until late spring 2023. Even with the common app essay essentially done since early in the summer, there is still so much work for D23 for all of the scholarships and supplemental essays; it seems never-ending at this point!

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How is it at high schools with average or below average resources, and probably a greater percentage of counseling work on things other than college preparation and application?

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My guess is worse, which makes this an increasing form of inequity:
Just asked a friend whose kid is at a public STEM magnet: counselor meeting and list making is the start of senior year, LOR requests are “by” senior year, so kids not in the know often lose out if teachers already “full”.

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For my kids, standardized testing was always targeted to be done before Senior year. But this can depend on a student’s progression through Algebra 2.

Requests were made for recommendation letters at the end of Junior year, but the background data and actually writing wasn’t until the Fall. Junior year was just getting the “will you write/yes I will” confirmation.

Campus visits were through the Spring and Summer.

Finances started with 529’s before the kids were born. Financial viability and constraints were always part of ongoing financial planning. The actual FAFSA/CSS was a fall task - not overly complicated, at least in my case.

Essays started after the school year with the Common App prompts, but the final release of school-specific questions on/around August 1 triggered most of that effort.

But I suspect my kids, and most on CC, plan much more in advance than the average US high school student. Starting all of these in the Fall of Senior year is probably still the norm.

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I think you are right on this. I will say, though, that at our HS kids are required to line up their teacher recommendations at the end of junior year - that makes the process much easier than chasing everyone the fall of senior year (and gives teachers plenty of time to get them done).

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In our small rural town D23’s college-bound friends are a bit shell shocked that she already has most of her apps in . . .

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Not really anything new, at least not for kids coming out of highly ranked magnet public high schools.

OVER a decade ago, my kid’s public HS (ranked top public HS in the country by WSj, so not necessarily a “typical” HS) required all recommendation letter requests be submitted to the teacher by March of Junior year.

The kids applying to T20s (virtually the entire class, LOL) had also completed all standardized testing (except for any senior year AP exams, of course) by the end of Junior year

The first semester of Junior year english class was the “write your college essays” term.

I think everyone else is just catching on to what was happening for a long time at some schools.

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In our district, the teachers haven’t even decided if they are coming back for the next academic year in March, let alone commit to writing a boatload of recommendations!

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Having 3 whose applications were in Aug/Sept. Each applying to 10-16 schools… the best merit comes early at some schools. Friends who waited with similar scores got nothing at the same schools.
So anyone who is looking for Merit at certain schools it is very important to apply early, which means ready to apply by Aug. before Senior year. We were shocked this year to find one of my sons top choices opened applications in June.
It is also great to have some Rolling and EA school acceptances in before some even apply. They can relax a bit because the hard work was done over the summer and not while taking classes.

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