<p>This is long-winded but please bare with me, I really need some advice. For starters, to say that I'm a chronic procrastinator would be an understatement. I've been so lackadaisical with the entire college search/application process I would be surprised if I get in anywhere half decent. I'm homeschooled and unfortunately I've had quite a few family issues recently. My mother (and teacher) suffered a stroke a few months ago and now we're busy preparing the house for when she gets home from rehab. I'm not trying to make excuses --I realize that my application predicament is a result of my own laziness-- but the situation certainly hasn't made things easier and I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed right now. </p>
<pre><code>I haven't even visited my top choice schools and I haven't interviewed anywhere (from what I understand, interviews are even more important for homeschoolers.) In fact, I have a list of six colleges and I'm actually only mildly enthusiastic about two or three. There are a number of schools that aren't even on my list which have recently started to look appealing to me but it's awfully late in the process to be adding schools. So now I have a week until my deadlines I don't even have my essays drafted yet and the scraps that I've written don't seem promising. Not to mention, I've missed a slew of scholarship deadlines.
The thing is, I've been planning on taking a gap year this whole time, and I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth applying beforehand. I don't even know whether I would want to defer if I was accepted at my first choice because I'm pretty sure there are other institutions that I want to look into and possibly apply to. Also, I'm not certain of this, but I feel like my chances could improve slightly over a gap year. While my academics and recs are strong, my ECs are pretty dismal. All I have is solo Cello and Orchestra and I don't have any honors, awards or leadership roles to show for either. I know that a gap year can't really make up for such lackluster ECs, but still it couldn't hurt. I think if I devoted myself to my cello with passion I could improve enough to warrant submitting an arts supplement and maybe apply for music scholarships.
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<p>Apart from that I would be:
1) Working to save some money
2) Volunteering (regardless of college applications, I'm really disgusted with myself that I haven't given anything back to my community and I feel like I need to give myself in service to pull myself out of this self-absorbed laziness before I start the next step in life)<br>
3) Pursuing some form of independent study or at least reading and writing in every spare moment I get.
4)Researching/visiting/interviewing at schools and basically going about the process correctly.</p>
<p>Also, I have a feeling that a half a year of new experiences would make better material for admissions essays than what I'm working with now. Given this, do you think I would have better chances applying next year?</p>
<pre><code>How are teacher recommendations affected by gap years? I took two courses at community college this semester and got glowing recommendations from my professors, both submitted through the common app. From what I've read, if I apply this year my profs would have to rewrite my recommendations for me to reapply. Would this effect the quality of the recs? Would I be able to use the original recs next year if I didn't apply this year? I'm guessing I'll have to ask them to rewrite either way but I thought it was worth asking.
Anyway, thanks for reading this and I would appreciate any advice any of you can give.
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