Hi I’m an international applicant. In my country, we graduate high school in December (I graduated in Dec 2016), and I now have quite a bit of free time. I know the US college deadlines are over already, but is it common for students to submit updates to the schools about their achievements, noteworthy events etc. that they carried out (from now till early March)? Is this common practice? Will the colleges bother taking note of your updates and factoring them into their decisions? Thanks 
Yes, you can and should do something worthy with your time for the next two months. Obviously the sooner you have something worth mentioning, the better. If you win an award or get an article published, etc…you can send an email to the regional rep of the colleges you have applied to. Just use a subject header saying your name: updated application information, or similar.
@Lindagaf thanks so much when do you think the admissions office will start their decisions process? I want to know when’s the latest I can update them
They will be reviewing apps right now, but I suspect that if you update them any later than the end of Feb or early March, it might be too late. It’s really hard to know, of course. I guess it just depends on when they get to your app, and there is literally no way of knowing that.
Bump. Any other input? Or does anyone else have an idea of when is the last possible time to update colleges?
I already said that there is no way to know. No one has a crystal ball. They will look at 37,000 applications. For all you know, yours might have already been rejected. They can’t reject them all on March 30. You will not hear anything different from anyone else. If someone else had something to add, they probabaly would have done so by now.
@Lindagaf thanks for your advice would you recommend I send an update to my school once I have received an award/done something noteworthy or compile everything and send them in together as one single update? I just won an award today, but in mid-Feb I’m organising a really big event. So I’m wondering if I should: 1) update my school about this award today then wait till mid-Feb and send in another update about the event OR 2) wait until mid-Feb to send in an update about both my award (which I got today) and the Feb event? Thanks!!
If anyone else has any advice I will be happy to hear them as well
Bump:)
Hi any answer?