i’m a rising senior and i realize that i should probably start preparing for applying to college in the fall (eek!). so what should i be doing now? currently i’ve just been researching schools, but should i be doing anything else, especially pertaining to financial things? thanks
<p>yeah, I wanna know the same thing. I started the common app, as like 7 of my schools require it, but that's all I've done so far.</p>
<p>You could be going thru study guides and practice tests to retake the SAT in the fall.</p>
<p>For financial issues, you should ask your parents to go to one of the EFC estimators on the web such as at collegeboard.com and get some idea of how much FA they can expect to get. You should talk to your parents to get an idea of the situation. Sometimes people concentrate on the schools they can get into and then find out later that the parents can't pay $40K a year and so they can't go to their "dream" school. There are financial-aid safeties as well as academic safeties.</p>
<p>You could be visiting colleges. You can visit local colleges that you don't even plan to apply to just to get a feel for different kinds of campuses (urban/rural/suburban, public/private, LAC/univ, small/large/midsize, etc.). Also be thinking about the type of college you want in terms of political climate, frats/sororities, and whether they have Division 1 sports teams. Pick out your safeties, matches and reaches. It would be good to have a folder for each college that you are considering to apply to when Fall begins.</p>
<p>For RD, the deadlines are normally between Dec 1 and Feb 15. I know that everyone says to not wait until the last minute to fill out the applications, but that doesn't mean you have to start in July. The forms don't take that long to fill out, especially after you've gotten all of the information together for the first one. The essays are what cause people trouble at the end. You still don't have to start in July. Just don't wait until the end. If you are applying EA/ED, things happen sooner.</p>
<p>You can pull your EC's together and make an activity-list showing what you have done. I recommend "Acing the College Application" by Michelle Hernandez. In it, she recommends during an activity-list instead of a resume. The activity-list is an attachment to the application showing your EC's and it is in the same format as the question on the application form.</p>
<p>You could get one of the guides on applying to college, but I wouldn't get a real thick one because you probably won't read it. Look for one that is an overview of the process. See Hernandez's book discussed above.</p>