Where to Start

College Search & Selection
1

Hi,

I am a junior and I am trying to figure out the college application process for senior year. I have looked for guides or “checklists” I should accomplish, but I cannot find one. Could you point me to such lists are make a list of things I should do or accomplish before applying to college.

Here are some of the things I have heard and some questions associated with them:

  1. Common App- When are the basic essays released and when are the supplemental essays released? Should I finish this before Senior Year, and can I write the essays over the summer?

  2. FAFSA- If in top income bracket, do I have to fill it out? If I do, will it hurt my chances?

  3. Scholarship- Good sites to choose from? Would it be better to focus on local and smaller competitions that I am sure that I can win then apply for national competitions?

4)Recommendations- Should I get it from teachers or professors at the labs which I worked at for the past two years? Also, I have been training under a USA Olympic taekwondo referee since kindergarten, would it be good to get a recommendation from him (does not have polished english)?

5)Subject Tests: Planning on taking, Math II, Physics I, and Chem in October 2015

  1. Anything I am missing or should be concerned about?
2

This US Govt site has a Get Ready and Make a Plan which has a timeline
http://knowhow2go.acenet.edu/middle-and-high-school-students.html

CC main site has articles on preparing for college, maybe they have what you are looking for
http://www.collegeconfidential.com/read-and-learn/

I will try your questions.

  1. The CA site says essay information is available early March, it is likely the main essay questions will be the same next year, they usually are, and they just updated them a couple of years ago. Starting over the summer is a good idea. Here are the prompts, halfway down the page:
    http://blog.commonapp.org/2014/02/23/essay-prompts-successfully-support-holistic-selection-process/

  2. If you are not applying for financial aid, you do not have to submit a fafsa (rarely some schools will want it for some merit aid). It will not hurt admissions chances if you if you fill it out, though.

  3. Most outside scholarships are based on need but not all. Some local ones may not, and yes you are better off there. Outside awards are often 500 or 1,000 and available for one year only. If you want more significant funds then a better strategy is to apply to college that may award you merit aid that is renewable for 4 years.

  4. Most colleges ask for 2 teacher recommendations. Also a letter from your GC. You may submit additional letters, but it is recommended to be judicious and not submit except if they have something different and significant to report. They do not care about English of people where it is not first language, but they care about content. My dd submitted one additional rec.

  5. fine, but my daughter made sure to submit balanced math/sci and eng/humanities SAT, look into that more what other people recommend these days and even if it matters to particular colleges. Even tech schools want you to have a very good english and communications skills.

3

My daughter and I found the College Board’s Big Future website to be very helpful at that stage. it has a timeline and helpful tips. It also has a great interface for putting together a college list. if you make an account and enter in things like the classes you’ve taken, GPA, test scores, it will show you on a graph where you stand compared to a specific college’s accepted students. You can browse schools and them make a “my colleges” list. You can run the Net price Calculators right from the site. It’s really convenient.

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/

My daughter applied to local, state, and national scholarships, and won some state and local ones. (The state one was for all four years, local was one-time-only.) They will definitely have less competition! It might be a good idea to make a list of all the scholarships you qualify for, and prioritize the ones you have the best shot at… but don’t overwhelm yourself with them at the expense of schoolwork and college essays. later, maybe while you’re waiting for decisions to come back, you could attack the second-tier scholarships. There are lots of scholarship clearing-house websites for the national and obscure ones. Ask your guidance office for a list of local ones they know about. If your state has any sort of college/financial web site (ours does) they might have a list or database. In our state there are tons of scholarships offered by veterans groups, community/business groups, etc. You can also just google “scholarships” and your state and town.