<p>Are they applying to last minute safeties or are they chronic procrastinators?</p>
<p>Looking through CC today, this seems to be a common occurrence.</p>
<p>If I were an adcom, I'd take a deadline day application as either showing little interest or having time management issues that could be a problem if admitted.</p>
<p>Dunno if this is the case for all schools, but one adcom we spoke to said they read all the applications en mass after the deadline and told us not to bother sending it very early.</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
<p>And soon followed by … “[Blank] happened to my application …”</p>
<p>Which I’ve always stated is akin to “the dog ate my homework.”</p>
<p>I have to say the last minute submissions boggle me. House rule was everything be submitted before Thanksgiving.
GMT, Plenty of schools start to review well before the deadline so this must be school specific. Our family ‘rule’ was for the kids benefit of having all moving parts get where they needed to be well prior to high school and college holiday closures.</p>
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<p>For the same reason that adults wait until April 15 to submit their income tax forms.</p>
<p>It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature.</p>
<p>Because they want to delay the assay torture.</p>
<p>Some kids are very busy in the fall, playing sports, school play, band competitions, drama competition, visiting schools. I’m thrilled that both of my kids applied and were accepted before October, but neither used the common app, and neither had to write long essays (just one very short one). Many high schools have finals before Christmas break, so that two week period is out for extra work on applications.</p>
<p>Some kids are still earning awards, taking tests, considering what type of school is right so it doesn’t make sense to apply in December or earlier.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say they are all chronic procrastinators. Kids apply to a lot of schools these days and some schools require a lot of additional writing. Some of the supplements were really straight forward and easy but others took a lot of creativity and thought. My own D started submitting applications end of October but she turned in her last 2 applications this week. It’s not that she procrastinated. It really took her that long to get the writing where she wanted it. 13 schools… about 6 full length essays and several more small paragraph answers. That on top of school, testing, scholarship applications (which has been another 3 or 4 major essays and apps so far) and everything else there is to do. Having a week off from school to focus on polishing really helped. If cost wasn’t an issue, I think she would have only applied to 5 or 6 schools but for us, we really need to shop merit scholarship and financial aid packages.</p>
<p>I have no doubt there are kids that just didn’t focus this semester and are trying to cram months of work into a couple days. However, most kids we know have been submitting steadily with maybe just one or two left come crunch time.</p>
<p>Many students apply ED1 and get denied/deferred, so don’t know if they’ll be submitting additional applications until mid to late December. Yes, they should have something in the works, but without acceptance to ED1, other school often come into play. Plus results from other students at the HS can also affect where to apply to.</p>
<p>There are plenty of reasons applications come in at the last minute, but not all of them are due to procrastination or laziness.</p>
<p>Because it is their job to drive us crazy.</p>
<p>This makes it easier on all of us when they finally leave for college.</p>
<p>My D applied to 3 schools that did not require essays and 2 schools that did. (None of them used the common app). The three that didn’t require essays were submitted in September and acceptances were back in fairly short order. The two that required essays went in at the last minute on November 1, which was the deadline for early notification. This was because the essays were not finished and ready to go until approximately 11:50 pm on the deadline date. D is a big time procrastinator. She went to the wire even though I told her that all the other procrastinators would be trying to submit their applications online at the last minute too and the systems would be incredibly slow, if not crashed.</p>
<p>I don’t know, I personally started everything I could in the summer and had my early applications done in September/October and had my regular decision schools done in October/November.</p>
<p>If the school doesn’t take submission dates into acct, then I guess it doesn’t matter. However, there may be some schools that do.</p>
<p>That said, some of these “late submitters” are going to get caught empty-handed if they carry that into grad and med school applications. </p>
<p>H’s niece has come up empty-handed after 3 cycles of med school applications. I was surprised since she has good stats…I stopped being surprised when I found out that each year she applied very close to the deadline. She didn’t learn her lesson after the first go-round of failures…nor did she learn after the second and third application years.</p>
<p>I have asked that here, before. </p>
<p>It happens every year. </p>
<p>Yes, adults do the same with taxes, but if we can’t get our stuff together, we can file an extension. Same does not apply to college apps. </p>
<p>I understand the ED outcomes influencing it, but it is also SAT/ACT test scores, transcripts, confusion over what essays to write, peer and teacher and GC recs… Much of that stuff should have been set in place weeks ago. </p>
<p>Every year, like clockwork, someone misses an important deadline. </p>
<p>And why?</p>
<p>I get a crazy amount of homework during the week, so the only real time I had to do applications was on the weekend. I’m applying to 12 schools (mainly because I’m completely undecided in major), so there were tons of essays I had to do. I did all of my applications together, not one at a time. I’m not lazy, it’s just a lot of work.</p>
<p>My kids got all the school paperwork in well within deadlines. Older son didn’t hear until mid Dec that he’d been deferred for his top college choices, so then he had more supplements to write than he had hoped. It worked out fine as I think he was possibly better off where he ended up. Younger son drove me crazy - I remember Tufts had a later deadline then the others and he told me he wanted to have fun with the optional essay so was going to wait until he’d done everything else before he tackled it. He did a great job with that essay despite my aggravation - well worth the wait.</p>
<p>For my son, it was really about being overextended all fall. The first half of the fall, he had tennis every day after school and then would do his 3-4 hours of homework after dinner. Saturdays were tennis tournaments and Sundays were a little bit of down time and homework for Monday- as well as mowing lawns (his “job”). As soon as tennis ended, he got a part in the school play. He was also finishing his Eagle project and paperwork for that so he could officially put it on college apps. He was incredibly busy. School got out on the 20th and he started on essays that weekend. One school was submitted by Christmas Eve. After the holidays he worked on essays for another school which I waited to submit until yesterday because, well, it was payday and Christmas had wiped me out. He has one more to do. He has a really good idea and he plans to write it before school starts again on Monday. It’s due on the 15th. </p>
<p>Sometimes you have to prioritize and you have to do the homework that is due that week before the college app that is due in two months. Just like everything else.</p>
<p>Late arrival at college can be due to guidance office methods. Ours liked to wait til the student had all applications complete before doing their part. Students had to submit the packet prior to Thanksgiving to guarantee submission to college before end of the year.</p>
<p>as someone who always waits until the last minute to do things, it has always been a conscious choice. I work much better and produce better quality work when I am under significant pressure. When i have months on end to do something the quality just isn’t there for me…not sure why but it works for me.</p>
<p>I don’t have a negative view of students who wait until the last minute to submit their applications. They may have more or less completed them much earlier, and might want to take all the time that is available to catch minor issues, or rewrite small sections. Occasionally, one becomes aware of answers that might be misinterpreted or that look silly, when one takes a break from the application and approaches it with “fresh” eyes. In my opinion, only the lapse of time permits a fresh view.</p>
<p>When I am working on a manuscript for publication, I often catch 10 or 12 minor issues after I have completed what I thought was the “final” proofread.</p>
<p>Taking all the time available can make sense–just not if it makes the student/family tense about submission issues at the very last moment.</p>