A Comprehensive College Prep Guide

The first few months of the school year are incredibly busy! For freshmen, it’s a fresh start, while for seniors, it marks the beginning of the end of their high school journey. Regardless of your grade, there’s a lot to do to stay on track for college. This guide provides key pointers for each stage of high school to help you prepare effectively.

Get Organized with a Planner

If you don’t already have one, get a planner, it is the single best way to help you organise yourself and your work. There are lots of different ones available, but I recommend ones that break the year into weeks with a monthly overview. Other features I like in a planner are, a yearly planner – great for seeing how long until the next holiday, pages for notes about anything, a plastic cover to keep your planner looking great.

Another thing I like to recommend to students is that they are creative with their planner, doodle little drawings to illustrate your life, or if you don’t feel your drawing is good enough you can buy planner stickers to use. Having a planner is one thing, but the key is to use it every day. Use it to see what is coming up in the week to come and what deadlines you need to make. Make a short note about what you learnt in school each day but also use it to record the fun things, birthdays, meet ups with friends and so on

Understand Your Goals to Beat Procrastination

Procrastination is probably the biggest single challenge faced by the students I work with, and it’s a challenge that you will face as the pressures of deadlines build over the next few years. The key to managing procrastination is to have a good understanding of what it is, be able to recognise when you are procrastinating and then put measures in place to motivate yourself to do what is needed. There are lots of suggestions about what you can do to manage yourself, but I think the single most important thing is to see the bigger picture, there is a reason why you want to put in the effort to do well at school, keep an eye on the prize.

Get Involved in Extracurricular Activities

Grades 9 and 10 are wonderful times to challenge yourself in all sorts of ways. Don’t be the student that sits through class without contributing in one way or another. Ask questions or try to answer a question asked by your teacher. Being actively engaged in the lesson not only helps you to remember what you are being taught but you will also show the teacher that you are an eager student and will help boost your academic reputation.

These grades also offer the opportunity to try out new things. Join with other people who share your interests and have common values. Clubs are a common way of doing this and if you can’t find a club that explores your interests then maybe now is the time to start one. Don’t just stick to the interests that you already have experience in, try exploring some new areas, you might just find a new passion.

Explore Career Interests

Having some idea of what you want to do as a future job can act as a great incentive when the motivation to pursue your studies is hard to find. For some, there will be a specific career that they aspire to, perhaps a doctor or investment banker. Others may have a broad idea of what they want to do, something in engineering or using English. If you fall into one of these groups you should spend some time exploring just what the opportunities in those areas are and what it takes to get into them. If you want to be a doctor, then find out about different medical specialisms, an engineer, which of the many fields of engineering appeals to you most?

If you have no idea of what you want to be, or too many ideas, then you need to start thinking about your interests. What careers link to your favourite subject at school or perhaps there is a career that links to a particular interest.

Stay Informed About Current Events

Students are encouraged by parents and teachers to remain focused on their studies, but it is also important to lift your head out of your textbooks and look at what is going on in the world around you. Being able to apply what you are learning to events in the wider canvas of current affairs is a critical skill and come the time to apply to college it can help make your application stand out. Popular news websites like the BBC, The Atlantic, and The Guardian are great sources of quality reporting on world issues, while podcasts like The Daily or Mid-Atlantic provide similar coverage in audio form.

Grade 11: Junior Year

Maintain Strong Academic Performance

You will hopefully have done well in your grades at the end of Grade 10 and will continue to do the same during Grade 11. Even if your Grade 10 results are not everything that you would wish, it’s still not too late to get back on track. Employ the study skills that you know work for you, such as keeping track of deadlines, rewriting notes from class and having a study plan. If you put the time and effort in, you can achieve great results this year.

Record Your Achievements and Activities

The next twelve months or so are going to be busy but before throwing yourself into researching colleges, taking on new extracurricular challenges and the like take a little time to do some preparation.

One thing you need to start doing is recording what you are doing, it makes it so much easier when it comes to writing essays and activity lists if you can go back and remind yourself what you did and when. How you choose to do this is up to you, but increasingly students are building personal websites where they place examples of work that demonstrate the different elements of what will become their application portfolio. Setting this up now will not only save time later when you are in the full throws of preparing your application but also keep everything in the one place

Start Preparing for Standardized Tests (SAT/ACT)

Although some colleges are test-optional, standardized tests can still strengthen applications. If you plan to take the SAT/ACT:

• Take a diagnostic test to identify weak areas
• Practice consistently and take full-length mock exams
• Register early to secure a test date
• Doing more full practice tests will improve your prospects of doing well in the test itself. Don’t forget to register to sit the test well in advance as testing venues can become fully booked.

Begin College Research

Start exploring colleges:

• Attend virtual or in-person info sessions
• Research admission requirements and program offerings
• Visit campuses if possible

Finalize Your College List

Now is the time to refine your choices. Review college websites, check housing options, and join last-minute info sessions. Ensure your list includes a mix of reach, match, and safety schools.

You should also have set up an account with the Common App, and any other application portal that you will be using, the Coalition App or the University of California application. Add the colleges you intend to apply to, it will help you keep on track with deadlines and supplemental essays.

You should also be working on the other important elements that make up your application, the Activities, and Additional Information sections together with the supplemental questions and essays that are specific to each college on your list.

Over the previous months you will have gathered lots of information about different colleges now is the time to review what you have learnt, identify any gaps and decide on your final college list.

First of all make sure you have fully researched the colleges, if you have not already done so, go over the college website, looking at the course offerings, housing options and what the student experience is like. Many colleges are still offering information sessions, so join one if you have not already done so. Alongside the research, reflect on what you want from your college experience and the type of environment that you will thrive in. Use all this to help you come up with your final college list.

Complete College Applications

By now, you should be working on:

• Personal essays (get feedback from mentors)
• The Common App and other application portals (Coalition App, UC Application, etc.)
• Supplemental essays and short-answer questions

Understand Deadlines

These are going to be coming at you fast and furious over the next few months, not only do you have the demands of your schoolwork but you also have to juggle the college deadlines.

Make sure you are familiar with the different admission plans,

College applications have different deadlines:

• Early Decision (ED): Typically November 1 or 15
• Early Action (EA): Typically November 1 or 15
• University of California Applications: November 1-30
• Regular Decision (RD): January 1 (varies by college)

If you’re applying for financial aid, submit the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) starting October 1.

Applications for the University of California open on 1st November and close on the 30th November. Regular decision applications have deadlines around the 1st January. If you are intending to apply for scholarships or arts programmes, there may be earlier deadlines, so check them out.

If you might qualify for state aid to help pay for your college education, then your family should complete the FAFSA (Free Application For Federal Student Aid) form when it becomes available on 1st October.

Continue the good work

Now is not the time to ease back on all of the other work you have on. Use your planning skills to prioritise the pressures of school and maintaining progress on the extracurricular activities that you have going on. Ideally you will want to share completed research papers or project work in your application so try to make sure that these are completed prior to submitting them to colleges.

Colleges that you apply to in the RD round will have access to your grades for the first part of Grade 12 so you need to keep your standards up so that they are reflected in your transcript from school.

Continue Strong Academically

Colleges review senior year grades. Stay committed to coursework and complete significant projects before application deadlines.