Seniors Panicked About College Apps?—Tell Them to Slow Down

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

The school year is less than a month old, but some college-bound seniors feel like they’ve been writing forever. Many colleges released their applications August 1^st, which led to thousands of applicants running—or being led to—their computers to sign up, log in, and apply away.

Much of this rush was understandable. Most seniors are a little bored by August, so the idea of starting a college application sure beat another afternoon of a trip down Tween Memory Lane by watching iCarly reruns. With most seniors having more free time before school starts, August is also a good time to start essays, since many students need to dust off their writing skills after a long summer of rest.

Students often wonder if they have to start early, and like many college questions, the answer is—it depends. You may be applying to colleges that work on a rolling admissions deadline. This means the sooner you apply, the sooner you hear back; it also usually means the longer you wait to apply, the harder it becomes to get admitted.

Since most of these colleges don’t require an essay or letters of recommendation, it’s a good idea to apply to rolling admission schools soon, and first. Not only do you get to “warm up” on an application that only has a few parts, you also may get admitted to a college before Halloween. How cool would it be to know you have at least one college to go to next year only six weeks after senior year starts?

It’s also a good idea to ask early for letters of recommendation. If you asked your teachers last spring, now is the time to remind them about the deadlines they have, and to thank them profusely for finding time in their overcrowded schedules to write a letter for you. If you didn’t ask yet, now is the time; teachers need 2-3 weeks to find the time to write a good letter, and since you want a good one, make sure you ask, pronto.

Ditto for test scores. You don’t have to apply to a college before you have ACT or SAT send your scores—in fact, it’s better to have the test scores there ahead of time. Colleges hold on to your scores through next spring, so take the time to order them now.

“Whew” says you, “so is it ever smart not to start early?”

Actually, there are some times when it’s a bad idea to finish early. Many students who crank out college essays in August want to hit Submit so they can “be over” with applying to college, but the frenzy of writing a first draft can sometimes convince you that your essay is a Hemingway; reading it two days later, you may be saying “no way.”

You also want to make sure someone with strong grammar skills checks your essays. This isn’t the time to not know you write with lots of comma splices— make sure you have the time to let someone tell you that.

Finally, you may just want to wait on essays because you can. If a college app is due January 1^st, no one is going to read it just because you turned it in early—and that’s a couple of months of living and thinking that could make for richer essays.

It’s always good to finish a project, but you give your essays some time to just sit in your computer, and sit in your head—remember, not only do you want finished essays, you want strong, finished essays.

I Heard it Through the Grapevine Your College Apps Aren’t Going Well

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Since I’m from Detroit, it’s only natural for Motown songs to come to mind on big occasions. On my daughter’s birthday, “Isn’t She Lovely” comes to mind. When a heavy snow closes school, the whole family joins in a chorus of “How Sweet It Is”.

And when my students start filling out college applications, it’s tough to get “Ball of Confusion” out of my head.

You might think the room should start spinning in September, when every magazine publishes its version of “Colleges So Great, No One Gets Admitted To Them”—but it’s easy to talk parents and students through this message, because they bring their concerns to my office and we talk about them.

The real challenge for a college counselor is how to help students whose first sense of application panic comes on a fall Saturday morning, when they bring a pen or laptop to the breakfast table, throw a last handful of Cocoa Doodles in their mouth, decide it’s time to take on that first application—and they freeze on the line that says “Name.”

In other words, they are coming out of the “College is Crazy” hype, and thinking about what they really want out of college for the first time in a long time, or for the first time ever.

I’m sorry I can’t be at the breakfast tables of each of my students when there’s nowhere to run to—if I could be there, I would tell them to go to their room.

Most students balk at filling out college applications because they view it as the first step towards leaving home. That’s easy to see; this is the place where you listen to your music, text message long after your parents have gone to bed, do a little homework, and think about your life. The world outside has changed and challenged you, sometimes in ways you didn’t like or didn’t completely master—but at the end of the day, you came home to sort out what it all meant, and looked forward to what came next. Giving this place up won’t be easy.

The good news is the colleges that are right for you will feel just like home. It may be in the dorm rooms, it may be at the library (hey, it happens), it may be the whole campus—but somewhere at those colleges, there is a spot waiting for you to reflect on the challenges of life, wonder about the possible, and text your BFFs til dawn. Once you think about college as your next home, completing the applications will be as easy as taking the written exam for your driver’s license, because both are just the paperwork that leads to a greater sense of freedom. In the end, going to college isn’t about leaving home—it’s about taking home with you.

The second thing I would do is replace students’ earbuds with soundproof headphones. Some students hit the brakes because of outside opinions about their college choices. The application to a college a student loves often heads to the shredder when a well-meaning neighbor asks “Where is that college?”, or Uncle Bob reports the college is nowhere to be found in the recently published rankings. If it turns out no other student at the local high school is applying to this college, this can become a trifecta for trauma.

When this happens, I encourage students to make the mature choice and be selfish. By fall, college-bound students know who they are and what they want in a college—with all the research they’ve done and the campuses they’ve visited, if college selection were a term paper, they’d have about 25 sources to quote and 3000 file cards to synthesize by now. Knowing what you know about college and yourself, it’s important to keep the well-meaning insights of others in perspective—some may know you, some may know colleges, but very few (except your parents) will know both as well as you do. Everyone on your first grade soccer team got a trophy for participating, and choosing colleges works the same way—with self-knowledge and college knowledge, everyone gets a best college, even if what’s best for you is different than what’s best for everyone else.

At this time of year, it’s easy for seniors to think it’s gonna take a miracle to get into college. You’ve worked too hard to believe in things that you don’t understand—instead, remember what home means to you, stay focused on what you’ve learned about college and yourself, and your college applications will go flying out the door so quickly, you’ll realize the miracle is you.

So pick up the pen, and pass the Cocoa Doodles. You can do this.

Applying to College? Here's How

Patrick O'Connor is  Associate 

Dean of College  Counseling  at 

Cranbrook-Kingswood  School in 

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Her path to college was pretty interesting.  She listened attentively as a ninth grader when she was told to take challenging classes; some subjects came easier than others, so she knew she would never blow the roof off of the entire curriculum, but that was OK. She was challenged, she had her strong subjects, she worked hard to make headway in every class, and she was happy.

The same was true in tenth grade, when students were reminded about the importance of making the most out of high school, not because it looked good to colleges, but because there were so many wonderful things to do in high school, and, well, they did have lives to live.  While some of her peers started to wonder if they had done "enough" community service, she could be found at every event related to saving the planet, helping animals, or helping others.  The highlight of this sophomore selflessness came when she performed with her aunt at a benefit concert, playing the zither.  Tell me that was on the activity sheet of any Harvard applicant last year...

...plus, she was good. She was part of a trio who won the junior year talent show, and just like that, the zither came down from Foggy Mountain and into cool.  Junior year was everything it was supposed to be; her voice was stronger in class discussions, her circle of friends grew wider and deeper, and she understood more about who she was, and what mattered to her. It was no wonder she only saw her college counselor a time or two in senior year; when you know who you are and you know what you need for life after high school, the only real function of a college counselor is to sign a few forms, point to the calendar, and be gracious when a student like this thanks you for all you've done.

It is neither realistic nor fair to wish that every student took this same path; while the earth would be cleaner and the endangered species list would be shorter, there is a risk not all students would attain the level of zither mastery this student did, and things could get ugly in a hurry.  Still, when a student pursues every class for the sake of learning, and not a transcript; when doing unto others offers no material value for what is done unto you as a result, and when test prep consists of sharpening two pencils and putting a fresh set of batteries in a calculator, it's hard not to want some semblance of comfortable uniformity, where neither parents nor students know a thing about college application stress, and the editors of every college ranking magazine take up cribbage for lack of an audience.

As the Class of 2013 begins the next round of dream sculpting, we would all do well to keep this goal in mind, and think of this understated wunderstudent, who is currently working on a feta cheese farm in Greece, with plans to tend oxen on an organic farm in China after that.  If that isn't quite what you were expecting, know that she will be heading to college next fall, having deferred admission for a year, along with the full-ride scholarship she earned...

...and know that, as much as she would respect you as a person, when it comes to your opinion of what you think of her college path, she doesn't really have time to think about it.  She's too busy leading her life.