Understanding US College Admissions
Abrahim Shah
(Oxford MPP, 2024)
(Cornell University Class of 2017)
The falling autumn leaves often bring with them a season of anxiety for high school students. From navigating mid-terms to deciding whether to apply early admission or in the regular cycle, the average junior and senior in high school undergoes a whirlwind of a few months. This blog on US college admissions hopefully eases some of those nerves and gives a blueprint to follow in the coming months.
Start Early
Cliches often hold significant wisdom. This holds most true for the trite advice of starting early and following a clear schedule. Nothing will help you more than dividing your work across the months you have. Since you will be contending with a massive workload, splitting it over months makes your job substantially easier. Get your SATs or ACTs out of the way as soon as you can—considering especially that many will have to undergo re-tests—and start brainstorming your CommonApp essay at the earliest.
A suggested timeline is below:
July
Decide on which colleges you wish to apply to and whether you want to apply in the early admissions cycle. Brainstorm your commonApp essay. Ideally write a first draft. Scratch all of it and throw it away. Brainstorm a second draft.
August-September
October
Prep for your school coursework. Your mid-terms are essential segments of the final transcript prospective colleges will receive. Don’t neglect them. Continue to exasperate yourself over the commonApp essay. It will eventually start to take shape and you’ll be proud of what you’re producing on paper.
If you haven’t already, give the SAT or ACT. In an ideal world, you will have given these tests in junior year. I didn’t. So it’s okay. But don’t delay beyond October. And be prepared for a second sit in November. I gave it twice and still missed my ideal score. So don’t fret if you don’t cross 1560. The US admissions process is more than just numbers.
By the end of October, you will have applied to your preferred destination in the early cycle. I never applied early, but that was more down to my indolence than anything else. Hence the first piece of advice in this blog: START EARLY.
November-December/Early-Jan
Final college deadlines vary but most are 31st December. Some have 15th January and a few 1st February. These two months are a blur in writing supplements, getting mid-terms out of the way (but you’re good because you started prep early) and making sure you submit the application before the deadline passes—trust me, this happens a lot especially if you’re applying to multiple colleges.
Organize Yourself
Another trite. Get used to it. Adulting is all about common aphorisms we take for granted when we’re 17 or 18. My experiences—many of them harsh—have taught me that nothing beats being organized, structured and having a clear plan. I get it. Life’s a mess in high school. Socializing, school clubs and all the other drama make organization sound trivial, but trust me, take a minute to pause. Take a deep breath. Prioritize things. Identify how you want to utilize the year ahead. This doesn’t have to be college application cycles. It can be planning for an exciting gap year you intend to take after graduation. Or the culmination of a project you’ve been working on throughout the summer. Regardless, Plan. Be Structured.
How do you structure yourself for the college admissions cycle?
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Start Early. Whoops, there we go again.
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Seek advice. Talk to alumni of different colleges. Ask them why they chose that college. How did they apply. What would they suggest you do?
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Have a clear idea about which colleges you wish to apply to and why. College admissions is a time-consuming—and expensive—process; be sure of why you’re applying to a particular college and what you want to study there.
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Have a daily, weekly and monthly plan. Distribute broad targets (tests, application deadlines, etc) across months. Further divide them across weeks and then on a daily basis. This is critical and helps you be pro-active about your day. You’ll have a clear sense of what you need to do on a daily basis, making achieving targets easier.
A Bit About the
CommonApp Essay
The bane of every applicant’s existence. I won’t expound too much on this since it requires several blog posts. My takeaway advice: introspect and be honest with yourself. What is it that you want the admissions team to know about you? Hone in on that and emphasize it. This can be anything from your relationship with a parent or a best friend, to the time you spent in the soccer team. Mine was on my relationship with the world of fiction and the characters I grew up with. Remember Oromis the elf from the Inheritance Cycle series? Probably not. He was a personal inspiration. Hence my advice: be unabashedly you. Own yourself. Connect with the admissions officer reading your essay.
Final Takeaway
​Brace yourselves. Here comes another trite. College admissions or where you end up for undergrad isn’t the be all and end all of life. I recognize this goes in the face of all the privilege and inequality we see in the world, but it is true. Enjoy the process and journey you’re undertaking. You will learn so much about yourself and grow so much as a person. Embrace failure but also the opportunity to improve and work slightly harder on the next supplement due. Benefit from your circle of friends and family. They are a constant pillar of support in this uncertain tempest. Let them help you and share their insights on your essay or life journey so far.
Take a deep breath. You got this. Ad Astra.