College Prep: What to Expect During 11th Grade College Counseling
The term “College Counseling” covers so many topics that it can feel overwhelming when you first get started. However, a great college counselor will help break the steps down into more actionable pieces that you can tackle one piece at a time. For most students, 11th grade is a great time to start getting more frequent college counseling help, and there are some key areas that you can focus on to help make your college applications as stress-free as possible during senior year. Here is a look at what you can expect from college counseling during your junior year.
During 11th grade, there will be two types of college planning that you should focus on: short-term and long-term. Short-term planning will include steps that you take this year to help with your college applications next year. Long-term planning will involve more research and deciding on bigger picture goals.
Short-term college admissions planning during 11th grade -
Things you should focus on accomplishing this year
Academics planning - Goal: Get good grades
If you only work on one thing during your junior year, it should be getting strong grades. The fact of the matter is that the very first thing that all colleges are looking at is your transcript. When they do this, there are two things in particular that they pay attention to: your grades themselves and the types of classes that you have been taking. Colleges want to see that you are challenging yourself with your course selection, so mixing in things like AP courses, dual enrollment, and honors classes can be very strategic. Still, it’s important to get strong grades even in those difficult classes, especially if you have your sights set on more competitive colleges. What’s more, your junior year grades are going to be more important than your 10th and 9th grade grades because they will likely be your most recent finalized grades when you apply to colleges.
TEST PREP PLANNING - GOAL: ACHIEVE STRONG TEST SCORES
As we look ahead to the fall 2025 college application season, some colleges have already announced that they will return to test-required status. Others, in contrast, will remain test optional, and some will even remain test blind. Unless you are only planning to apply to test-blind schools, it is in your interest to at least attempt the ACT or SAT to ensure that you at least have a score to submit should you need one. Some high schools even make this super easy by providing a free ACT or SAT during a school day in either the fall or spring of your junior year. If your high school is one that does this, take advantage of the opportunity to take a free test and get out of a day of classes.
When it comes to testing as part of college applications, a strong test score is only going to help your applications. For the more competitive schools, or public schools in certain states, ACT and SAT scores may be required. For schools where testing is required, a strong test score may give you an edge over other applicants with similar grades or even help you qualify for additional scholarship money and merit aid. For many test-optional schools, there is really no drawback to attempting the test because you can always elect to apply test-optional if you are not satisfied with your scores. If you do this, the colleges will not see your scores, and they will not be a factor in your admissions decision. Even for schools where they are not, strong test scores offer an easy way for colleges to compare you to other applicants, so it is worthwhile to try to achieve a strong score.
Consider also taking some time to actually prepare for the ACT and SAT. If you’ve ever taken a Pre-ACT or PSAT, you’ll likely remember feeling super flustered with how fast you had to move, and maybe you even ran out of time. The timing is the biggest part that students struggle to be ready for when it comes to just winging the exams. Instead of winging it, at least do some practice on your own. There are great prep books that you can buy on sites like Amazon, and the SAT even has practice digital tests through their Bluebook app. Do some practice tests on your own, watch videos, use Khan Academy - whatever you can do to get yourself to practice. And if you want more help, consider ACT or SAT tutoring through a one-on-one tutoring company like The Prepared Student. Abby has been helping students achieve their ACT and SAT goals since 2019, and she would be happy to help you, too. Check out the ACT Tutoring or SAT Tutoring pages, or go to the About Me page to learn more about Abby and how she can help.
TLDR : Take the ACT or SAT at least once during your junior year or even the summer after 11th grade, and spend some time actually preparing for the test. A strong test score will help your college applications, and a poor test score can often be hidden from your applications.
COURSE PLANNING - CHOOSE YOUR 12TH GRADE CLASSES
As I mentioned above, colleges want to see that you are challenging yourself with your course selections throughout high school. This is also true for 12th grade, even though you will likely send your applications off before any of your senior year grades have been finalized. Just because you’ve already applied to college doesn’t mean your work on your grades is done. Remember that the college you elect to attend may request your mid-year grades around January of your senior year and will definitely request a final transcript from your school once you graduate, so it’s important to maintain your strong GPA and continue to challenge yourself as well. Keep this in mind when it comes time to register for senior year classes during your junior year, and make sure that you know how to pick classes strategically to set you up for success. If you have historically been an honors level student, continue to take honors courses; if you have taken several APs in the past, continue on this track. Colleges do understand that it is senior year, so it is okay to ease up a little with your coursework load. Don’t feel like you have to take six APs all at once, but it will look odd if you take no AP courses when you have always been an AP student.
DECIDE WHO TO ASK FOR LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION
As college admissions becomes more and more competitive, letters of recommendation are playing a larger role in the admissions decisions process. While your teachers usually won’t be writing your letters until the fall of your senior year, having a plan for your letters early on can be very strategic. Take some time during 11th grade to consider what teachers you will ask. Typically, you will ask two actual teachers at your high school. There is also usually space to incorporate one or two outside recommenders. These can be people in roles like research mentors or managers at part time jobs. Think about whether there are people in similar roles that you would want to include as well. Once you have an idea of who you will ask, make a point to connect with those people and be intentional about your behaviors and attitude going forward. For instance, make a point to participate often in the classroom of the specific teachers you will ask. Go to them for extra help when you don’t understand something. Pick up extra shifts when your manager offers them. Keep in mind that these individuals will be referencing not only your academic abilities but your character as well, so build on that leading up to the fall of your senior year.
CREATE A RESUME
While it may be a little early to start working on your college application essays, it’s not too early to start creating your resume. After all, your resume should include the activities and responsibilities that you have taken part in throughout 9th, 10th, and 11th grade, as well as 12th grade. Start to list out all of the activities that you have participated in during 9th, 10th, and 11th grades. Include the time commitment of each responsibility, your role or title, and some of your key responsibilities. These are the things that you will end up including on your applications. When it comes time to put your activities into your applications, the Common App Activities Section will give you space for ten activities. It’s okay if you have more than ten; you will just want to prioritize the ten more significant. This is why it will be good to map out all of your roles in advance. It will save you lots of time later!
Long-term college admissions planning during 11th grade
Start to research schools
Throughout junior year is a great time to start to actually consider what colleges and universities you will want to apply to. If possible, go and visit some schools near where you live. Even if you aren’t sure if you’ll want to apply to them, visiting any college campus will help you start to pinpoint the factors that matter to you. Consider things like the geographical location, the size of the student body, and student/faculty ratio. Do you want to stay close enough to home that you can drive home from time to time? Or do you want to move clear across the country or possibly study in a different country altogether? Do you like the idea of a close-knit school where the student body is small enough that you will get to know pretty much everyone, including your teachers? Or do you prefer the thought of meeting many new people at all times and taking lecture-style classes potentially with hundreds of other students. These are good starting points for beginning to narrow down your best fit school profile. Next, I recommend considering specific program offerings. More in point #2 below…
Start to research majors and career paths
As you consider what schools you may want to apply to, think about the possible majors and programs that you are interested in. Different colleges may be known for very strong programs in specific areas, and knowing what you are interested in studying will help you to determine schools that will be a good fit to provide you a strong education in those areas. If you already know some of your interests and paths that you may want to pursue for your career, this will be as simple as a quick internet search. If you don’t quite know what you want to study, start by thinking about the classes you’ve had experience with throughout high school so far. What have you enjoyed? What have you looked forward to learning about? Don’t worry if nothing really comes to mind — there are SO many fields of study that most high school curriculum does not touch at all. I promise you are going to find something that you are passionate about. Taking major and career quizzes is another good way to start to research possible career paths. Keep an open mind as you search, and even consider looking at specific course offerings at different schools. If you think you might be interested in studying business, check out the business coursework required at one or two colleges. Just the course names and descriptions may be enough to let you know how intrigued you are by the major. And if when all your research is said and done you still have no idea what you want to study, that is okay too! Remember that you can apply to schools as an Undecided major. In fact, for most majors, you are not applying directly into the major anyway. When you pick a major of interest on your applications, you are telling the colleges your interest — that’s it! You won’t actually declare your major and sign papers and create a strict plan with your advisor until the end of your sophomore year. So fear not if you don’t know what you want to study — you basically have two years to explore during college if you want to. (I took four intro-level courses during my first semester of college because I didn’t know what I wanted to study. Just from taking those intro-level courses, I discovered two areas that I really did not want to study and one area that I loved, and that became my major.) Everyone makes it seem like you have to have your whole life figured out already. You really do not. A side tip for students who don’t know what they want to study: consider applying to larger schools. Larger schools usually have many more major and course offerings than do smaller schools. This will give you even more options to explore and will lower the chances that you’ll end up wanting to transfer because the school you attend doesn’t have a great program (or a program at all) for the area that you’re interested in.
Develop a preliminary list of schools
Toward the end of your junior year, it is recommended that you have a preliminary list of schools started. This could be a short list of five or six safety and target schools. Or it could be a really long list of thirty-five schools that you want to research and narrow down further. The most important thing is to start to put actual schools onto the list and start to develop a plan for building out or narrowing down that list to those that you will actually apply to in the fall. By completing this step early, you give yourself a lot of time throughout the summer to continue to research if need be or, even better, to go and visit actual schools and do some campus tours. You’ll be surprised that it usually takes a while to come up with a strong list of schools, where you are excited at the prospect of attending each and every one, and that should be your goal!
Begin to brainstorm essay topics and ideas
You’ll want to wait until the applications open (usually in August) to start writing your supplemental essays, but most schools will have a longer personal statement that you can plan out earlier. For this one essay, you are given free rein to write about whatever you want, and it is sent to most of the schools that you will apply to. Due to the very open-ended nature of the essay, many students find it helpful to do some brainstorming and consider different topics and paths before starting to actually write anything. A lot of thought and many essay drafts will go into writing a very strong personal statement college application essay, so this is definitely something that you can get a jump start on during junior year. As a good starting point, think about experiences, topics, people, responsibilities, and obstacles that have been important to you or significant in your personal development. These are good places to start, as the college essay should be about something significant that has impacted your life and your reflection of it.
Come up with a plan to improve your resume if necessary
Once you’ve mapped out all of your activities that you have partaken in throughout high school so far, do a quick analysis of your list. Have you done a good job of being involved at your high school? Do you have a strong number of volunteer hours? Do you have examples of leadership roles that you have taken on? A very strong resume will be strong in three key areas: leadership skills, passions demonstrated, and community impact made. If after reviewing your activities you feel that you don’t have enough volunteer hours, then your goal for the summer should be to remedy that part of your resume by finding more opportunities and dedicating more time to volunteering. If you can find something that will help you explore your passion further, such as a summer program or an internship opportunity, these can be great things to focus on during the summer of senior year, and the applications for these types of opportunities tend to open in the spring of your junior year.
There you have it! Junior year will include a lot of difficult coursework, lots of homework, and a good amount of college planning. But that doesn’t mean you have to feel overwhelmed by the entire college planning process. By breaking the process down into smaller pieces, you can work through the college application process with little to no stress! Seriously! If you are looking for additional college admissions counseling help beyond what is provided by your high school, The Prepared Student would be happy to help with as little or as much of your college planning process as necessary. Read more about what college counseling with Abby looks like, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you think we’ll be a good fit to help!
Good luck, and happy prepping!
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