Your College Prep Timeline
Though college applications may seem a world away, high schoolers should begin to think about and prepare for college as early as freshman year. Here, we’re walking you through what steps you can be taking each year of high school to help you be as prepared as possible to make the transition to college a total success.
When you think about a college application, hopefully there are many factors that come to mind. After all, a completed college application includes everything from grades, GPA, and standardized test scores to extracurricular involvement and teacher recommendations.
Since many of these pieces are built up throughout all of high school, it’s important to start thinking about your college application “resume” early.
There are things you can be doing during each year of high school to help ensure that you will be prepared to easily put together a strong college application. It will be a lot of work along the way, but trust us, you’ll be glad you didn’t wait until fall of senior year to start to put the pieces together.
9TH GRADE
Freshman year is typically a little too early to be thinking about the ACT and SAT, particularly since students haven’t usually taken all of the math courses needed to understand the content in the exam.
However, your normal class grades and GPA start building right away with your first classes as a 9th grader. For that reason, we recommend buckling down and getting as strong of grades as possible as a freshman. Furthermore, it’s important to focus on CORE courses that colleges expect you to be taking each year: English/Language Arts, Math, and Science. These are the big areas that colleges expect you to have a foundational understanding in before you head off to college. We’re also going to add Foreign Language to the list. Many colleges require at least two years of coursework in a language other than English in order to be admitted to their school. That being said, we recommended taking at least one course in each of the following areas during your freshman year: English, math, science, foreign language.
But remember that colleges will look at more than just your grades. They also want to find students who are involved members of their communities and will bring this involvement with them onto college. For that reason, it’s important to get involved in different groups and activities taking place at your school and in your city. Joining clubs and organizations as a freshman is also a huge plus because it will help you build relationships with peers early on in your high school experience as well.
To recap, there are 3 things you can do as a 9th grader to help your future college applications:
Get good grades
Take the right courses: English, math, science, foreign language
Be involved at your school - join a club/extracurricular/sport
10TH GRADE
As a tenth grader, your focus should be largely the same as during ninth grade. Your grades will continue to build upon past semesters, so continuing to get good grades is crucial. Similarly, you’ll want to keep taking courses in the CORE subjects that colleges expect you to master, as well as foreign language courses if you think the colleges you’ll apply to will require it.
On top of getting good grades and taking the right classes, sophomore year is the ideal time to take your first practice standardized test. Some schools will administer a P-SAT or a Pre-ACT test to all sophomores — if this is the case with your school, your job is pretty easy here. Just show up and take the test! However, if your school does not offer these practice exams, you’ll want to find a different way to get a baseline score of your performance on the ACT or SAT (or both). This could be as simple as finding a practice test online or using a test prep book. If you prefer to do an in-person practice test, there should be plenty of locations in your area that offer this type of exam. This first test is meant to be an initial idea of your mastery of each of the test sections. Don’t feel like you need to study for days leading up to the test — it’s actually more useful to see how you do without studying at all! From there, you can start to put together a test prep plan for helping you to reach your goal score.
While you are busy getting good grades and taking practice ACT and SAT tests, you’ll also want to keep building up your community involvement resume. While it’s important to be involved at your high school, colleges also like to see that students take part in their broader community. This looks especially appealing when students volunteer their time and energy to help others. For this reason, we recommend volunteering at a minimum of one event as a sophomore. This type of community service not only looks great on a college application but will prove to also be an enjoyable way to get more involved in your community.
To recap, there are 3 things you can do as a 10th grader to help your future college applications:
Get good grades
Take a practice standardized test
Be involved in your community - volunteer at an event
11TH GRADE
Junior year of high school is when the dial starts to turn to more and more difficult steps as you get closer to making that transition to college. For many students, junior year equals many AP classes and exams, which is great. We highly encourage all students to push themselves academically at this point in high school. If you really like writing, consider taking AP Language and Composition instead of English 11 — this type of academic motivation is incredibly appealing to colleges. Not only does it tell them that you are smart, but it shows that you WANT to learn and work harder and push yourself to do better. That says a lot. So, while it’s important to keep getting good grades as well, we recommend that students start to push themselves harder during 11th grade academics.
On top of academics at school, junior year is an important time for standardized tests. Being that you can take the ACT and SAT as many times as you’d like, it’s great to start early and give yourself time to take the exams a handful of times if you need to. Before you jump into taking the ACT and SAT, it’s important to set a goal for yourself. What score do you want to see? This can be a hard number to pinpoint because everyone is different. Not only is every student different, but every college is also different. After all, you’re using this score to help you get admitted to the college of your choice. That being said, it’s important to use that information to help you identify what your goal score should be. Before you choose your goal score, create a first draft of the colleges you think you’ll apply to next fall. From there, do a little research to find out what range of ACT and SAT scores those schools expect. This information is easy to find online. From there, set an ACT or SAT score that is in line with this range or above it to give yourself the best possible chance of admission to the school.
Last but not least, junior year is the time to also be thinking about initial college visits. In the time of coronavirus, many schools have developed very high-quality virtual college visits that you can do anytime you’d like right from your home. This is a great option for an initial “visit” if you won’t be able to get to the actual campus. If you are able to find some time to set up in-person visits, this is always preferred. After all, you might get to a certain campus and hate it! We’ve seen it happen. So you don’t want to apply to any schools without first seeing them in person (if it can be helped). Structure a plan to visit the colleges (either in-person or virtually) on your first draft list before starting senior year in the fall.
To recap, there are 4 things you can do as an 11th grader to help your future college applications:
Push yourself academically
Set & achieve your goal ACT/SAT score
Visit colleges (in person or online)
Create a first draft of the colleges you will apply to
12TH GRADE
By the time you reach senior year, your grades and GPA will basically already be set for your college applications. You’ll apply to colleges in the fall, so it’s not likely that your senior year grades will even go with your application. That doesn’t mean it’s time to start slacking off and getting bad grades. It’s still important to keep a strong academic standing, but rather than push yourself to your edge academically this year, we recommend focusing more on the logistics of your classes. Remember how we talked earlier about some colleges requiring certain classes? Now is the time to make sure that you don’t end up in a pickle, missing anything that’s required to go to your #1 school. Double-check that you aren’t missing any years of math or foreign language or anything like that, and structure your schedule to make sure you graduate with everything you need completed.
Aside from coursework, much of your brainpower during the first semester of senior year will go toward your college applications. Think of college apps like a really big school project. There are so many steps to completing a college application, so it’s great to start early and space out your tasks so as not to overwhelm yourself too much. Make a list of all of the steps you need to take — these are included in the Common App if you are using it — and make a plan for completing each one. Consider things like how far in advance you should ask a teacher to write a recommendation so that he or she has plenty of time to write it. This is not a pretty picture if you leave the entire application to the very last minute.
Once you’ve crafted the perfect college applications and sent them off to the schools of your choice, it’s time to start thinking about MONEY. College is expensive. I hope that’s surprising for you to read. But the great news is that there are a lot of resources out there that can help bring down expensive tuition costs IF you take the initiative to go and find them and take the necessary steps to apply.
One type of such aid is scholarship money. Scholarships, too, can come in various forms. Some schools offer merit-based aid that is based on proven academic track record, often linked to a student’s GPA and standardized test scores. Think of this like a prize for working hard and exceling at school and on the ACT/SAT. In addition, there are TONS of private scholarships as well. It can be hard to find these, but we recommend that you spend some time searching for and applying to as many scholarships as you can find that you qualify for. Every thousand dollars in scholarship money that you earn is a thousand dollars that you don’t have to take out in student loans. Don’t even get us started on student loans… The fact of the matter is that college is so expensive that it can be debilitating for new grads trying to pay back all of that money while is accrues interest at lightning speed. Your future self will be so appreciative if you spend some time applying to scholarships and trying to save some money.
To recap, there are 3 things you can do as a 12th grader to help your future college applications:
Choose the right classes
Apply to colleges
Apply for scholarships
If you only take one thing away from this entire blog post, let it be this: start to think about the transition to college EARLY on in high school. Waiting to get all your ducks in a row simply leads to extra stress and anxiety (and sometimes missing requirements, which means missed college application deadlines…).
Give yourself a leg up and start to build an awesome resume that shines with awesome academics and community involvement right from the start of 9th grade. You’ll be so glad you did!
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