Applying to College - What a Parent Needs to Know!

It was Halloween night, and I was filling out my college applications. I sat at the kitchen table with multiple blue ink pens and a jumbo bottle of Wite-Out, painstakingly handwriting my responses…only to stop mid-sentence every few minutes so I could hand out candy at the front door! With the number of kids in our neighborhood, it’s hard to imagine those essays could have turned out all that compelling, much less legible, to application readers at that very selective college.

It’s also hard to imagine that I, and many others, mailed in a POSTCARD to apply to what is currently one of the top 20 public universities in the nation! 

I mentioned both to a high school senior a couple of years ago, and he looked incredulous (was it the Wite-Out or the mail?). Barely missing a beat: “Yeah, but did you get in?” I’m happy to report that, yes, both applications were successful…but MY, how things have changed! 

And that’s what we often hear from parents of high schoolers: “Things seem so different from when I applied to college”, almost always followed by, “I just don’t know what I don’t know”. 

If you have a student in high school, or even middle school, then maybe college is starting to loom on your family’s horizon. So, what don’t you know? Here are a few tidbits to help bring you up to speed…and hopefully take the anxiety of the unknown down a notch or two.

What is the Common App, anyway?

The short answer is that it’s an online college application platform through which today’s students apply to most of their schools. Currently, more than 1,100 institutions accept applications via this platform, although there are a few notable exceptions. The Common App has significantly streamlined the process for applying to college – no more mailing off individual paper applications (or postcards) to each school!

The Common App itself is free to use, and it comprises a main section of basic information about a student’s school, grades, honors, and activities. The 650-word “Personal Essay” also lives in this section, as well as a few other shorter essays that may be relevant to a student’s story. Each college has its own, separate application section in the Common App, which includes questions, supplemental essays, or other components specific to that school.

The Common App has gone a very long way to streamline the process, BUT…that doesn’t mean that the application will be quick and easy to fill out. In fact, students are surprised each year by the care and time that should go into completing the main and college sections of the Common App. Additional time is needed to request teacher recommendations, send test scores and transcripts to schools, and a few other essentials. Much of this can be accomplished through the Common App, but not all!

Why does it seem like students apply to college so early these days?

Because they do!

Most parents remember a time when seniors largely applied Regular Decision, with deadlines after the winter holidays and notifications in late spring. This meant that we were standing at our mailboxes (!) in April, awaiting word on our college fates! Some schools, usually private institutions, also offered a binding Early Decision option, and those deadlines occurred earlier (late fall).

Regular Decision and Early Decision options are still available, and the timing of deadlines and admission decision notifications is about the same as it always was. However, many public and private universities now offer nonbinding Early Action application options, and EA deadlines can start as early as September! The good news is that EA admission decision notifications are sent out earlier as well, often starting in late fall.

Finally, schools that offer Rolling Admission will accept an application starting in early August (sometimes late July!), which means a student’s complete application will be reviewed when it is received, and the student will be notified as soon as the school has reached its decision – often within a few weeks.

The Common App updates every year on August 1st for the upcoming application season. So, in many ways, 8/1 is the official “go time” for applying to college. Believe it or not, some students these days will know where they’re headed when they sit down to Thanksgiving dinner!

Are all the colleges still Test Optional?

In a word: no. It didn’t take long after the Covid era for many schools to start reinstating score requirements, and there’s a good reason for doing so. Research has shown that a standardized test score is a very reliable predictor of academic success on a college campus – often more so than a GPA. Scores have the advantage of offering consistency, whereas curricula and grading can vary widely from one school to the next. In sum, not all GPAs are created equal! 

As your family considers testing, it’s a good idea to make sure you know the difference between some similar-sounding terms that schools use. “Test Required” is straightforward, but if a school is “Test Preferred”, that means your student is strongly encouraged to submit a score, and their chance of getting in will decrease significantly without one. 

“Test Blind” means that the school’s application readers do not know at all if a student has sent in a test score, but reviewers at a “Test Optional” school usually do know if a student has chosen to withhold a score and may draw conclusions accordingly. While some colleges are more recent to the Test Optional game (and may well go back to asking for scores anytime), others have been TO for a long time. It is often the case that a more holistic review of a student’s overall application is likelier at a TO school than at a Test Required school.

Should my student take the SAT or the ACT?

There is no right answer to this question! All colleges accept both tests these days, so the decision should be driven by which test best suits your student’s strengths. The SAT and the ACT are different tests, now more than ever with the recent introduction of digital versions. Further, the SAT is fully digital, but the ACT still offers a paper version in addition to a digital version. Mock tests are the best way to determine which test is right for your student. 

We’ll talk more about the evolving landscape of standardized testing in an upcoming post!

How many schools should be on a college list?

Again, no right answer here! We’ve seen very successful results when a student applies to only a handful of schools, but we’ve also supported students who have applied to as many as 25 schools! According to the Common App, the average number of applications submitted through the platform was 6.65 for the 2023-2024 season (most recent data available). This represented a 4% increase over the previous year, and we see this in our practice as well.

While there may not be a “one size fits all” number of schools, there is one thing we know to be true about a student’s college list: it needs to have enough schools of all different types of admissions probabilities so that a student has options. If a student is applying to all “Reach” schools, even a super long list could result in bitter disappointment. If ever there was a time to have back-ups, and back-ups to the back-ups, this is it!

What kind of extracurriculars should my student be doing (and how many)?

Wow, are teenagers EVER busy these days!

It’s true that colleges love to see students play sports (teamwork, commitment, discipline), volunteer (concern for others and the world around them), join clubs (leadership a plus!), and hold jobs (responsibility, exposure to “real-world” people and challenges). All of these are wonderful additions to a student’s application picture, but they may not all be right – or necessary – for your student.

When deciding on an extracurricular, it should be put through a couple of very important filters, starting with genuine interest. Is it something a student loves or at least enjoys? If it’s totally new, is there an authentic desire to learn more or try something for the first time? Consistent participation over time is ideal, so legitimate interest is an excellent foundation. 

The second filter is relevance to a student’s potential academic interests down the road. It may sound obvious, but a student who loves Math and might want to study it or a similar subject in college should probably hit “pause” for a moment before they sign up for the school newspaper. There’s only so much time after school each day, and there might be another activity (Math tutoring?) that warrants greater consideration.

Just like there’s no right number of schools on a college list, there’s also no one number of extracurriculars for all students. There are, however, 10 spaces to list them when it comes time to fill in the Common App. That may sound like a daunting number, but fortunately many different types of activities and pursuits could qualify for one of those spots! 

What’s the most important thing a parent needs to know about applying to college?

If we could only give one piece of advice to a high schooler, or their parents, it would be this: prioritize academics. 

Students should earn the very best grades they can, and any roadblocks to strong academic performance should be removed, even if an extracurricular needs to be sacrificed. Also critically important: students should take the most rigorous courses their high school offers – as long as they are doing well in the class. Rigor in one subject may not be as important as another subject, depending on the student and their unique picture. It’s a delicate balance, grades vs. rigor, but an enormously important one.

One last thing: try to ignore the college chatter

There’s no doubt, the amount of college chatter, and anxiety, is directly proportional to a student’s grade in school. By the time a student (and family) hit junior year, it’s deafening! 

Word on the street is notorious for not being entirely accurate, though, and neighbors, classmates, and other parents in the bleachers may not have valid information. Hearsay may have a nugget of truth, but often it is not the whole story. 

Now you know!

To my fellow parents who applied to college “on paper,” yes, things are very different these days. Hopefully you now know a little more than you did before…but if you still have questions, give us a shout!