If you are considering college and are in the class of 2025, your college search should be well underway. Here’s are tips for summer:
— Sign up for an SAT or ACT if you plan to apply to any private schools or out-of-state colleges. Many elite schools are once again requiring it — Dartmouth, MIT, Cal Tech, Yale, Brown, Georgetown, and any public school in Florida and Georgia. Even if a school does not require a test score, it can help if you are at or above the published range.
— If applying to private schools, request two teacher letters of recommendation before school ends. You do not get to see these. Teachers upload them via a link you will share in the fall.
— Create a “brag sheet” to share with your teachers and counselor who may be writing your letters of rec. Share this the first week of school. Not sure what to write? Here’s a sample.
— Visit colleges, anything will do so you start to understand how different they can be. If you can’t visit in person, watch one of the seasons of The College Tour (or all 11 if you are ambitious!) Take notes on what you do and don’t like to use in your search criteria. Create a Niche.com account, too.
— Clean your social media. Delete anything inappropriate or embarrassing. Remember, someone much older than you defines inappropriate as they read it. Set your settings to private versus public.
— Create a timeline of when you will have each draft of your essays done. I suggest picking the first day of senior year and working backward. Count on three drafts/essay. So, three Common App essay drafts plus 12 UC essay drafts (four questions at three drafts each) equals 15 essays to write or revise. Nine weeks of summer is 63 days; 63 days/15 drafts equals one draft every four days. You do not want all this work in addition to your senior classes.
— Write your essays. The Common App prompts are confirmed and unchanged from last year. The UC Personal Information Question (PIQ) prompts are not confirmed but rarely have significant changes. These are not your typical essays. UC offers a great video on how to answer their PIQs. Also try The College Essay Guy videos and website for good advice and examples. Anticipate doing three drafts of each essay.
— Find a good editor and be certain they understand the purpose of these essays. They are not a brag sheet or grocery list of your accomplishments.
— Create accounts for the Common App, UC, and California State University applications after Aug. 1. Anything you enter before Aug. 1 will be erased.
— Create a FAFSA account and invite your parent to create an account. Once each person is approved (three-five business days on average) the student can invite the parent to link the accounts.
— Create a scholarship profile on Fastweb.com and BigFutures.com. Then put a reminder in your phone to check email weekly through whenever you enroll in college. August of 2025 at least.
Bonus tip: If you are an athlete who plans to play in college, reach out to coaches now. It requires effort and initiative to get noticed. Be persistent and keep a spreadsheet of who you emailed and when.
