Recommended Start Date: Beginning of summer before your Junior (not the middle of the summer!).
Recommended Deadline: Early fall Junior year.

Benefits:

• Study in the summer

• Use your training to also prepare for the PSAT

• Get the test done early (you don’t want to be testing in Senior year)

You can take the SAT/ACT as early as 5 years before your college application date! So, you have a lot of flexibility here. Some of my students have taken the SAT/ACT in 8th grade (or earlier) in order to get into Johns Hopkins CTY or other advanced programs. Some middle and lower high school summer programs will ask for an SAT/ACT score, so you might want to take the test for that.

But, my best recommendation is to take the SAT in August and October of your Junior year, and to take the ACT in September and October of your Junior year.

Why?

At that point, you should have all the math you need for the test. You’ll be able to study over the entire summer before those tests, meaning you don’t have to juggle homework, APs, clubs, sports, and your SAT/ACT training. And you’ll automatically prepare yourself for the Junior year real PSAT, which is the only way to qualify for the National Merit Scholarship.

Students who study in the summer perform better on either test than students who study during the school year.

Caveat: If your child has big gaps in math or verbal, start your SAT/ACT training early, or start your child in math or verbal tutoring. The longer you let gaps fester, the worse they’ll get. But acting quickly can mean that your child’s grades improve, their confidence grows, and their SAT/ACT scores will ultimately be higher as well.

Recommended Start Date: Start training in the beginning of summer before Junior year.
Non-Negotiable Deadline: October of your Junior year.

You don’t have a choice on this one, but you will likely take a practice PSAT in 10th grade and sometimes also in 9th grade. If you get those scores back and they’re lower than you’d like them to be, contact a tutor right away. Get on their roster, register for a summer or school year program, and start fixing any major gaps in math, grammar, and reading right now. Gaps don’t go away; they only get worse. You can start your PSAT/SAT/ACT training as early as 9th grade!

Important Dates: Junior year GPA comes out around June. Senior year fall GPA will get reported around December.

Grades will always feel like the most pressing thing. There’s always a test tomorrow, a quiz around the corner, a paper due in a few weeks. Don’t forget that you have to actively prioritize the other things that are going to matter so much more than grades…even though grades are very important!

For Early Decision and Early Action applications, colleges will look at your Junior year grades and earlier. They might request a partial transcript from your Senior year, so don’t slack off in fall of Senior year!

For Regular Decision applications, colleges will generally look at the first semester of Senior year and everything earlier. So, again, you can’t slack off in the fall.

And, surprise surprise, you can’t slack off in your Senior spring semester either. Colleges are looking for you to maintain your grades, and any major drops can result in complications to your credit transfers and even your college acceptance and enrollment.

Recommended Start Date: As early as possible. There are tons of simple things you can do in middle school to set your child up for success.
Recommended Deadlines: You should have at least two activities you can point to by the end of 9th grade, 4-6 activities by the end of 10th grade, and 5-8 by the end of 11th grade. Read on for clarity on these activities! You can also check out this page for more on Demonstrated Interest.

I have known college admissions officers who have explicitly said they don’t care if you have a perfect GPA and a perfect SAT score, if you don’t have Demonstrated Interest, they’re not going to accept you.

Now, this isn’t every admissions officer at every college, but it is a common enough sentiment that Demonstrated Interest is my number one priority with all of my college strategy students.

The idea here is this: imagine you’re an admissions officer for MIT, one of the most amazing engineering schools in the world. You see an application of a student with a perfect GPA, perfect SAT/ACT score, maybe the person is even class president or valedictorian…or both! And they want to go to MIT to study engineering.

But, they’ve never taken a physics course. They’ve never built a single thing in their lives, not even Ikea furniture. They’ve never even looked at a screwdriver.

Do you admit them for engineering?

You’re MIT. You could have ANYONE. Students with perfect GPAs and perfect test scores and all the right accolades are throwing themselves at you, seeking admission. Do you take the kid who has never seen a screwdriver…or the kid who built his own pinball machine?

The pinball machine doesn’t even have to be important. What’s important is that it’s clear this student actually is interested in engineering.

THAT is Demonstrated Interest.

You must show Demonstrated Interest.

Take courses that follow your intended major, read books, pursue service opportunities that match your interests. Create independent passion projects and group projects that follow your intended major. Enroll in summer programs within your intended major. Do as many things as you possibly can to show the college that you are really, truly interested in XX major. And do as much as possible in the early years of high school. Check out more examples for specific majors here.

This is actually one of the most important reasons to find a College Strategist in 8th grade or the summer before 9th grade. This process can take some guidance, and there’s a lot that a professional in the field who does this full-time can share with you throughout this process.

Recommended Start Date: Start asking teachers and mentors in early Junior year.
Recommended Deadline: Secure your recommendation letter teachers by the end of Junior year.

Your teachers won’t write your Rec Letters until Senior year, but you’ll want to secure their willingness to write them earlier.

I tell my students to spend 9th and 10th grade building up their college resume/portfolio. Then, throughout 11th grade (and a bit in 9th and 10th as well), talk to your teachers and other mentors about those projects. Make sure they know what you’re working on, even if it’s not completely related to the field they teach. But, if you are doing a big coding project, it would make sense to talk to your computer science teacher! If you’re making something engineered, show the project to your physics teacher, etc. This is assuming you’re close with that particular teacher.

Make sure the teachers who will write your recommendation letters know, as much as possible, everything that you’re doing, everything about how amazing you are. That way, when it comes times for them to write the letter, they already have insider knowledge! They may have even helped you along the way and feel invested in your application and outcome. That’s exactly what you want.

If you didn’t start your college strategy until later in high school, just try to make things happen as quickly as possible.

Other Rec Letters: Many of my students have also gotten recommendation letters from a music teacher, external mentor, charity president, etc. if that student was exceptionally proficient in a specific area. Many schools have separate places where you can submit an outside recommendation letter, so it’s great to have one in your application whenever possible.

Important Dates: This varies a lot by school, but it should come out sometime in Junior year, and it should be due either at the end of Junior year or beginning of Senior year.

As soon as you receive this questionnaire request from your school guidance counselor, send it to your college strategist. If you’re working with me, I’ll add the deadline to your College Strategy Calendar, and I’ll start working on it with your child right away. You’ll also usually receive a parent questionnaire (or “brag sheet). The questions are usually pretty straightforward, but there are some strong guidelines that can help you use this tool to give your child the best shot at an Ivy or other competitive/reach school.

These questionnaires are used by guidance counselors to write their official letter of recommendation for your child. Guidance counselors can’t know everything about every student, so they literally just ask you what they should say in their letter of recommendation. Truly, many of these questionnaires will include a question like “If you were to write the first three paragraphs of your own letter of recommendation, what would you write?” Many times, these questionnaires will get largely copy/pasted.

That may sound a little silly or frustrating, but in reality, this is massively to your benefit. You get to tell your guidance counselor exactly what you want said about you. You can make sure that their letter of recommendation perfectly matches and supports what you’ve put in your college essays and elsewhere in your overall application. So, use this heavily to your advantage!

Caveat: If you have any unfinished projects on your college resume that you really want included in your counselor questionnaire (or any teacher questionnaires for teacher rec letters), just delay your response. You can even tell them that you’re working on finishing a project and would like an extension on your questionnaire so you can get them the most up-to-date and helpful information you can. I have never met or heard of a teacher or counselor who threw a fit about this. They’re all so busy anyways, they truly don’t mind waiting even a month to receive these questionnaires.

That said, you do need to turn in these questionnaires by about August of your Senior year because they need time to actually write the letters!

Important Dates: Many of the more competitive summer programs will have application due dates in mid-October through December. Other deadlines will fall February-April.
Recommended Start Date: Start researching for next summer…this summer. Or as soon as possible.
Recommended Deadline: Know what you want to do next summer and start writing your application essays by about August (September at the latest). 

Once you know what programs you’re applying to next summer, you want to start either writing essays right away (if the application deadline is in the fall) or start adding things to your resume to make you a more attractive candidate for this particular summer program. Then, you would write your essays starting around January (for application deadlines in the spring).

Summer programs are really powerful ways to build up your overall College Resume, and they can be really fun and rewarding. You can gain wet lab experience (if you’re old enough). You can work in teams of kids equally excited about your own field of interest. You can make connections with college professors and graduate students who could become mentors for you on your independent projects, or who might invite you to join their research projects.

But, many summer program deadlines pass early in the school year. So, start looking in the summer, and try to start writing even during the summer before those applications are due. It’s much easier to write strong essays when you aren’t swamped with APs and other schoolwork!

Recommended Start Date: Start trying to get internships, shadowing opportunities, or jobs in 9th grade or the summer before.
Recommended Deadline: Finish any internships before August of Senior year if you want to write about them in your college essays.

This is a really soft deadline because you can absolutely have more internships after you’ve submitted your college applications! Internships are not solely useful for College Strategy. They’re also useful for your future career and for securing opportunities while you’re in college.

But, if you do want it to help you in your college application, it should at least start before Nov 1st, so that you can list it on your Activities List and resume. And if you want it to be more beneficial, then it needs to end before August of Senior year so that you can learn from it, get your key takeaways, and write about the experience in your essays.

Important Dates: The first week of school. Act fast on this! It varies a lot by high school.

Starting up a new club is a great way for you to put leadership experience on your College Resume, and it’s a great way for you to gather together people who share the same interest as you. Many of my students have their own great projects going, and then create a club so they can get more students involved in the project they’ve started. This could be a small business venture, a charitable event or activity, or just something the student does for fun.

The trouble is, most schools don’t let you create a club at just any time of the year. Usually, you have to submit forms to start a club in either the first few weeks of school or sometimes in the last few weeks of last year. Those are two very small windows out of the year, so you want to act quickly on this.

Parents: When you enroll your child in a new school, or just before they start 9th grade, you can really help your child by asking the school for their policy on starting up clubs. As soon as you find out, send this information to your college strategist. If that’s me, we’ll start brainstorming what club your child could start and how that would fit into their overall application right away. We can also fill out any required club paperwork together.

Many clubs will also require a teacher mentor. This is just another great reason to foster good relationships with your teachers and keep them informed of your activities. You’ll already have a teacher in mind! A club is also a great way to start up a relationship with a teacher, especially if this is something the teacher is also passionate about.

Recommended Start Date: mid-November of Senior year, but really ramping up in January.
Recommended Deadline: Most scholarships close by March.

You should prioritize your college essays first, of course. Scholarship deadlines tend to fall after the main college essay application season.

But, a few scholarships do close in November of December, so it’s never bad to start a quick search right after you finish your early deadline schools. From November onwards, you should focus on your regular decision schools and their essay deadlines, but we can juggle in a few scholarships that are due early, especially if any of them are asking similar questions to what you’re writing about for your college essays.

January is really the time to dig into this process more intensively. By mid-January, you should have finished almost all or all of your regular decision submissions, so you can fully shift focus to scholarships. Read more on how to search for scholarships here.

Recommendation: Read at least one book per year for college strategy purposes.

Some colleges (like Columbia) will directly ask you about books, articles, podcasts, and any other media you consume. They’re trying to see if you just go to school to learn or if you genuinely pursue knowledge in every possible way you can. Guess which of those you should be?

I recommend that all my students read at least one book relevant to their intended major per year (this can be done over the summer) and consume either a book or some other form of media on any academic topic of their choice each year (a total time commitment of around 20-30 hours in a year).

Even this tiny amount of effort can pay off in a big way. Students will learn about sound systems or the invention of plastic or business enterprises that failed in other countries, and it all helps them achieve that well-rounded feeling in their college essays (and interviews).

If you’re serious about getting into a top school, then you should follow this advice. If you’re not interested in getting into schools with sub-20% acceptance rates, then you can worry about this less.

Recommended Start Date: Get a College Strategist by the beginning of Junior year.
Deadline: Whenever your Junior year English paper is due.

If you have your heart set on Princeton, or even if you just think you might theoretically apply to Princeton as a total maybe, you need to prepare for one of their big requests: send in a Junior year, graded English paper from school.

Why do they ask for this? They might give you all kinds of reasons, but really they want to find out if you’re using a college strategist. If you are, and you didn’t plan ahead, then your school English paper will be very much your style of writing, and (depending on how much help you end up needing with your essays) your college essays might not follow quite that same style…

It’s also possible that your parents might try to help you write your college essays, and that will be terribly apparent if Princeton can compare your college essays to your school essay as well.

If you think they can’t dig this deep because they don’t have enough time to spend per student, don’t forget that AI at this point makes this process as simple as copy and paste.

In the end, this is one major reason why I insist that my students do 98% of the writing for their college essays. There are a ton of things I can help with, especially in brainstorming and cutting down your essay to get it to fit the word count. But I really need that essay to sound like you, encapsulate your personality, and match your school English paper and interviews!

You should have a college strategist look at your Junior year English paper to make sure that the writing quality is very high, the grade will be high, and the writer’s voice is a voice that would properly fit the college essays as well. That way, when it comes time to write the college essays, you can use that same voice, and everything will match nicely and fit the needs of the college essays.

Recommended Start Date: January of your Junior year or as soon as possible! The more time you have, the better off you’ll be.
Important Deadlines: Oct 15th, Nov 1st, and a few dates in January and February of your Senior year.

Your college applications are going to be due right around Nov 1st for Early deadlines and somewhere between early January and mid-February for Regular deadlines. This isn’t just the essays; this will include every bit of information but the FAFSA (and a few Honor’s College essays will be due after the school’s official Early deadline).

Every year, almost all of my students and parents start inventing new deadlines for themselves. I’ll have a student come in and tell me that they have to have this essay done by Oct 3rd, or a parent will tell me that they want to submit essays by Oct 21st. These are not real deadlines, but students and parents invent them every year.

My answer is always the same: If you’re going to work this hard to try for Ivies and other competitive schools (which these days includes many state schools!) then you should work as long as you can to make the essay as perfect as you can. If the essay isn’t done, do not submit it. Don’t just make up a new deadline and start hitting “Send”. You will regret it when you receive rejection letters in December.

Ivy admissions are unfair, chaotic, and complicated. Give yourself all the time you possibly can to get the essays Ivy-ready (and even state-university-ready).

If you do want to submit early, I’m happy to help you do that! It just means that you need to start writing your college essays in January of your Junior year. Many of my students start writing even earlier. The essays rarely change from year to year (UChicago excepted), and even if they do, we can often repurpose the same essay or parts of it. You won’t be wasting your time. You’ll be freeing up your time to be able to make last minute additions, get additional advice, add extra colleges to your list, add specific (and more competitive) programs to your application, and much more.

Recommended Start Date: Some time during Junior year.
Rough Draft Deadline: End of your Junior year

So many students get through all their essays, all their portfolios, all their rec letters…and the thing they’ve put off forever is a resume.

Resumes are very simple. They should be one page. They should look boring and plain. They should be very readable. They should convey key information.

And yet, everyone puts them off forever. So, I have all my students produce a solid rough draft by June of their Junior year (earlier is great because you might need it for a summer program application). After that draft, we will add updates and rearrange the information listed based on how things develop during that summer and fall of Senior year. These edits are generally smaller and take little time, meaning you pretty much always have a resume ready to go any time you need to submit an application, send something to your teachers for rec letters, etc.

Recommended Start Date: August of your Senior year, when Common App officially opens.
Recommended Deadline: Fill out all the basics by around September of your Senior year.

For the Common Application, Apply Texas application, UCs application, MIT’s application, and really anything else you apply to, you will have to input basic info. Your name, address, phone number, school information, etc. Also, many of these separate applications will require you to input a truncated version of your resume manually (even though they also, often, request a resume upload as well).

You should get these parts done early. Don’t save them for later. Get them done over the summer or in August of your Senior year. You’ll see a bunch of green check marks indicating everything that’s done, and it will make you feel like progress is really happening.

Recommended Start Date: Some time Junior year is usually good. But, if you have a dream school (or three) write them down early!
Recommended Deadline: Have your top 3-5 schools chosen by mid-Junior year (or earlier) so you can start writing some essays. Spend the summer before your Senior year selecting all Target and Safety schools, and finalizing your Reach school list.

There’s good flexibility here. If you think Columbia is your #1 school in Junior year, and we start writing those essays, it’s not a big deal if you change your mind. The essays that Columbia asks are quite similar to the essay prompts of other Ivy League and top private and state schools. There are a few “archetypes” of essays, so we can usually adapt a Columbia essay to become a Brown essay instead.

Don’t worry about “getting it wrong” when making your list. Just think about location, size, budget, acceptance rate, special programs, and anything else you love about the schools.

By the time you start your Senior year, you really should have a solid list that isn’t changing daily. If you end up adding a school or taking one out, that’s not a big deal. But, if your list is massively shifting every week, then you need to carve out some time to get serious and finalize that list as soon as possible.

Recommended Start Date: Summer before Senior year.
Recommended Deadline: October 28th.

Honestly, I could also say “November 1st” here, but people get really nervous when making absolute last minute decisions. So, try to make this choice a few days prior to the Early deadline.

You can also make this decision months in advance! But in over a decade of being a College Strategist, I have found that families will almost always change their ED/REA at least once. And it’s just not a big deal. I want you to think of it as not a big deal if you change your mind.

Now, to clarify, where you ED vs REA vs EA does matter. It can make a big enough difference that you should take the question seriously. But, it is also something that can be changed all the way up to the day you click “Submit”.

With my students, we’ll write all the essays for their top colleges well before November 1st, and then we’ll decide towards the end where to ED. We may change our minds based on a new SAT attempt that was successful, or based on a development in the student’s charity or other activities. 

Since all the essays are written anyways, we have the freedom and flexibility to make that choice later, and to change our minds. And many, many of my students do change their minds during this process. They learn new things about each college; they might go visit the colleges. There are plenty of great reasons to change your mind. Give yourself the flexibility to do so!

Recommended Start Date: You could start visiting colleges as early as 8th or 9th grade. Just be sure to take lots of notes so you remember the visit. Many younger kids end up doing tours early when their older siblings are touring as Juniors. But, you can start in Junior or even Senior year.
Recommended “Deadline”: Summer before Senior year or winter/spring of your Senior year, assuming you didn’t apply ED (binding).

Visiting colleges isn’t strictly necessary! But, if you do want to go visit some colleges, any summer during high school can be a great time to do so.

Many students also choose to wait until they’ve gotten their acceptance letters, and then tour the colleges they were accepted to in order to help them make their final decision. This is also a great plan!

Caveat: If you live within an hour driving distance of a college you’re applying to, I would make time to go visit on a weekend. It can be a red flag for admissions committees if you say that you’re really committed to this school…but you’ve never visited and you live 20 minutes away.

Recommended Start Date: You should be thinking about this throughout 8th grade and all of high school, but start out by just thinking about what you enjoy! Don’t make this a chore, just use your passions as guidance.
Recommended Deadline: Try to have your intended major pretty well narrowed down by May or June of Junior year.

There are many essays you’ll need to write that will ask you for a first and second choice major, and then ask you why you have chosen those majors. The longer you wait to make a choice, the less time you’ll have to write those essays. And those are very important essays. So, end of Junior year is a good deadline. And earlier is always great, too!

Recommended Start Date: 9th grade or as early as possible.
Recommended Deadline: Major progress by the end of your Junior year.

This is harder to quantify because it really depends on what you’re doing for your Service Project. If you’re running a charity, you might have a yearly event that’s scheduled for September. That’s fine. If it’s a yearly event, that means you’ve already done one event! So, you already have some major progress by the end of Junior year.

If you’re putting on your first ever event, I would really recommend that you do it before Junior year ends (or possibly very early in the summer). You need time to see how it went, plan next steps, and write college essays about the experience.

Talk to your College Strategist today about setting clear deadlines and goals that are directed at your specific Service Project!

Recommended Start Date: 9th grade or as early as possible.
Recommended Deadline: Major progress by the beginning to middle of Junior year.

Again, this is harder to quantify because there’s a lot of variety in what you might be working on. But, you do want to have big progress earlier in Junior year because you want to show your teachers, guidance counselor, and other mentors! This is a huge area where you can get input, get them invested, and then have them write about your project in their letter of recommendation. But, in order to get them involved and writing about your project in a way that will actually benefit your application…you need to actually have something impressive completed that you can show them.

If it’s art, put together an exhibition and invite your art teacher. If it’s a coding project, get it functional and show it to your computer science teacher. If it’s a business, get a website fully up and running and then ask your economics teacher for advice on marketing. If you’re writing a book, get a full draft done and send it to your english teacher.

Whatever it is, get it to a big point of progress and start showing people either before Junior year starts or something early in Junior year!