Hey guys!
Since the first semester is over, I wanted to do a little re-cap about senior year so far, and some tips that might help current juniors wanting to prepare for their last year of high school.
First. Choose your courses WISELY. In your junior year, or early senior year depending on your high school, you’re going to be given the option to choose what courses you’d like to take senior year. If you know that you’re going to be applying to selective colleges (T10-T30), make sure to take a rigorous course load!!! I cannot emphasize this enough. It’s important to take note that your senior year grades and courses matter just as much, maybe a little less though, than junior year, but regardless, colleges will still notice if you got the case of “senioritis” by taking all on-level courses when you used to take a boatload of AP courses. But also, keep in mind that this is your last year of high school, and you’re going to want to spend time with your family, friends, etc, and doing the things that you may not have had time for before! So, for example, say junior year you took 3 AP classes. Try to take 3 or 4 AP classes as well senior year, so that you continue immersing yourself in rigorous or challenging courses, while also maintaining high grades. These grades will be compared to your overall performance, or “grade-range”, from previous years, so as long as your senior year grades are at the same level, or in fact better, than previous years, this will benefit you significantly in the long-run! Side note: sign up for those AP tests, and pass them based on your desired college’s score so that you can earn credit for it! You might not have to take the course in college, or you can accelerate if you’ve accumulated enough credits from AP exams in high school to even graduate college a year early!
Second: Continue those extracurriculars, whether they were short-term or you might just be thinking “it’s senior year, why should I?” Well, regardless, you should aim to continue them- one, to show commitment, and two, if it is something you genuinely enjoy, you would most likely be engaging in it, despite college applications or deadlines. A tip for this would be, if it is an internship, try to solidify those during spring of your junior year so you can pursue the internship during June or July, and hopefully secure a letter of recommendation from your advisor/boss/manager, etc. If one of your extracurriculars, for example, is a passion project, like a coding project or building an app for the elderly to keep their medications in a structured manner, or it could be creating art murals to educate the public on awareness issues like smoking, you should try to complete these projects during the summer between your junior and senior year so that you’re not struggling to balance passion projects, college apps, AP classes, extracurriculars, part-time jobs, or any other responsibilities you may have. This is certainly something that helped me when navigating the ups and downs of senior year so far!
Third: Try to complete most of your supplemental essays OVER THE SUMMER!!! Tbh, I tried to do this. But I procrastinated a tad bit. However, I did complete my common app personal statement, activities list, additional info, and all the sections of Common App as soon as it opened before senior year started AND THIS IS SO HELPFUL. Even if you might not have a completed Common App before school starts, make sure that you write down or keep track of all your essay ideas, extracurricular activities, responsibilities you hold, and have access to your transcript before junior year ends (or even the summer before senior year). This is just so that you don’t have to stress about it at the start of senior year and you will already have the more tedious tasks out of the way. I used a Google Doc to keep track of each component of the Common App and created a tab for each college so that I could separate the supplemental essays and have a list of the prompts when needed for easy access.
Fourth: Ask your teachers for recommendations junior year! Before this year is over, make sure you ask at least 3 of your teachers (it can be less if you’re definitive that they will write you a letter, I just did three because for one of my teachers I wasn’t sure if he would choose me out of the other students who also asked him). If you ask them senior year, they are going to be short on time, ESPECIALLY if you have early action or early decision college deadlines that are usually in October or November. A small tip for this: try asking a teacher in a course that intersects with your desired major in college, as they can attest to how you perform in the subject and how well prepared you are to excel in that major in college. Some colleges require recommendation letters from certain teachers, like an English teacher or Math teacher, so make sure to research what your college requirements are for recommendations!
On that topic, Fifth: Make your college list junior year, or even before! You can always add and remove schools during the summer or even in August or September, but try to finalize that list before October. I know a lot of counselors have mentioned that you should completely have it finalized over the summer, BUT, since the FAFSA and CSS profile open on October 1st, even if you are ready to submit these financial documents on that day, you can change that college list until then! But up to you, this is just something I think helped me, especially when I was still unsure about applying to a few certain schools. If possible, try visiting colleges junior year as well! My school lets us take 2 school days off junior and senior year to explore potential careers and colleges so that we get a feel of how campus might be and talk to current students about any niche facts that may not be found online for that school!
Ok, I will be making a part two for this! Stay tuned