Notes for Seniors on App Season
Application Season Reminders
What are the seniors’ jobs as an application deadline approaches?
• Always keep a steady head, take deep breaths before you send an email or come into the college office, and focus on what is the next step you can take that is in your power.
• Be kind, polite and courteous to the adults at school helping you.
• Expect that it will take us some time to review items you send us. For the next month we will be working very hard on rec letters and reviewing many items from you. Start any supplement, essay, etc. more than 2 weeks before it’s due. Be sure to read our general advice on essays here.
• Rule of thumb: Your procrastination is not anyone else’s emergency.
• Your job is to send your application and fee on or before the deadline. You have until midnight ON the deadline. We recommend submitting earlier in case there are technical problems. They happen.
• Your job is to select your teacher recommenders in Naviance. If you don’t, they may have trouble getting your letter submitted on time. (You also need to triple check that the deadlines selected in Naviance are correct and actually offered by the college—check the college websites. If you don’t, the school materials won’t go.)
• Your job is to provide your teachers with your earliest deadline with a month's advance notice. Even for schools that don’t use Common App, if they accept recs, they are most likely submissible through Naviance. You don’t have to do anything different for different colleges.
• Your job is to send official test scores to your colleges. You may already have official scores you can send now. You can also send more scores after you apply. Try to send new scores as soon as you receive them. If they aren’t received on the deadline day, it’s totally fine (with a couple of exceptions.) Go to actstudent.org or collegeboard.com. Check colleges’ rules on reporting—some require all dates.
• If applying test optional to any colleges, don’t list scores in your application(s).
- If you took the October ACT, you may want to submit screen shots of your scores to colleges before you get the full report, since the writing scoring is delayed this year. Colleges should send you information about how to manage those reports.
• To “send” a Common App: 1) After you log-in, ensure the “check marks” are all green under the “Common App” tab. 2) Once you have completed the work under “My Colleges” for the school you’re submitting, click “Review and Submit” under that specific college that’s due. 3) This should allow you to view a Print Preview, pay your application fee, and submit. 4) For each college, you want to check back after you send to ensure its “check marks” under “My Colleges” are ultimately green.
• To “send” a non-Common App: Check over the application carefully, submitting the application and fee.
What is The College Office's job as my application deadline approaches?
• Our job is to send your transcript, teacher recommendations, and college counselor recommendations (which we are busy writing now!) When materials are entered into the system, one of the counselors or Cyd will submit them asap.
• You don’t need to check with your teachers, nor ask us if we are sending those materials. Trust us, if you’ve done your job.
• We spend the deadline days and those leading up to them carefully ensuring transmission of thousands of documents, so know that we’re working for you behind the scenes, something that makes it hard to answer emails quickly during those days.
• Naviance and Common App do not always show you the correct status of teacher recs and school materials. It could take a few days, and sometimes a manual correction on our end for you to see them as “submitted.” Everyone gets things in on time. Even if the school materials somehow were not sent, in reality they can be sent for some time after the deadline. It is common that teacher recs are uploaded after we submit other materials. They may end up being submitted a day or two later. This is completely acceptable. It is inappropriate to ask teachers whether they sent their letters!
It is YOUR PART OF THE APPLICATION that needs to meet the deadline.
Many colleges’ information systems will automatically send emails when they process one item as received. This email will list other items that are needed to complete your application. This does not mean these items aren’t submitted.
Bottom line, colleges want your application and they will help you complete it if anything goes wrong. Sometimes it does. Keep your perspective. Your counselors have many years (52 between us) in counseling and admission! We have never seen an application invalidated by an honest mistake, a computer glitch, or when supporting materials are received.
Finally... during winter break, we are on vacation! There are no "emergencies" that can't be dealt with when we return in January. Please respect your counselors' and teachers' time with family.
Finally... during winter break, we are on vacation! There are no "emergencies" that can't be dealt with when we return in January. Please respect your counselors' and teachers' time with family.
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