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You hit submit, now what?

February 4th, 2020

Regular decision applications have been sent off for review and early action deferrals will soon be reviewed again: the waiting game is in full force. For some high school seniors who sent their applications in the fall, a lot can happen between their submission and the final decision in March. Is there anything applicants can do to increase their chances of admission during this downtime? Sure!

Photo from Northwestern University’s additional material upload page via Medium.com

When significant progress has been made since the application was sent off, updating your profile can make a difference in the outcome. Many times students are able to use the update link through their portal on the college’s website and I believe this is always the best path if offered. If not, emailing one’s admission contact or the regional admission officer is wise, with clarity in the subject line, such as “Update information for (full name), Fall 2020 applicant.”

If you have been questioning whether or not you should provide an update to your application, the article linked below from Medium will help you make that call.

Article referenced below from Medium.com published February 15, 2019 written by Theo Wolf

Guide to Sending an Update to Colleges After Applying

So you’ve sent in your applications and now you’re nervously waiting to hear back. You might be wondering if there’s anything more you can do to help sway the decision. The answer is yes! While we don’t recommend inundating the admissions office with updates (there’s a classic story known in college admissions circles about a kid who sent postcards to the admissions office every week), in some cases it can be helpful to send an update to the schools you’ve applied to.

Should I submit an update?

You should submit an update to colleges if you have made significant progress in some aspect of your candidacy story, whether you’ve greatly developed your Spike, won a major award, received serious recognition from a well-known website, etc. If you haven’t done anything noteworthy, an update email is unnecessary, as it will be unlikely to move the needle on your application and may actually annoy admissions officers (they have a massive amount of reading to do this time of year). You don’t need to send an update on grades (unless it’s requested of you), since that will be in your counselor’s midyear report. We particularly recommend an update if the college cares about demonstrated interest.

Check your email! A crucial habit for college applicants

January 21st, 2020

In today’s world we are always connected. Cell phones have created a new way to communicate and respond immediately that is much faster and quite frankly more enjoyable than the way things used to be. Long gone are the days of “snail mail” where response time could take almost a week.

For teenagers, email is typically not the first means of communication and understandably so. Sifting through junk mail to find the important pieces of communication can be a turn-off, and replies don’t arrive as quickly as with texting!

Photo by Stacey Westcott via Chicago Tribune

However, email is still a very important way to communicate in the world of school, work, and especially college admissions. In the article linked below, the Chicago Tribune helps you understand the importance of staying on top of all the information being sent your way so that you don’t miss anything.

Article referenced below from Chicago Tribune, published December 19, 2019 written by Dawn Rhodes

Teenagers don’t use email — colleges do. That’s a problem during college admissions season

Amber Fitzgerald never uses email.

When the 18-year-old started applying to colleges this year, the crush of messages flooding her inbox made her stop checking it.

“I get 10 emails a day just from two colleges,” said Fitzgerald, a senior at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights. “If I go a week (without checking) we’re talking 100 emails easily from schools I’m not even interested in.”

Email is not the default for most teenagers, but it remains the primary avenue for colleges to communicate with prospective and current students. That can mean aggravation for college-bound teens and their families at the time of year when schools send critical admissions and financial aid information mostly via email.

Deep dive: show schools and colleges who you really are

January 7th, 2020

When applying to boarding school or college, you work to distill your entire life into a several-page application for someone to read and determine your fate. What do you include? How do you stand out against the other piles of applications?

Sure, you include test scores, GPA, involvement in clubs and other extracurricular activities. But what really makes you, you? What do you do on a day to day basis that doesn’t necessarily “earn points” with the admission office but shows what you really value as a person? In the article linked below from Forbes contributor Brennan Barnard, you’ll learn how to take a deep dive into your daily tasks and discover exactly how to reveal what’s at your core to admission officers.

Seniors sending updates to admission offices may glean some ideas, and juniors looking ahead to next year’s applications can certainly benefit from Barnard’s article. Boarding school applicants, too, may find this article helpfulful as they put final touches on pending applications.

Article referenced below from Forbes, published November 20, 2019 written by Brennan Barnard

What Matters In College Admission

A look of surprise and encouragement washes over his face and with earnest he exclaims, “You mean that matters?”

I am sitting in my school counseling office reviewing a high school senior’s college application, and I have asked why there is no mention of the hours he spends at home after school caring for his grandfather.

The importance of a testing timeline

December 10th, 2019

As the semester is winding down and winter break is upon us, it is a great time to begin planning ahead for your next step in the college admissions process. Juniors will soon receive PSAT results, which means it’s time to determine a strategic plan for spring semester SAT and/or ACT testing.

Have you mapped out your strategic testing plan for the months ahead? How will you juggle test preparation with studying and extracurricular commitments? The article linked below from Applerouth offers great food for thought about all of this.

(Note: Although Shropshire Educational Consulting is not affiliated with Applerouth, we trust their website and appreciate all that this test prep organization shares.)

Article referenced below from Applerouth, published February 13, 2019 written by Katie Rose-De Laet

Creating Your Student’s Best College Admissions Testing Timeline: How to Get Started

Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal. Springtime is when we really feel the need to plan out the future. It’s a great time to start making academic and test prep plans as well: you’re almost done with one academic year, but not yet bogged down in summer vacations and internships and part-time jobs. Many parents aren’t sure exactly where to start when it comes to planning out their student’s testing timeline – so we’re going to walk you through the process, starting at the end and working backwards!

If you don’t yet have a college testing timeline worked out for your student, this is the time to do it. If your student is a freshman or younger, it’s too early to begin any kind of test prep, but it’s never too early to work out a timeline. Planning ahead will make sure you don’t miss out on any deadlines, but it will also take a load off your mind and allow you and your student to focus on what’s most important, no matter where they are in their school career.