Your Four-Year College Planning Calendar

If you’ve been watching the news, reading any major paper, or listening in on your neighbors’ conversations in your local supermarket, and you have a student in middle or high school (or, for that matter, kindergarten), then you’re probably aware that the college admissions process is starting earlier and lasting longer than ever before. For many adults who attended college, admissions was more of an afterthought. Perhaps you took the SAT once, late in the fall of senior year; applied to your state university or a couple of private colleges where a family member attended or which a guidance counselor pulled out of a hat; and arrived on campus with little thought about why you had chosen that particular place.

In case you were wondering? Yes, it is different today, and for many reasons. The admissions process at selective public and private colleges and universities is more complicated, unpredictable, competitive, and extended than ever before. Once you get in, paying for school is just as difficult. What’s a family to do? Start earlier, plan carefully, and don’t give up. Here are some key action steps for parents and students to keep in mind during the four years of high school to help organize and make sense of the admissions process.

Freshman Year

The most important factor in college admissions is the quality of a student’s academic program. Thus, freshman year is a time to set out a four-year academic plan. This will change as a student moves through high school and depend on performance, development of new interests, qualifying for various course levels, and scheduling conflicts. Nevertheless, now is the time to:

• Make sure a student will fill the requirements for selective college admissions;
• Compare a prospective course plan to the requirements of any particular colleges you are already considering; and,
• Discuss your son or daughter’s strengths and interests and how best to pursue them through high school.

Colleges like to see that students stretch themselves through high school and take a demanding program. Students who read more and take more demanding classes also tend to do better on standardized tests. Next to performance in high school college prep classes over time, standardized testing is the third most important element in college admissions decisions.

Other freshman year tasks include:

• Considering extracurricular strengths and interests, and hobbies, and which will make the most sense to pursue in the following years. A student’s passions and innate talents should drive these decisions, not a desire to try to fit what you think colleges want to see.
• Planning for next summer, by January or February, to use the summer months productively, whether for work, to pursue an academic or extracurricular interest, to volunteer for a cause of interest, or to try something new.
• Registering for any appropriate SAT Subject Tests for the May or June test dates. Students in honors classes like Biology or World History might be ready to try one of these tests. Some colleges require two or three of them for admission.

Sophomore Year