Getting Into College: Summer Break
It’s summer. You have no school, and life is good. Between sleeping late and spending time at the pool (or something more constructive), there’s a little voice in the back of your head:
“Hmm, maybe I should be doing something for college…”
You should definitely be listening to that voice, it has your best interest in mind. Well, there are some things that you should be doing and things that you don’t have to worry about. The first thing that you DON’T have to worry about is the most fun: CLASSES!! Your grades are the most important factor in getting into college, but when you don’t have classes, you don’t have anything to worry about!
So what should you be doing?
Prepare for the ACT/SAT
At PreazyPrep, we always encourage prepping for the big standardized tests (okay, we’re biased, but they are still very important!). There are two benefits to doing your prep in the summer: no school to worry about and lots of choices for test dates. The first benefit should be obvious, with no school it’s easier to focus on the ACT or SAT, which will help you increase your score faster.
The second benefit is that most test dates for both the ACT and the SAT are in the fall. This means that when you prep in the summer, you can take the test, and if you still feel you can get a better score, you have enough time to do some more work and go back for that better score.
Start Looking at Colleges / Narrow Your College List
This activity depends on how close you are to actually doing your applications. If you are going to be a freshman or a sophomore, congratulations on starting to think about college so early. As a reward, you’re task is easy: start looking at colleges and getting excited! Start making a list of schools you think are interesting or you would like to go to. Do some research and find what sets these schools apart. Let yourself get excited; looking at colleges should be fun. Don’t worry about narrowing down your list… that will come later. Right now, your list should be big, diverse, and exciting.
Now, for the rising juniors and seniors, you have a little tougher task. Don’t worry, it should still be exciting, but you have to do a little more work. First, if you haven’t made a broad list of schools, start there. Make sure to look at schools you know and schools you’ve never heard of. Find something special about each school.
When narrowing down schools, you need to take an honest look at your grades and your test scores and compare those to the average scores of the schools you’re looking at. You want to have a variety of schools, some where you are ahead of the averages and some that you may need to put in a little more work. Don’t get discouraged in this stage, and don’t eliminate a school just because your grades and scores are lower than the school’s averages. Remember, it’s only an average. Nearly half the students have scores lower than the average.
This is a very hard step, but it’s an essential first step in looking at schools. The thing to remember is the college applications and admissions are more than just numbers. Just like you looked for interesting and unique factors in colleges, your application, when done right, should tell the colleges all the interesting and unique factors about you.
Once you have a range of schools, choose the ones that you are most excited about. If you’re a senior, you should have between six and ten schools. If you’re a junior, you don’t have to narrow your schools that much, but you should be getting close to these numbers.
Once you’ve narrowed your list, you’re nearly done. The only other thing left is to learn as much about each school as possible. The more you do this now, the less you’ll have to do around application time, and trust us, you’ll be busy enough then.
To Visit or Not To Visit?
On one hand, summer is a great time to visit schools since you don’t have any school of your own, but on the other hand, it’s hard to tell a lot about a school during the summer. If you can visit a school when students are in classes, it is always best to do so. When students are there, you get a better feel for what life is really like, and it’s easier to pick up on those intangibles that make some schools great.
However, if you have a really busy schedule, it’s much better to visit a school in the summer than to not visit at all. Just walking around the school and seeing pictures that aren’t in a school sponsored brochure or website can really make a big difference.
Summer Activities
There are a lot more things you can do to make yourself a better candidate, and it really depends on the student what that is. These activities could be a summer job, volunteering, summer sports league, taking summer classes, or whatever else you do. Like all activities, it’s generally better to be deeply involved (with a possible leadership position) in a handful of things than to try to do everything.
In the end, you should enjoy your summer, but you should also be aware of the things that you can be doing to help get yourself into college.
