College Applications: April To-Do List
- Apr 9
- 3 min read
It’s April! It creeps up every year, and it’s the month when we start meeting with our college application students in earnest. We’ve had students finish their entire personal statement in April before, though it’s more common that they finish it in June or July. Here are five important points we’re telling our students and parents to keep in mind over the next few months.
College Application To-Do List
Get started on the personal statement. The personal statement prompts are usually released in February each year, so you can start working on it as soon as they’re official! Most of our students start working on the personal statement in April, with the caveat that prepping for the SAT/ACT and AP/IB exams is more important at this stage. Remember: any brainstorming you do will help you generate ideas not just for the personal statement, but for all the supplemental essays!
Develop a plan for the summer. If you’ve got internships, a job, a program, or vacations planned, that’s great! Just be sure to set yourself some realistic goals about how much college app work you’ll be able to do during that time. We recommend that you try to have your personal statement and Activities section done by the end of July so that you can focus on the supplemental essays once they come out on August 1st. Keep that in mind so that you’re not working on everything in August if possible!
Do NOT fill out the Common App yet. The Common App resets around August 1st every year (though sometimes earlier) to incorporate updates and post colleges’ new supplemental essay prompts. You can work on the personal statement and Activities section outside the Common App, but don’t fill out any boxes on the actual site until this update takes place or you’ll lose your work!
Make plans for college visits. If you’re visiting colleges over the summer, make sure your travel plans are set (flights and hotels will only get more expensive!) and that you have a strategy for what you want to see at each college. If you want to audit classes, remember that it’s the summer term so those classes won’t be fully representative of what classes there look like. If you want to see something specific, like the Architecture majors’ workspaces, the theater, the sports facilities, the labs, or the libraries, reach out to the admissions office to make sure they’re available. Many colleges perform renovations or maintenance during the summer so some spaces might be closed.
Be honest about your commitments between now and October, when the ED/EA applications are due. Where some of our students get in trouble is that they say they’re going to do work over the summer but then… they don’t. Often this is because they think they’ll be able to work on vacation or during one of their summer programs, but most of the time that’s not realistic and we want you to genuinely and deeply enjoy those experiences. With a little planning, you can get yourself ahead and take a TON of stress out of this process. The more you do now, the less you have to do later!
In April, we recommend that students focus primarily on prepping for exams and earning the highest grades they can in class, but if they have the bandwidth, it is indeed time to start this process. If you have any questions about this list or want to set up a consultation, email us at info@kingfisherprep.com. We hope you have a marvelous spring!
#CollegeApplications #CollegeVisits #Education #CommonApp #CollegeAppPersonalStatement #IvyLeagueSchools #StateCollege #CommunityCollege #HighSchoolSenior #TipsForStudents #KingfisherPrep
"College Applications: April To-Do List" - Written by Nathaniel Dolquist, Kingfisher Prep Head Mentor and CEO
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