It's November 1st! Now What??

Today is November first, the most anticipated and/or dreaded day in college admissions! Hopefully if you were striving to meet Early Action or Early Decision deadlines, you were able to finish all those essays and hit send on those applications! First off, congratulations on submitting those applications! It is definitely worth celebrating all the hard work you’ve put in over the last several months. Applying to college is no easy task. I imagine you must be feeling a huge sense of relief, but also a sense that now you have done everything you can do and what is still to come is completely out of your hands. Here are a few things you can still do, followed by some helpful suggestions on how to manage your current headspace. First, the action items:

• After submitting your applications, you should have received invitations to set up your portal logins within a few days. If you have not received those invites, make sure to reach out to those admissions offices if it has been more than 3 or 4 days since you submitted. 

• If you have received them, have you set up your portals already? If you have, have you double-checked to see that nothing is missing from your application? Have you confirmed that your colleges have received your transcripts, test scores, recommendation letters, financial aid forms, etc?

• I recommend bookmarking all of the login pages to all of your portals and putting them in a dedicated bookmarks folder in your browser. Get in the habit of checking all of these once a week or so to make sure there’s nothing missing and to see if you have a decision waiting!

• A nice thing you can also do during this time is to send a nice thank you letter/email to your guidance counselor and teachers who wrote your recommendation letters thanking them for their time and (presumably) kind words!

Now, a little dose of perspective:

• Take advantage of the time you have now that you’ve finished (or at least mostly finished) your college applications to enjoy your senior year! Spend time with friends, get reacquainted with hobbies you enjoy, savor these last months of living at home with your family (as much as they may drive you crazy!)

• Start mentally preparing yourself for going off to college next year (no matter what college it ends up being!) Think about the life you want to have for yourself in school: the new things you’d like to try academically/socially/extracurricularly, etc. How you might like to reinvent yourself in a place where nobody knows you. 

• Know that, no matter how the chips fall in a couple months, you put in a great effort to be the best student you can be these last three and a half years, to write all of your essays as truthfully and meaningfully as you could, and ultimately admissions decisions can be somewhat incomprehensible (and are not a reflection on who you are as a person!)

• There is not one perfect school for any student; your experience in college will be very much informed by what you bring to it. If you have a good mindset, no matter where you end up, wonderful things will happen for you. You will make great friends, have new experiences, and learn new things!