Summer is Critical for College Apps
by Tony T.
Summer is a critical time for college applicants because it offers you a unique opportunity to take advantage of your free time and work on your application materials and to explore colleges. Here are a few reasons why:
- During the summer, you have the chance to reflect on academic achievements, extracurricular activities, and personal experiences. You can use this time to plan and strategize how you want to present themselves in their college applications.
- It gives you ample time to build up your college application inventory, including your overall transcript, your standardized test results, your resume & extra-curricular activities report, your personal stories and essay ideas, your recommenders list, your colleges list, etc.
- It allows you to explore some colleges to know better why and where you want to be so that you can narrow down your choices. From our experience working with students and families, most students did not visit colleges they applied to because they ignored this important step.
- It is a great time to prepare for your tests such as SAT or ACT, and TOEFL for international students, IvyBoost advises you to get your tests done by October.
- It is also a great opportunity for a summer program, research, internship, or job to ramp up your personal profile. Many such programs are sponsored by colleges and may include your dream school, so it is also a great opportunity to fully explore that school.
- It gives you enough time to brainstorm and craft your college essays. Writing a college essay is not difficult, but getting better ideas for your essay may take a much longer time to think about. Working with an experienced essay mentor may help you get this job done much more efficiently and avoid the pitfalls that most applicants made about their essays.
- It gives you adequate lead time to prepare the early applications which may have deadlines as early as October. Using summer to work on your application will ensure the quality of your work and may impact the admission results substantially.
IvyBoost Education offers a 10-step college application service. Our experienced counselors and essay mentors will guide you step by step and manage your application deadlines to maximize your opportunities for the colleges in your choices.