So you’re a high school senior in Taiwan, and you’re preparing to apply to college in the US. Actually, you’re thinking about applying to five or ten schools. They all seem so competitive. Your dream is Columbia or Penn or maybe Johns Hopkins, but you wonder if you should apply to a wider range of schools in order to increase the chances of acceptance.
You’ve identified your reach, match, and safety schools. If you are rejected by Columbia but get into UCLA you’ll be pretty happy; but you really don’t want to wind up at University of South Carolina. There’s just one problem. It’s already September. The new school year has started, and you have piles of homework for those tough AP classes you have selected. It requires an almost superhuman balancing act to manage your assignments, clubs, and sports – all of which are important to get into US schools – with the considerable amount of work required to complete five to ten undergraduate applications.
It’s almost enough to make you pull your hair out, right?
So how do you handle the whole process and manage your time effectively to get everything done well and on time?
Great question. The answer is surprisingly simple: you make a plan and you stick to it.
You are going to make a document called “My Game Plan.”
This document is both electronic and printed. You will have it on your smartphone or tablet so that it will be accessible everywhere you go. You can choose a word processing file, spreadsheet, or slides for your game plan document, whatever format helps you feel the most organized and is easy to refer to.
Your game plan document will center on three things:
– Key Dates
– School Research
– Essay Questions
(This article goes over the first part: key dates. Part II and Part III will cover school research and essay questions in depth.)
The goal of your game plan document is to centralize and outline everything you need to do in one document, which will allow you to feel much more in control of the process. Additionally, you’ll be able to show your parents and college counselor a comprehensive plan, and reassure them that you’re taking the college application process seriously.
Part I: Key Dates
You need to know the critical dates for all of the schools that you’ve chosen to apply for. When are the early application deadlines? Are there two early decision rounds for any of your choices? When are the regular application deadlines? When is the last date that you can retake the SAT or ACT for your target schools? Do you need to do an alumni interview by a certain date? Oftentimes you need to arrange for those well before the early application deadline.
Consolidate all of the dates in a document and color code them for schools. All of the dates for Duke will be blue. All of the dates for Michigan will be gold. Put all of the dates into a Google Calendar, and set up alert notifications for them at intervals of one month, two weeks, one week, and three days before the due date so that there is no possible way you can forget what’s coming.
By setting all of the dates down in one central location, you will give yourself, and your parents peace of mind as you go through the application process. In Part II, we’ll review how to do school research and what details to keep track of. Don’t miss it, and be sure to share this advice with any friends you may have applying to undergrad programs abroad to help them!
[Find the next two installments in this series here: Part II // Part III]