dsultemeier

My D's school gets out relatively early (May 23). My D said the other day that her GC wants the forms and school lists when school gets out so the GC can work on her letters over the summer. My D's teacher said the same thing for recommendations. Everybody seems to be in anti-procrastination mode right now!

The only problem is that I looked on the school websites and the Common App forms for next year aren't up yet and some of the colleges haven't updated their forms yet. My D was also still tweaking her college list based on visits we are doing in May and June. We can of course contact the schools and talk to the counselor about the forms but do you have any other ideas on how to get started right now on this. As a side note I just printed off the school report from U of Chicago and it is 4 pages long. No wonder she wants to get started now.

believersmom

dsultemeier-
That sounds great!!! Way to go on getting down to business and make sure that GC knows how outstanding s/he is to light the fire. The teacher recs are important early too because it is just rude to ask in the crunch time. Asking early also makes it easier when down the road for scholarships and such the student needs the rec tweaked a bit to fit the situation and the teacher knows that the student is not coming to them at the last minute.

Try not to sweat the Common App. It comes out in July (on the first I think) and you can download a copy of this years to see what is on it, the CA does not vary that much from year to year. Constantly check though as your D settles on schools, to see if the school does the CA, as my D found one of her schools joined affiliation with CA for the first time this past admission cycle. ONE word of caution about the CA that is relatively new. It USED to be that a student could do the CA, submit it, then go back in and tweak things like the essay to more personalize it for each school, then submit the edited app to the next school and so on. NO MORE! With the exception of the various schools' supplements (which not all schools do), what the student submits is what ALL the CA applied to schools see. D had done a very specific essay for her (then) 1st choice and had a more generic for her other schools. She almost sent the "I love your school far and away the best" essay to ALL the schools!!! Fortunately she caught it and the faux pas was avoided.

We should also list Rolling Admissions schools on another thread perhaps, to save time looking up each school's situation. Maybe I will start that in the admission & search section...