<p>I can see the wisdom in getting all apps done at once, but I foresee possible trauma with d – “Mom, don’t you have faith in me to get in to College X?!”</p>
<p>And Pizzagirl, I agree that the two week window is way too small if things do not go as hoped with ED.</p>
<p>Two week window is plenty of time. Computers are never down for more than few hours or a day. FYI - most top tier schools do not start reading until after the deadline. There is no reason to get apps in early. If your recs or transcript are late, no need to worry, they will usually give you some grace period.</p>
<p>D1 applied to Duke on Dec 24, on Dec 26 she was notified for interview. One more thing, don’t do paper submission, do everything electronic.</p>
<p>You can make copies of the common ap - and send at different times, and even change it up. It’s in the instruction sheet …how to do this.</p>
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<p>Have her read oldfort’s older daughter’s story.</p>
<p>I’ve also read threads …where the student was so despondent after being rejected or wait listed … they had trouble completing other aps.</p>
<p>I guess that could be a problem for an especially emotional kid, but if the other colleges on a student’s RD list are Common App schools, and the rec letters have already been written and transcripts sent, then how much effort does it take to fire off the Common App to more schools? Yeah, some may want a school specific essay, but sometimes you can adapt something already written… and even if not, it’s just the one thing that remains to be done. For most kids, that’s really not going to be that difficult to pull off. If it seems it might be, then just write a preliminary draft in advance.</p>
<p>Tufts had 5+ extra supplement essays, and they were all thought provoking questions. D2 wrote over 20 new essays. Worst Christmas ever.</p>
<p>One other thing to keep in mind is many schools (especially public) have a deadline of when you must notify them which schools you want to apply to. D1’s school was very lenient. Her GC told her to apply to more schools if she wanted to over the winter break, and the school would expediate her transcripts to those schools after the break.</p>
<p>I have very little trust in things like that which are out of our control. D got screwed over by not one, but two, teachers promising her recs for a summer program and never following through. And I don’t believe the GC office has any sense of urgency. If it was up to me, everything would be submitted – all ED, EA and RD – by Nov 1 and call it a day.</p>
<p>When your student approaches teachers for recommendations for that ED application (which had better happen during the next couple of weeks, if it hasn’t happened already), you may find that the teachers will want to get the student’s whole list of colleges all at once, with all the accompanying recommendation paperwork.</p>
<p>This happened to my daughter, who suddenly found it necessary to finalize her RD list in September, just so that she could get recommendations to accompany her ED application.</p>
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<p>That is one reason D had everything ready to go for the other schools. My friend who ia a GC recommended this (although in hindsight, her grades/test scores were way above the midrange for her ED school, but than again you never know…).</p>
<p>To the OP - this is an excellent thread topic.</p>
<p>My three sons all filed either early action or early decision. They had all of their scores sent at the same time for each of their schools and the applications were all completed by the date of their EA or ED. They each felt that if they did not get accepted they at least had everything ready to go.
I was very grateful for this attitude especially the year that our twins applied. They did however submit the applications for their safety school (state) because it was rolling admission and once they gained admission to the early schools they declined admission to the safety. They were accepted immediately at the state schools long before early decision and early action news came.</p>
<p>After being rejected in the early round, D1 went back to her essays and looked for ways to improve them before submitting applications at the end of December. Nothing like a good dose of humility and reality to sharpen the old editing pen…</p>