{"id":203,"date":"2021-05-29T21:44:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-30T03:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/?p=203"},"modified":"2025-10-04T08:27:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:27:23","slug":"college-applicant-survival-tips-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/2021\/05\/29\/college-applicant-survival-tips-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"College Applicant Survival Tips (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you\u2019re a highschooler and you\u2019re reading this post, you might be thinking about college.\u00a0 (If you have other plans, that\u2019s cool too, but as the title indicates, this post is written with those who are going to college in mind.)\u00a0 Some people know exactly where they want to go, and hopefully what their second choice is if the first doesn’t work out.\u00a0 Some people aren\u2019t too concerned about where they\u2019ll go, they\u2019ll just apply somewhere and see what happens.\u00a0 And some (including myself a two or three years ago) want to go to a good school but don\u2019t know which one.\u00a0 I\u2019m now a college junior and have (obviously) been through the process of applying, so here are some tips and what-to-expects that might help you.\u00a0 First off, the process in general:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Go to College Applicant Survival Tips (Part 1)<\/a> to keep reading!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

\n
  1. Don’t know where to start?\u00a0 Try looking up \u201cTop [your major] schools,\u201d or \u201cBest [state] schools,\u201d or something similar.\u00a0 (Just beware that different lists use different criteria, and not all criteria may be useful to you.)\u00a0 Especially look at in-state schools, depending on your financial means – they have lower tuition costs and sometimes more scholarship opportunities for state residents.\u00a0 Or maybe you have other factors you\u2019re looking for, like online courses.\u00a0 Start there and see what\u2019s offered.<\/li>
  2. If you aren’t a millionaire, hit the scholarship search hard.\u00a0 Schools have quite a few of their own, and there are outside sources too.\u00a0 Here\u2019s one site I used that was really helpful in finding non-school-specific scholarships that I qualified for: careeronestop<\/a>.<\/li>
  3. Start early.\u00a0 The school deadlines to turn in admittance applications look like they give you plenty of time, but they’re really the last<\/em> deadline there is.\u00a0 If you want to apply for scholarships, honors programs, or other things, they may have earlier deadlines, and it helps to start several months before.\u00a0 Especially depending on how many different places you’re applying to.\u00a0 I procrastinated getting serious about applications until after I took the ACT for the last time in October, and because I was applying to several schools and the accompanying scholarships etc., I was constantly scrambling to meet deadline after approaching deadline for a while. I also got no sleep.\u00a0 Don’t be me.<\/li>
  4. Which leads to the next point: I noticed that among the schools, scholarships, and programs I applied for, the more prestigious they were, the more work the application required and the earlier the deadline was.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if this holds true for all schools, but keep it in mind.<\/li>
  5. If you want to get into the top schools, prep for the ACT (or SAT) like your life depends on it.\u00a0 They have average ACT scores in the 30’s.<\/li>
  6. Prepare to be deluged with tons of emails for a while.\u00a0 Although come to think of it, you’ll still get lots of emails even when you pick a school and once you actually start classes, so just accept that your inbox will never be the same again (if it was quiet before)\u2026<\/li>
  7. Don’t stress about finding the perfect school right away, or studying up on them all.\u00a0 You\u2019ll learn more than you might have wanted to know as you study for application essays and the like, and if you\u2019re limited by finances, the list will narrow itself as you receive financial aid offers.\u00a0 I ended up choosing Mizzou because my list was only down to two options financially, and between the two, I liked Mizzou’s campus more than the other when I toured them.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    I still have a handful of notes to go, so tune in next time for part two, where I\u2019ll share a few tips related more to the applications themselves. And of course, feel free to share any thoughts in the comments!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If you\u2019re a highschooler and you\u2019re reading this post, you might be thinking about college.\u00a0 (If you have other plans, that\u2019s cool too, but as the title indicates, this post is written with those who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[33,32],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-blog-business","tag-applications","tag-college"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}