It’s almost February. If you are a Junior in high school, graduating in 2013 and you have registered for or taken the ACT, spoke with your counselor about college, and started to visit colleges that interest you…good for you! You are right on track and doing great!
If you are a Senior in high school, graduating in 2012, you should have taken the ACT a few times, attended college fairs, toured the colleges that interested you, applied to and chosen the college of your choice, filed your FAFSA, and applied for scholarships.
If you are a Senior and all of those things listed above mean absolutely nothing to you…you better get your ass in gear! Graduation is right around the corner!
What’s that? You’re on the fence about college? You’re sick of school and think college isn’t for you? Maybe this will help with your decision:
That’s right. On average, a person with a Bachelor’s degree will make $1 million more, in a working lifetime, than a person with only a High school diploma. That’s not just chump change.
The ACT website gives a great college planning checklist for every year of high school. It’s never too early to start preparing for college.
Now, if you’re a Senior and you are on track with your college preparation, good for you. Just remember that now is not the time to slack. You need to keep those grades up through graduation. Even though you’ve been accepted to the college/university of your choice, you will still have to send a final transcript to that college. They will see if you totally gave up during the last term and it could affect your entrance into a professional program within the college or university.
As much as you will hate to believe it, your grades will follow you. From the time you begin high school until the time that you graduate from college. Your grades will follow you the whole way.
For you Juniors:
- Keep meeting with your college/career counselor at least once a year
- Continue to take and plan challenging courses
- Keep your grades up
- Register for the ACT. You should be academically ready to take it by spring. If not, take it early in your senior year.
- Talk with your parents and high school counselor about colleges that interest you
- Prepare a list of questions to ask on campus visits
- Continue to visit colleges and talk with college students
- List, compare, and visit colleges
- Investigate scholarship opportunities
- Volunteer for activities and clubs related to career interests
- Get a part-time job, apprenticeship, or internship; or job shadow in a profession that interests you
For you Seniors:
August 2011, you should have:
- Signed up for the ACT (if you didn’t take it as a junior, or if you aren’t satisfied with your score, or if you’ve learned a lot since you first took it.)
- Review ACT test results and retest if necessary
August – December 2011, you should have:
- Visited with your school counselor to make sure you are on track to graduate and fulfill college admission requirements
- Keep working hard all year; second semester grades can affect scholarship eligibility
- Visited with admissions counselors who come to your high school
- Attended a college fair
- Applied for admission at the colleges you’ve chosen
- Found out if you qualify for scholarships at each college you have applied to
January – May, this is what you should be doing now!
- If you need it, get help completing the FAFSA
- Ask your guidance office in January to send first semester transcripts to schools where you applied. In May, they will need to send final transcripts to the college you will attend.
- Visit colleges that have invited you to enroll
- Decide which college to attend, and notify the school of your decision
- Keep track of and observe deadlines for sending in all required fees and paperwork
- Notify schools you will not attend of your decision
- Continue to look for scholarship opportunities
- Keep track of important financial aid and scholarship deadlines
- Watch the mail for your Student Aid Report (SAR)—it should arrive four weeks after the FAFSA is filed
- Compare financial aid packages from different schools
- Sign and send in a promissory note if you are borrowing money
- Notify your college about any outside scholarships you received
I know that list looks super intimidating but just take it one step at a time and utilize the guidance that is available for you.
You can do this and in the end, you will not regret all of the hard work, it’s totally worth it!
Curvy Girl Guide Contributor, Heather Pierson, is a former higher education and admissions professional, and is also a wife, wine lover and mom to two beautiful girls. She’s an amateur blogger who is having a blast trying to find her career niche in life, while bouncing between stressed out, uptight, and anxiety filled. You know, like all the other rock star mommy’s out there!
I was a “getting ready for college” crazy person. I had a large chart (on poster board) with all the schools I was applying to and their location, tuition, programs, average ACT score & the like, to present to my parents. My parents and grandparents took me on three huge trips to tour schools in California, the East Coast and the South…I…toured a lot of schools. I had to take the ACT, the SAT and the SAT II’s (thanks to some odd requirement at UCLA…..). This just brought it all rushing back! It was a great experience though and I loved where I ended up. Great advice.
I cannot stress enough not to slack off during the last semester of your senior year!! One of my former students did just that – he’d gotten into his school of choice, and just let everything slide that last semester (I think his highest grade that semester was a C, and there weren’t many of those). He lost out on a scholarship because of his poor showing in that last semester!
I just want to say thank you for this. While I knew I wanted to go to college my family had never really dealt with all the prep and didn’t know what to do. Long story short I didn’t know when to take my SAT/ACTs and missed out for all the deadlines for universities. Instead I went the community college route and while not a bad track that wasn’t my intention.
Will bookmark this for my little brother when he gets older.
I think you’ve put together a great list above that could help a lot of high schoolers. But at the same time, kids shouldn’t feel forced to go to college either, no matter what your grades and test scores and guidance counselors tell you to do. It’s not right for a lot of kids right out of high school, and that’s fine too. It’s fine to join the military or get a job and live with your parents or a bunch of friends until you figure out what you’d like to do and where you’d like to do it. Just stay active in your life and in your community. The nice part about college is that you can go whenever you want to. And I’m guessing that when you actually want to go is when you will get the most out of it.
That is a very good point DreA, the only downfall with taking time off in between high school and college is that the likelihood of you actually enrolling in college, drops significantly.
The best piece of advice I have is, if you would like to take time off in between high school and college, have a plan laid out. Know exactly what you want to accomplish during that year or semester off, and follow that plan to a T.
where’s the info about SATs/why do you only mention ACTs in your article? you’re leaving out some very helpful (and very important) information.
I agree. Most advisors that I’ve spoken to suggest the SAT not the ACT.
It really depends on where you live and what schools you are looking into. Where I live, in Ohio, the ACT is much more prevalent than the SAT. The SAT is much more prevalent in the East coast and West coast schools.
Most colleges will accept either score. The SAT was designed as an aptitude test — it tests your reasoning and verbal abilities, not what you’ve learned in school. The ACT, on the other hand, is an achievement test. It is meant to test what you have learned in school.
The main point is, check with your guidance counselor and find out what the college you are applying to, prefers.
And…I apologize for leaving that out previously. This was my first time writing anything for CGG and I had a brain fart that more than just Ohio people would be reading it
Thanks for the reminder!
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