There’s no denying how busy your child’s junior and senior years can get. In addition to being two of their toughest academic years, your child will be tasked with maximizing their standardized test scores, continuing to pursue high-impact extracurricular activities, securing recommendation letters, and working on their college applications by writing essay upon essay.
Given their various responsibilities, your child should follow a timeline for what to complete and when. Otherwise, they may have to play catch-up at a later time, which can lead not only to unnecessary stress, but also weaker applications. With all the hard work they’ve put into setting themselves up for successful college admissions, it’s important that your child not fall behind during this critical period.
We developed a recommended college application timeline to help ensure that your child completes all their junior- and senior-year to-dos ahead of time and with little anxiety. Rather than include general advice (e.g., “Put aside time for your applications”) or things they have to do as part of their schooling (e.g., “Take your final exams”), our timeline exclusively focuses on when your child should complete various tasks associated with their applications.
Our timeline can be applied flexibly to accommodate your child if they decide to take their standardized tests or begin working on their applications sooner or later than we recommend. If your child is an early bird, they can spread out their work further. On the other hand, if your child is running a bit behind, they’ll have to speed up their work. At the end of the day, whether your child begins working on their applications early or late, the key is to always prioritize application quality over speed.
In addition, some of the timeline’s bullets may not apply to your child. For instance, if they’re not looking to apply to any University of California (UC) schools, feel free to disregard those bullets.
Regardless of the dates we’ve listed below, we recommend you visit each test company (i.e., ACT or the College Board for the SATs) and university website for up-to-date offerings and application deadlines.
