The ideal college applicant has a good ACT score, a solid GPA, a rigorous course load, and is deeply involved in extra curricular activities.  If someone has achieved all of this, she may think she has acceptance in the bag. 

However, she may have forgotten something very important: time to actually apply.

Most students who have busy schedules have them because they are involved in many things.  This involvement is what makes them look good on college applications.  Ironically, it is these students who have trouble finding time to set aside for applications.

Every day after school, I have cross country practice until 5:30.  Then I go home and eat dinner, and start homework.  By the time I am done, I’m exhausted and go to bed.  On Saturdays I have meets and on Sundays I work.  With all of these things going on in the present, it is hard to find a time to think about the future.

Yes, it would have benefit me to do more work on this during the summer, and now I realize the mistake I made.  But at the time, September seemed so far away and I couldn’t bring myself to think about anything having to do with school.

There are many other students that have a similar schedule, and I imagine that they are having difficulty with this too.  It would be a big help if teachers in senior classes assigned less homework in the first few weeks of school.  With extra time after school, students would be able to get their applications in and have all the stress over with.

It is too late for seniors now, but I would heavily recommend to any underclassman to start applying before school starts and you have a thousand other things going on. 

Take the advice that I ignored, and save yourself a lot of stress so you can enjoy your senior year.

--Submitted by Jordan Messner, Managing Editor of Content