When to Apply for College? Your College Application Timeline

November 07, 2023 :: Admissionado Team

The college application process is long and involved, and it seems like every year, students start preparing for college earlier and earlier. But when should you actually start applying for college? Where should you start? There’s a lot to be done! Luckily for you, we’ve here to help. Keeping in mind that everyone’s approach is unique, here’s a rough college application timeline to help you plan perfectly and have as stress-free a college application process as possible.

Testing: Spring of Junior year

Like it or not, one of the first steps you’ll take toward completing your college application is taking standardized tests. It’s hard to miss these, as most schools will host tests for all their juniors and seniors and most of your class will be participating. Depending on which region you are applying from, the SAT or the ACT may be the more popular option, and many students choose to take both so that they can pick their best result. While there are testing dates as early as fall and winter of junior year, make sure that you have registered for the test taking place in the spring of your junior year. That way, if test day goes poorly, you can always fit one more try in during the fall. However, you don’t want to be sitting for these exams for the very first time in the fall. 

Choosing your schools: Spring – Summer

Maybe you’ve known since you were an eager eighth grader what colleges or universities you want to attend, or maybe you don’t have a clue where you want to end up. At this point in the process, it doesn’t really matter how much you know about universities. You need to invest some time formulating an application strategy before you can make informed decisions. Sit down with a college counsellor or admissions consultant—failing that, anyone who can act as a reasonable sounding board—and talk through what you want out of the college experience. Are you looking for an institution with some serious research heft, or somewhere renowned for its liberal arts curriculum? Do you want an urban setting, or are you looking for that idyllic, small town college experience? Figure out what you are looking for before you dive into research on specific schools.

The research process should be one of the most fun steps in the college application! This is where you get to dream: browse college websites, blogs, watch virtual tours, and imagine yourself on campus. Where do you fit in? What gets you really excited about college? Once you have a healthy-size list of options, it’s time to make some strategic choices. 

You should aim to apply to no more than 10 schools—any more than that and you’ll be stretching yourself pretty thin during the application process. When organizing your list, be sure to include schools that fit into the following three categories: “safety,” “target,” and “reach.”

Safety schools are those that you have an above average chance of acceptance (let’s say 90%-100%). Your GPA should fall well above the school’s average and your SAT scores should be 100-300 points higher than the average accepted student. We suggest having 2-3 safety schools on your final list. While these should be schools you like and would gladly go to, these are your fallback options (did you get that from the name?).

Next up, we want to find 3-5 target schools. These are schools that you have a solid shot at getting into—they are solidly in your range. Your GPA, test scores and overall profile should match with students that have previously been accepted. These will be a step up from your safety schools, and you should feel both pretty solid about your chances and about the possibility of attending.

Finally, your reach schools. These are the schools that may be a bit “out of your league,” but where you still stand a chance to woo the admissions committee. You should feel that tug in your stomach for these schools—these are the “dream” schools. We suggest students apply to 2-3 reach schools, and while you’ll put your all into the applications, recognize that these are “reaches” and that you may be disappointed.

We strongly urge students to complete their school selection August-September during senior year. You should have had a chance to visit most of the schools you are interested in during the spring or early fall at the latest, and if you simply aren’t able to vist in person, do your research online and through contacts at your schools of interest.

Essay writing: the earlier, the better!

There’s almost no such thing as “too early to write my application essays.” Especially when it comes to the Common Application. It’s all but certain that most, if not all, of the schools you will be applying to will take the Common App, so you may as well get started on this as early as you can. We think the best time to start writing your application essays is early summer, immediately after you have your school list set.

Give yourself a week or so once school is out to put your feet up and turn your brain off—and maybe even get outside! Then start setting aside some time each week to work on your essay. The Common App essay is the core of the creative part of your application—and we won’t lie to you, it’s high stakes. It’s extremely difficult to write a unique, personal and effective essay; an essay that not only conveys an interest or aspect of your personality, but contains your unique voice and captures some “essence,” all while charming the socks off an Admissions Committee that will read thousands of essays. If that doesn’t convince you that you should get an early jump on this essay, we don’t know what will!

Aim to have your Common App essays done before the first day of senior year—trust us, it will feel great starting the year with a major piece of your college application ticked off. If you want to go above and beyond, you can even get a jump on your supplemental essays, doing them in order of the schools’ deadlines. 

Early Action deadlines

Early action deadlines tend to fall in the first half of November, with the occasional cheeky October deadline. Make sure that you have confirmed the deadlines for each of your schools on that school’s official website. While blogs or articles that compile deadlines can be useful for a quick reference, your college app is too high stakes to let someone else’s poor research be your downfall. You should typically only be applying to your top choice school on an early action or decision deadline, depending on how committed you are to attending that school (make sure you know the rules of early action—usually nonbinding—and early decision—binding). You may choose to apply to one other school if both are at the top of your list, but check each college’s rules about this, too—some don’t allow you to apply for another school early action if you are submitting an early action application to them (Harvard, for example, has this rule). 

Regular Decision deadlines

There is more variety in regular decision deadlines, but typically they fall around the New Year—Jan.1. Some are a few days or a couple weeks later, and a few exceptions fall much earlier (the University of California network of schools has a regular decision deadline of Nov. 30), or much later, in February or March. Just as you did with your early action and early decision deadlines, confirm the application due dates on each school’s website. We suggest compiling these deadlines in one, easy-to-reference place—your digital calendar, a good old-fashioned planner, or even a list posted on your refrigerator. 

Once you know your deadlines, begin writing your supplements for each school at least a month before they are due. Supplemental essay questions are often unique, or downright odd, so it is worth giving yourself plenty of time to get familiar with the question, think about what that school is really asking you, and ruminate on how you can best represent your unique and true self and answer the question effectively. Once you’ve given yourself time to think it over, then outline and draft your responses and set it aside. Work on something else for a while—that history project or Spanish presentation, or maybe even some application forms, and come back to your essay a few days later, with fresh eyes. Finally, always make sure you’ve given each piece of the application a final read-through and polish before submitting. You shouldn’t be typing out your last sentence at 11:59pm the day your application is due!

Recommendations: Spring Junior year – Fall Senior Year

You’ve probably heard this from teachers, college counselors, and maybe even your parents, but you cannot leave the recommendations last. Whether you are putting this off because you aren’t sure who to ask, how to ask, or simply because it seems like a straightforward task you can take care of later, you will be doing your application a major disservice if you don’t ask for recommendation as early as you can. Consider that teachers write your recommendations on top of their regular teaching and prep responsibilities, alongside whatever else is going on in their lives (yes, teachers have personal lives, too), and often for dozens of students. Do you really want your recommendation falling to the bottom of the list and getting the last-minute rush treatment because you failed to ask early? 

To the extent possible, ask your chosen recommenders to write a recommendation for you in the spring of your junior year. If there is a teacher—perhaps someone whose classroom you’ve been in for multiple years, or a teacher you particularly connected with during junior year—that you know you’ll want a recommendation from, giving them the full summer and fall to work on your recommendation is not just considerate, but advantageous to your app. If you need some time to consider who you might want a recommendation from, you can still reach out during the summer—while they may disappear for a few months, teachers are still teachers even over the summer. Send a polite email with your request, and they’ll usually appreciate that you are starting the process early and giving them plenty of time to turn around the recommendation letter.

In some cases, you may need to wait until the fall to request a recommendation. Making sure you’ve asked everyone by Oct. 1 is a good rule—if that feels impossible with a specific recommender, you should seriously consider choosing a different person. 

Application Forms—don’t leave these for the last minute!

While this might seem like a straightforward step you can save for last, the forms and short-form questions that accompany your applications are often far from straightforward. They won’t require the kind of creative energy, time and revision that your essays will take, but these should not get the last-minute rush job. There’s more to them than you might think! In addition to the usual form-filling, there are sections on your interests and plans for the future, your extracurricular activities, and more. Oftentimes these questions are nested on digital forms where new questions sprout up with each response, so you won’t know how long this task will take until you sit down and start doing it. You need to put time into filling this out carefully—a sloppy, rushed job on the Common Application forms or on supplementary forms for a college will paint a poor picture. We suggest working on your application forms during those times you have set aside during the Fall of your Senior year to work on apps, but when you don’t quite have the creative energy or inspiration needed to work on your essays. Make sure everything gets a final review, and ideally a second pair of eyes, before you submit.

Financial Aid—Late Fall 

Once you have your applications under way, you should begin thinking about financial aid. Make sure you know the deal for each school you are applying to. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is released on October 1st. If you plan on applying for federal financial aid, it’s important to complete and submit your FAFSA by the earliest financial aid deadline of the school you are applying to. Completing your FAFSA can be time consuming and requires financial documents from your parents or legal guardian.

Making a Decision

Decision notifications will begin rolling out in March and April. This can be an incredibly stressful and anxiety-inducing time. Remember to breath! If you did the work and followed your personal timeline then you will wind up attending an amazing school that will be lucky to count you as a student!

At Admissionado, we have one simple, unshakable, fundamental rule. Let’s call it the Admissionado Golden Rule: go to the best darn school you get into. If that means Harvard, congratulations! If your best school is a local community college, that’s awesome too! Whatever your results, give yourself a pat on the back: you ran the marathon, made it through the gauntlet, walked the tight-rope—the college application process is no easy task, and you deserve kudos for reaching the finish line.

No doubt, the college application process is a long and complex one—you need to begin thinking about and planning for this process well before your senior year rolls around. That said, if you plan carefully and work ahead, this can be a relatively stress-free process. Who knows, you may even enjoy parts of it—this is a great opportunity to think carefully about what you want out of the next four years of your life and get excited about this next big step!