What Should Students Be Doing During the Admissions & Application Process?

Carl's professional career has been directly related to admissions in higher education. He was previously the Assistant Director of Admissions at Widener University, and has already obtained two master's degrees. Before his position at Widener, he was an Undergraduate Admissions counselor at Gwynedd Mercy University. There, he received his M.B.A. in Strategic Management & Leadership. Carl hopes to support current & future students throughout the admissions process by educating them and building potential discussions.

In today’s society, it has become expected that students who plan on attending college or graduate school should know exactly what their plans are after graduating. This relates to a multitude of capacities, but when it is all said and done, the program of their choice as well as type of school they wish to attend are among the most significant. In this post, I shed light on what students should be doing now to prepare themselves for the application process, what experiences they should partake in to better understand a particular institution, and the importance of making yourself stand out when you are going through the application process.

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Let me start off by stating that all institutions have amazing accessibility for their students to become successful no matter the environment, price, or location. However, when incoming students do not actually take the time to do their research about the schools they plan on applying to beforehand, it can create a whirlwind of trouble. Here are some tips on what you (and your families) should be doing now in order to better prepare for the application process as well as the experiences you should participate in:

Make sure to visit every institution before you plan on applying to them, even if the entire program is offered online. If you had a particular school on your radar, but then realized that it wasn’t a great fit for you after visiting, you can easily knock them off your list. Thus, when going through your applications, you’ll potentially be paying less for application fees in addition to cutting back on the emails, newsletters, and phone calls you’ll be getting throughout the next nine months. It’s also important to realize that when you narrow down your list, the strain of picking which one of those schools you’ll be attending becomes much easier. For instance, deciding from a smaller cohort of five colleges as compared to ten will enable you to not only attain information more clearer from each of these schools, but it also allows you the opportunities to explore the vast experiences each one offers (i.e. Open Houses, Admitted Students Day, FAFSA Completion Nights, etc.).

Now more than ever, colleges are providing an array of opportunities for incoming students to interact with people aside than just admissions departments during their visits to campuses. These include deans of schools, resident directors, clubs & organizations, and much more. Open Houses, shadow days, program workshops, and overnight visits are just four of the hundreds of options most schools offer. You can always find the upcoming events on a college’s web-page, through their calendar, or by contacting your admissions counselor directly. In the end, it’s about understanding all of the mitigating factors and then planning, strategizing, and knowing which schools and application pools will maximize your chances for acceptance.

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Remember, although you decided on which school/s you can see yourself attending, your application must still be reviewed by an admissions counselor. These tips are what you should be doing when attempting to stand out from other applicants.

Search for the admissions staff pages on each of the institutions’ websites. There, you will be able to find who is responsible for reading your application. Typically, counselors are assigned specific territories for which they recruit and review applications. Once you obtained the counselor’s information, reach out to them (via email or phone) by introducing yourself. You can write about who you are, what your plans are (short-term & long-term goals), why you are considering attending that particular school, or anything else that makes your introduction noteworthy. Most counselors are reading hundreds, usually thousands of applications annually. If you go through the process pretty cut and dry, then you look more like a statistic to that counselor as compared to an actual person with a unique story.

Continue the conversations with your counselors with weekly and/or monthly outreach. Most of these interactions should regard questions that you have. No matter how ridiculous your questions maybe, you won’t know the answers until you make the efforts in contacting them. Admissions counselors will also not know about your concerns until they are reached out to.

Make sure you’re applying to the colleges of your choice right away, even if the institution has rolling admissions! If you are current high school student and hope to attend college the following fall, take note on the following example. If you apply in August or September when applications open up as compared to waiting until after the holiday break (post-December), you could be setting yourself up for added stressors. For starters, counselors typically have a smaller applicant pool in the earlier stages of the process, which means that you are competing against a smaller group of applicants. Your counselor will more than likely recognize your name & application; that is if you followed the steps from the previous tips above. It should also be noted, that the later you apply to schools, the likelihood of you being added to a wait-list or the length of time it takes to hear back with an admissions decision becomes greater.

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Do you have a story that relates to either yourself or someone that you know going through the application process? What are some other tips that you recommend people should know about when deciding to attend a particular institution?