For many of you, this is the time when you’re prepping for final exams, applying for scholarships, and buying gifts for your friends and family. If you’re a high school senior, this is also an important time for you to draft and review your college applications before submitting.

Seeing that Early Action/ Early Decision deadlines have passed, there is one last deadline for most schools: Regular Decision. Regular Decision is the last deadline for high school students to submit their college application(s) and receive notification by early April until late June. Before submitting your college application(s), here are a few reminders to run down before submitting.

Letters of Recommendation

Most colleges will ask you to provide letters of recommendation from teachers, advisors, and/or coaches. Always give your recommenders plenty of time to write these letters; two weeks in advance provides ample amount of time for recommenders to draft and submit, however giving your recommenders more time doesn’t hurt. Always check up with your recommenders to see if they need help with the process, such as uploading and submitting their recommendation letters through the online portal system, typical for many college programs. Lastly, always follow up and thank your recommenders, as they took time out of their day to think, write, and recommend you to the college you want to go to.

Constructive Criticism

Almost every college you apply to will make you respond with an essay about a specific topic or provide a short response to a question. Whatever you write, do not forget to review, edit, and also get feedback from teachers, friends, and family members. Whenever we get feedback for our writing, we get another pair of eyes that can reveal any mistakes that we may have been blinded to. Accept constructive criticism and consider implementing the critique from those who provided feedback to better construct your essay. After all the necessary edits and reviews, double check one last time before submitting.

Hold up! Don’t submit!

Don’t submit it just yet. Before you click that submit button, review all of your essays. Are there any points you failed to address? Any grammatical errors? Make sure you reread all of your entries as you cannot go back and resubmit your application. Review over the basic material such as your contact information, making sure everything is correct. Did your recommenders already submit their letters on your behalf? Make sure to double, triple, and quadruple check all information, documents, and additions to your application before submitting. Imagine having to contact the office of admissions to say that you made a mistake on your application! Once you have thoroughly reviewed and feel confident about your application, press the submit button! You’ll be receiving a submission notification from the college in a couple of days, to about a week, so keep a heads up.

And there you have it, one less thing to worry about ­­­— college applications. Feel free to review these steps while you complete your college applications, as it will definitely pay off in the future, trust me!

Story by Kyle Catarata – OWINN Special Projects Coordinator