College Applications Submitted

If you applied Early Decision or Early Action, that doesn’t mean you should save your Regular Decision applications until later (if you’re deferred or denied admission). Don’t take this risk. It’s unwise!

If you’ve submitted your college application(s) for Early Decision / Early Action and you’ve already completed your essays for the schools you may be applying to through the Regular Decision round (i.e., if you don’t get in Early), then take a big breath and enjoy it. Go out for a night. See a movie. Go for a swim. Go for a run. Get away from the computer. Heck, do this again the next day. You’ve accomplished something. You’ve finished your college applications. That’s a whole lot of work.

But that doesn’t mean you should start slacking off in school. Your grades must remain top notch. If you’re an A student, you should remain an A student. If you’re not admitted via Early Decision, for instance, your grades from senior year will matter as you seek to gain admission to colleges through Regular Decision. And just because you gain admission Early, that doesn’t mean your admission can’t be rescinded. Will it be rescinded if you’re an A student who happens to get a B senior year? No. That only means that you’re human. But if your grades drop dramatically, you are jeopardizing your admission. Why do that? Why risk all that you’ve worked for? Remember all of the stress that went into achieving what you achieved? Why make all that stress meaningless?

Similarly, if you applied Early and haven’t yet done your Regular Decision applications, do not save those for the last minute. When you learn you’ve been deferred or denied admission, then is not the time to start on your Regular Decision applications. You’ll be in a lousy mood and you’ll be in an utter, stressful time crunch. So you should be finishing up your applications to all schools now. Get that stress out of the way. Put in the work now and stop procrastinating as procrastinating will do you no good.