Work at being good at high school

This is your top priority. If you don’t get around to the college stuff this spring, there’s still time to catch up in the summer. It’s a lot harder to make up for a rough semester of high school.

When admissions counselors look at you transcript next fall, this semester is the most recent and full picture they have. While they'll look at all your grades and activities, the junior year is really important. It lets them see how you perform in more rigorous classes and more leadership roles than you're likely to have in the 9th and 10th grade. 

As much as possible, improve your grades a little from where they were last year and even last fall. It’s fine to switch activities around, but make sure that you’re staying at least as active as you have been the past 12 months in terms of extracurriculars at school and things outside of school. (Remember: working and helping to take care of family absolutely counts as activities.)

Explore colleges

Now is a great time to start exploring colleges if you haven’t already. Maybe you’ve already got a firm idea of where you’d like to go. Maybe you have no idea at all. Most juniors (at least the ones who have already decided that they’re going to college) are somewhere in between. They have a few ideas, but will benefit from exploring a lot more.

When I work with juniors, I like to have a pretty good “college list” of about 30 schools by the end of the school year. That list will continue to change as you go along. Don’t feel like you have to have a finalized list by the end of the year. And there’s nothing magical about the number 30. Your list this spring might be 5 or 10 or 50. But you should try really hard not to wait to start putting a list together.

Questions to ask yourself: what do you think you’d like to major in? (“I don’t know” is a fine answer if that’s the case.) What size of school do you think is best for you? Would you like a smaller school with a strong sense of community, or a larger school with lots of options? What are your geographic preferences? Do you want to stay close to home or get away from home? Are there areas of the country you’re really attracted to? That you refuse to live in? Are there any particular sports you want to make sure are available? How interested are you in joining a fraternity or sorority? Are there political concerns that may make you avoid certain areas or types of schools? How religious would you like your college to be?

Don’t start eliminating schools based on cost…yet. That will come, but not in these early stages. At this point, when you’re building a big list, aim for diversity. Don’t exclude expensive schools yet, but also look for more affordable options. Don’t be afraid of colleges with low acceptance rates, but also include high acceptance rates. If you’re not committed to a specific geographic area, look at as many areas as you can.

Places to explore: When you’re learning about a college, spend a lot of time on that colleges’ website. Look at their main page, their admission page, the pages for majors you’re considering, and anything else you’re curious about. It’s a low-tech book, but the Fiske Guide is my favorite place to research schools. I also use Niche and Big Future. Don’t pay too much attention to rankings, but don’t ignore them. My rule of thumb is always “the top 100 is actually a tie for first place.”

For a great read about admission in general and not individual school profiles, Jeff Selingo’s Who Gets In and Why is well worth your time.

Make a testing plan

Decide if you’re going to take the SAT and/or ACT. You probably will. If they give it at your school, take it. Then, when you get your scores, decide if you’ll take it again. If so, prep and take it one more time. You can now decide on a school-by-school basis if you’ll submit your scores to colleges you apply to. Most colleges are test-optional, but not all are. Make sure you know the testing approach for each school you’re considering. If your high school has a school profile available, look to see if it includes test score ranges. It’s useful not only to know the midrange of the colleges you’re looking at, but also the midrange of your high school.

Start talking to your family about the cost of college

You don’t need every detail right now. But there are some things that are good to ask. Do you have any college savings for me? What do you think is a generally reasonable price per year to pay? In a year, I’ll need a very clear line between affordable and unaffordable—how close are you to having that number?

Make summer plans

If you need to work or want a job, that's great. As far as college is concerned it really doesn't matter what that job is so long as you work hard at it and think about what you learn from the job. As you go to work, remind yourself to work as hard as you can. And when you're done, ask yourself what you learned from that day's work. Those two things matter so much more to everyone—especially you—than the job title or name of the company. 

If you don't need to work, then make other plans. And here's the trick: treat it like a job. Decide to do your best and be reflective. Even if you have the easiest summer imaginable--maybe you're going to spend two months as a VIP on a cruise ship sailing around the Caribbean--you can still get a lot out of this. Just begin each day reminding yourself to make the most of the day, and end each day reflecting about what you learned. Whatever is you do, it can be useful for your college applications and useful for your productive and interesting life.

Sitting around "doing nothing" is the enemy of any smart and ambitious student. Even in the summer.