Alright, class of ‘21, let’s do a quick check-in and make sure you’re on track for an efficient and effective application season. It’s Mid-October, and most of your applications are probably due in early January. Where should you be in the process right now?

Your college list should be final. You should know by now where you’ll be sending applications. Sure, you might end up adding a school, maybe even two. And one or two may drop off. There’s no reason you have to consider the list absolutely final until all your applications are sent. But you should be way beyond the point where you’re trying to figure out where you’ll apply. The reason is that there’s a lot you should be doing for the schools on your list other than simply applying.

The main reason you want to have your list final by now is that you need to be actively interacting with all the colleges on your list. You should have signed up for their mailing list, and you should be opening those emails and clicking all the relevant links. You should be following the colleges on social media. You should be looking through their websites, checking their admissions page, financial aid page, and department pages for any majors you’re interested in. You should be watching their videos and going on their virtual tours. You should look up who the admissions representative for your area is and send a note introducing yourself. To be clear, you’re not doing this because it gets you demonstrated interest points. It’s not a trick or a strategy. It’s just that you’re going to eventually be at one of these places for four to six years. Your college will be an integral part of your academic life, social life, future trajectory, and your identity. So you should be getting to know them as well as you can before you make a commitment.

You should have already requested recommendation letters and have those lined up. They may not actually be sent yet, but you know who is writing them and have followed up with those people to make sure everything will be ready on time. I’m hearing, anecdotally, that rec letters are a little rough to come by this year. Teachers have the extra stresses of working from home or all the extra work required for teaching in person. They may be less likely to say yes, or only able to say yes to fewer people. If you’re not the early bird for requesting letters—and it’s far too late to be the early bird—then you may not get exactly what you want. The teachers you were most hoping would recommend you may be unavailable, and you may have to go to other teachers and/or non-teachers. This problem will get worse daily, so get your letters lined up this week if you haven’t already.

You should have the basic paperwork filled out for your applications. You’re probably using the Common Application. There’s also a good chance you’re applying to a school that doesn’t use Common App. You may also be using the Coalition Application. Whatever the applications, there’s the hard part—essays and other written responses—and the easy part—basic forms like your name, school, and contact info. Get the easy part out of the way. Don’t try to finish the more difficult and important things at the same time you’re fiddling with filling in blanks. Make some momentum by picking the low-hanging fruit of paperwork.

If you’re going to apply Early Decision, Early Action, or any other November deadline, then you need to decide that and act on it. You’ve still got time—you can focus intensely on a single early application and be done with it between now and early November. But you need to decide in the next few days in order to give yourself time.

Decide if you’ll report SAT/ACT scores. Most universities will be test optional for you, and I really don’t think you should apply to any schools that aren’t. So, assuming you do have SAT or ACT scores to report, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to report them. I wrote about this question this summer, and my advice is to make the decision to send or withhold your scores based on how well you believe the scores reflect your academic abilities, not by comparing them to a school’s midrange. You can read my whole explanation here. Whichever you decide, you want to be making this decision soon. Even if you took it in October and haven’t got your scores back yet, or are planning on taking it in November, you still want decide what your threshold is between sending and not sending scores. You don’t have to wait until you have scores to decide where your line is.

You should be completing the FAFSA and, if necessary, the CSS Profile. These are the two ways that you apply for financial aid, and both of them opened up on October 1. There’s a lot of paperwork involved, and it uses your family’s tax return data, so it’s not necessarily easy to do. Many schools have a deadline published about when they need to have this information if you want to be considered for financial aid. That helps. But many don’t, and that can make it easier to put this off. Do not put this off! The sooner you get this finished and sent off, the sooner you can know what kinds of financial aid offers you’ll get. Make this a priority!

Speaking of financial aid, you should be talking with your family about money and affordability. When you get aid offers later in the year, you want to know ahead of time what your line is between affordable and unaffordable. Don’t wait until the numbers come in to start thinking about this and talking about this. It’s not always an easy conversation, so get the ball rolling.

So there you have it, a good picture of where you should be right now. If you’re more or less on track, congratulations! You’re doing great!

If you’re behind, there’s still time to catch up, but there you’re probably going to need to sacrifice something to make the time to catch up on college applications. You may end up sacrificing some of your time and effort on school work. As long as you don’t completely stop your school work, that will be fine. We’re talking about a few weeks, not all school year. You may end up sacrificing time with friends and family until you’re caught up. And that will also be fine for a short amount of time. If you get really behind, though, you may end up sacrificing the quality of quantity of of your college applications themselves, and that’s not so fine. If you get behind in studying for a high school class, you can get back on track when applications are sent off. If you get behind deadline for college applications, though, there’s no making that up.

A common belief is that you don’t have to sacrifice any of those things—you can just get less sleep and make it up that way. What I want to say is that choosing to sacrifice sleep is actually choosing to sacrifice all those other things. If you’re not rested, then you will end up sacrificing your school work…and your relationships…and your college applications. There’s just no way to perform well if you’re not getting enough sleep. So just cramming in a a few all-nighters is not a good way to catch up. Instead, you have to make some tough choices about what’s going to go away for a short time while you get caught up on college admissions.

If you’re actually ahead of schedule, that’s wonderful! What I’d like you to do is start thinking about the decisions you’ll have to make this spring. Start doing some planning and strategizing, considering the following questions:

If you hit the worst-case scenario and don’t get accepted to any of your schools—or get accepted but cannot afford any of them—then what will your next step be?
If you hit the best-case scenario and get accepted to all of your schools—including aid that makes them all affordable—then what will your choice be?
If you have to choose between your top-choice school with a bad aid offer and your bottom-choice school with a good aid offer, what will you choose?
If you get offered opportunities to visit campuses in the spring or apply for more scholarships, how will you make the time for that?

For many seniors, the spring semester is actually a lot tougher than the fall. Go ahead and start planning for that.

Wherever you are in the application process, I wish you well. This is what you’ve been working for, and you’re getting really close. I hope this guide is useful as a check-in to make sure you’re on track.

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Read these related posts: What should I be doing right now? Fall, 11th grade, Why you don’t deserve a scholarship, Don’t pass up a full ride.
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