Which Application Process Is Right For You?

By N'agelie Lazo, Senior

It’s November iPrepians! Probably one of the most stressful months throughout the year for a senior. You see, November has an enormous amount of deadlines that before you realize it, you have become THE COLLEGE APPLICATION PROCESS...dun..dun..dun…

Enough of my corny jokes, November is the home to the Early Decision/Early Action deadline. For those who are early birds, this deadline may be for you. Usually the time frame for this deadline is somewhere in late October, early November. Due to Hurricane Irma 2017, many application deadlines were pushed back.

Early Decision: Application that is binding to the school — the student, who is accepted through Early Decision, must attend the college.

Early Action: Application that is NOT binding to the school — the student, who is accepted through Early Action, will receive a response from the school of their choice earlier.

Now, after carefully reading over the differences between the two application processes, do these best fit you? If not, there are other ways to apply that you may be interested in…

Another very convenient and more realistic application process is Regular Decision. Regular Decision has a later time frame usually through late December, early January. This is  recommended for any senior who is in danger of catching Senioritis (procrastinators- unite!) within the first 9-weeks of school.

Regular Decision: the normal process by which students apply by published deadlines, with promise of receiving an admissions decision no later than April 1 of their senior year.

Sounds like a pretty good deal if you ask me! Most Seniors, this year, have plans of reaching the Regular Decision deadlines due to the massive case of Senioritis that has gone around. Be careful not to catch it! If you’re one of the unlucky few that did, and the Regular Decision still is too  much pressure, I’ll do you one better!

Welcome to the most amazing deal of them all...Rolling Admissions! This application process is handy to the seniors who are stressed out with classes, internship, dual enrollment, you name it! Although sometimes rolling admissions periods do have deadlines, you won’t have the extra stress of getting in college applications before your winter break.

Rolling Admissions: The idea behind rolling admissions is that it offers a large application window for students—sometimes six months or longer—and that colleges respond to applicants as the applications arrive instead of waiting until after a particular deadline.

Many Florida Universities have Rolling Admissions. *Do keep in mind that with longer periods to apply for colleges, the longer you may possibly wait for a response back.

HANDY TIP: Remember when you are ready to submit to your colleges, you MUST send your SAT/ACT scores directly from College Board/ACT website; Colleges don’t take self-reported scores on your Common/Coalition Application.

Now that you have the glossary of applying to college, you MAY or MAY NOT have come to a final decision on which application process best suites you...and that’s okay! My experienced senior advice would be to definitely take the time out to research each application process on your own. Also, be conscious of the time period you’re working with...before you know it you may have already missed a deadline! Don’t worry N’agelie Lazo is hear to save the day...Here’s a handy list of upcoming deadlines for those application processes: https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/get-in/applying

​Until next time, N’agelie Lazo...signing out!