Guest post from Hannah

Hello!! I’m Hannah and I write the blog The Pink and Green Prep. If y’all don’t read my blog, I’ll give you a little bit of a background. I’m from Memphis, Tennessee but I live in Connecticut until I head off to college in the fall. Since I’m in the midst of graduating high school, I thought I would give y’all some advice on the college process and senior year!! Here are my tips!!

1. Take as many advanced/AP/honors classes as you can possibly handle. If your school offers AP’s and if you have the grades for them, take them!! They are a great way to bump up your academic resume. Advanced classes are like candy to colleges; they absolutely crave them and they make you as a candidate look great.

2. Do applications and supplements as early and as efficiently as you can. I cannot stress this enough, it is absolutely awful to put off college work to the last minute. I speak from experience: I was filling out my 7-question-ridiculously-hard supplement from Wake Forest 2 days before it was due on January 1st. It was a huge mistake and it’s not worth the stress. The Common App goes live on August 1st, so fill out the easy questions before school starts. Get it out of the way and you’ll feel much better.

3. Visit colleges before you decide which ones you’re applying to. Get all of your college visits out of the way in your junior year, so that during senior fall you can focus on apps and your schoolwork. Also, you could think that you love a college but end up hating it when you visit!! Just because someone tells you that you might like a college does not mean you are going to. Here’s a story: over the summer before my senior year, I made my “top colleges” list, comprising of Vanderbilt, SMU, Auburn, and Wake Forest. I had already seen Vanderbilt, so I knew that I loved it, but since people told me that I would be great at SMU and Auburn, I believed that I would automatically like it. Noooo. I visited SMU and Auburn over one weekend my senior fall and I ended up not liking either of them. I had to completely revise my college list after that. VISIT COLLEGES SOON. DO IT.

4. An easy way to look more attractive to colleges is to have a great extracurricular list. Colleges look for involvement as well as dedication. It’s good to create clubs at school, do community service, be on a sports team, be involved in the school musical or play…anything!! Most college advisors will tell y’all this, but the extracurricular list is really important and SO EASY.

5. Don’t depend on only one school. Have a first choice, of course, but always remember to have a second choice, a third choice, etc….don’t put all of your eggs in one basket!! You never know what’s going to happen and you need to be prepared. My college advisor told me that I need a positive plan and then a backup plan for my first choice school. Crazy things happen during college season and it’s good to have alternative situations planned out!

I hope that this helps everyone!! The college search is a crazy time for everyone, so don’t feel as though you’re the only one stressed out and frazzled!! This sounds cliché but…it gets better!! Soon enough y’all will be into college and having a great time!!

I hope everyone has a fabulous day!! Good luck to dWa on her college visits!!!

xoxo, Hannah