Of everything you do in high school, the activities you undertake during your junior year will have the among most significant impact on your competitiveness for college admissions and scholarships.  As a rising junior, how can you set yourself up for success?  In this post, we’ll walk through a checklist for rising juniors to review before school starts.  Specifically, we’ll show you how to tackle each of the following five priorities with free tools and resources developed specifically for Alaska students:

1. Determine whether you should prepare for the PSAT—something you should do before or during August)
   
   
2. Craft your SAT/ACT strategy to maximize your scores and efficiency
   
   
3. Get serious about your GPA: Depending on when you submit applications, the next two semesters will comprise the final grades colleges see.
   
   
4. Start developing your college list—the single most important factor upon which nearly all of your other decisions over the next 12-18 months will depend
   
   
5. Determine whether and when you will need to take SAT Subject Tests

Let’s get to work!
 

Updated January 19, 2021 - The CollegeBoard has discontinued the SAT essay.  At this point, only a handful of schools schools require or recommend the ACT Writing (essay).

Updated May 22, 2020 - Over the last two years, a variety of high-profile colleges have announced that the SAT/ACT essay will now be optional for applicants to their schools because they believe a single essay cannot reliably predict a student’s college writing capabilities. As of this posting, only a few colleges require or recommend the SAT/ACT essay.  Finally, Princeton, in a move mimicked by Brown (and likely other colleges soon), has made the SAT/ACT essay optional, but instead requires all applicants to submit a graded writing sample. Should YOU plan to take the SAT/ACT essay? Here’s how to decide.

Developing a working college list no later than junior year, and finalizing it before senior year begins, is what sets the most competitive applicants apart.  If there's one thing about college admissions that high school students should learn upfront, it's that all roads in high school lead from where you intend to apply to college.  The colleges on your list will determine the minimum GPA you should aim for, which standardized tests you need take (and the scores required to make you a competitive candidate), how many essays you will need to write, what kind of scholarship opportunities may be available, which other application deliverables you may need to prepare, application/testing/scholarship deadlines, and much more.

Whether you're a sophomore or a senior, it's never too early to start thinking about where you aspire to attend college, and how you can start building your application assets to be a competitive candidate by the time you apply. In this post, I'll explain our five-step process to identifying your colleges of interest.  I'll also describe how I work with my college admissions consulting students to professionally guide them in developing their preliminary and final college lists.

Step 1: Start Early

Step 2: Consider Your Assets and Preferences

Step 3: Research Colleges

Step 4: Develop Your Preliminary College List

Step 5: Finalize Your College List

"What I really liked about working with you the most was the essay refining part because it kept me on track. And I like to say that I would have been able to stay on track, but I definitely would not have because there were times when I would sit down on the weekend and be like, 'Okay, I'm meeting with Kimberly on Monday. I have to write this essay or I'm not going to have anything to show her.' So that in the moment kind of sucked. But looking back it was really good for me. Otherwise it would have not been good. I was also really happy about this feedback that you were able to give me with my essay and how I was able to make it as good as it could be."

-Anja L., graduate of Dimond High School

Anja L. is a Dimond High School graduate.  During spring of her junior year, Anja began working with us in a college admissions consulting program.  We began working together to build her college list, enabling her to visit colleges during the summer.  In addition to college research and list building, I also assisted Anja planning and developing of some of her college essays (including her main Common Application essay) and optimizing her SAT testing plans. Anja concurrently completed a 12-hour SAT Individual Prep program and received one-on-one academic tutoring in her precalculus class. Over the course of her SAT prep program, Anja increased her SAT superscore to 1450 (97th percentile).  Anja was accepted Middlebury College, Colorado College, University of Vermont, and Montana State University, where she was awarded a $46,000 scholarship, for which eligibility criteria generally include 95th+ percentile SAT/ACT scores, 3.8+ GPA, track record of leadership/honors/high-impact extracurriculars, and essay application.

In this post, I share excerpts from an interview with Anja, during which we discussed the college list-building process (including some of the tools she used), essay development, and her SAT preparation experience at Frontier Tutoring.  Responses have been edited for length and clarity.  Use the links below to jump to the questions you're curious about.

-Kimberly Hewitt, Business Unit Manager - College Admissions Consulting

SAT Subject Tests could be an important part of your college admissions profile.  In this post, we'll cover critical things to know about SAT Subject Tests—like the fact that there is still a penalty for guessing, unlike the regular SAT.  We'll also discuss other FAQs from Alaska students, including which colleges require SAT Subject Tests, what makes for a competitive score.

"It's nice to have a third party saying, 'What are your goals? Okay, then this is what you have to do to get there.' So it's not just parents going, 'You need to get good grades, you need to do this, you need to do that.' You’re helping the [students] figure out what they want to do and how to get there."

-Bhree R., parent of Emma F., 11th grader at West Anchorage High School

Emma F., a junior at West Anchorage High School, is one of my current college admissions consulting (CAC) students at Frontier Tutoring.  In this post, I share excerpts from an interview with Emma and her mom, Bhree, about why they chose to start college admissions consulting during Emma's junior year, rather than waiting until senior year.  Responses have been edited for length and clarity.  Use the links below to jump to the questions you're curious about.

-Kimberly Hewitt, Business Unit Manager - College Admissions Consulting

"Starting DURING junior year allows you to improve your COMPETITIVENESS.  Starting AFTER junior year limits you to improving your NARRATIVE."

-Kimberly Hewitt, Business Unit Manager - College Admissions Consulting

Many high school students and families I meet with wait until fall of senior year to think critically about their college list or applications—but for best results, students should begin planning for college admissions during junior year—the earlier, the better.  Why?  If you start planning for college admissions during 11th grade, you will have time to improve your profile and competitiveness (for example, by adjusting your coursework selection, improving your grades and test scores, initiating or enhancing your involvement in specific extracurriculars, identifying and deepening relationships with potential recommendation writers, etc.).  On the other hand, if you wait until after junior year to begin thinking about college admissions in earnest, you will be limited to expressing the most compelling narrative about the profile you already have.  To be clear, optimizing the way you tell your story and express your goals on college applications is critical—but you'll be even better positioned if your profile is more competitive to begin with.  In this post, I'll walk you through six specific, high-leverage areas I work with on students when they start a college admissions consulting (CAC) program during their junior year.

• Developing and refining an optimized college list
• Getting to know your story—and translating it into your essay strategy
• Choosing coursework strategically and maintaining an excellent GPA
• Selecting, scheduling, and preparing for standardized tests
• Optimizing your extracurricular profile
• Identifying letter of recommendation writers and equipping them to advocate strongly on your behalf

Matt F. is a 2017 graduate of South Anchorage High School who completed a College Admissions Consulting program with Frontier Tutoring during the 2016/17 school year.  He also improved his ACT score by four points after taking our ACT Prep Class during his junior year.  Matt is now a freshman at Penn, where admitted applicants have an average high school GPA of 3.84 and SAT score of 1520/ACT score of 34.

In this second installment of our How I Did It series, we're giving you a first-hand account of what it's like to go through the college admissions process with a professional advisor.  Now, let's hear from Matt, along with his mom, Melissa, as they tell us about their experiences working with Frontier Tutoring in a College Admissions Consulting program.