Ep.2/ junior year of high school
This episode is all about what steps to take during junior year of high school for a successful college admissions experience.
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In this episode of Admittedly, Thomas addresses families with high schoolers in their junior year. Admissions counselors at schools are contacting juniors, parents are scrambling over how and when to get started, and the pressure is on to get everything ready for college applications.
Thomas touches on the importance of grades junior year, why leadership roles can make you a better candidate for university, and how you should spend your summer leading up to senior year.
These topics will be further explored in future episodes, but with the tips discussed in this episode, you can start planning and thinking about schools that work for your family, your budget, and your goals right now.
Key Highlights
When to start the admissions process
The first step juniors need to take
Examining your grades and extracurriculars
Showing initiative and work ethic
What to do during the summer
Some questions to ask yourself about the academic and physical environment you want to be a part of
What to look for in a college when you're researching
How you can get started right now
Selecting the right schools to apply to
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Hello, and welcome to the second episode of the admittedly Podcast. I'm Thomas Caleel. And today I'm talking to families with juniors in high school, I can feel the panic, you can sense the panic. The seniors have just gone through early decision applications. They've gotten their results in December, but some of them had to scramble for regular decisions in January. And now everybody is nervously awaiting the decision release in March. And at this point, juniors, you're starting to get contacted by the admissions counselors in your school. They're starting to shift from the seniors to your class, and the pressure is on I know, parents are starting to scramble a little bit and thinking, what do we have to do? There's so much to do, when do we have to get started?
And the answer is about now is a good time. Because if you've been doing things correctly, and planning ahead, you should be in a pretty good position. If you maybe have not paid as much attention as you would have hoped to this high school career, then now's a good time to really kind of step back, focus, assess, and think about where we're going.
So, juniors, what do we need to do? The first thing we need to do is take a look at our semester, one transcript. And, yes, I certainly understand that schools have different grading periods, they have different terms.
Certainly, if you're in an IB program, you're going to have a different grading process. But for right now I'm going to speak to the US system. And I'm going to assume we're on two semesters, we can adjust from there, and I welcome your questions on this. But for semester one, we want to look at our grades. How did you do? Did everything track? Are we in line with where we have been in the past? Was there something good or bad that happened? Is there something that we need to think about in the second semester, maybe a weakness in a particular class? Do we need to get some tutoring? Do we need to spend more time with our teachers going over materials that maybe we didn't quite absorb or could have done better on because grades your junior year are really, really important? I'm not saying that you make you panic. I'm just saying that because it's true.
Really, you know, your academics consistently across all four years of high school are very important, but junior year is when the difficulty level goes up. And universities and colleges are really looking closely at that as a measure of your academic potential in college. So we want to make sure that our second semester courses are okay, do we need to step up or step down a level? That's okay. Right. One of the questions that I get a lot of times as well. If we think about, for example, AP courses, is it better to get a B in AP math, or an A in the regular honors math? And the answer and I don't say this flippantly is the best outcome, obviously, is to get an A in the AP. But really, as you're thinking about classes, academic rigor, how you challenge yourself is very important.
So if you are getting A's in easier level classes, that's not going to be an impressive and impressive achievement to an admissions officer who's reading your file, they really want to see that you're stretching yourself and that you're challenging yourself. And if for example, you get a B, and your teacher says, I've never seen somebody work harder. This young individual, this individual worked as hard as they possibly could. They took advantage of office hours, they came in to see me they worked with the student tutoring service, and they really, really, really tried their hardest, then that goes a very long way to showing your attitude and aptitude.
So we really want to make sure our courses are on track. We want to start thinking about leadership roles in senior year for those of you who are involved in sports, or extracurricular activities. Ideally, you've been working on things that you're very, very passionate about. And we want to start thinking about okay, how do I take a leadership role in this organization or on this team? What do I have to do to show my potential Now, does that mean if you don't get a leadership role you have no chance at a good college? Absolutely not.
And remember that there are leadership roles outside of Captain co captain, president, vice president, treasurer secretary when you will Looking at clubs, really, there are so many ways for you to make an impact on an organization, you could organize a conference, you could organize events, you could end up winning the on a team, like a spirit or motivation award or you know, the hardest worker, getting a letter from your coach, for example of somebody who really goes above and beyond and, and is the person that the other players turn to.
For example, if you're working a part-time job, after school, or you're doing research, you look for opportunities to maybe do a, you know, management training program, if you can, or pick up some extra shifts, or whatever it is that you can do to show that you're being recognized for your initiative, and work ethic, and place on the team. The next thing we want to think about is the summer, the summer is coming up in and it's something that is very, very critical this summer, between junior and senior year is really, really important because, by this point, you've tried different things. You've experimented academically, you've experimented with extracurricular activities, and by now you should have things dialed in, you should have a meaningful summer experience. And we'll talk about this in greater detail in a later podcast.
But really, we want something that speaks to our central thesis. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is that, as a junior, you are going to be presenting yourself, this coming August or September, as you're doing your application to a university, you're going to say this is who I am, this is what matters to me, this is what I want to study at your university to achieve my goals. And so if you say you want to be, for example, a journalism major, but you spend the summer traveling and having fun and hanging out, that doesn't really evidence, your love of journalism. If you say you want to be a journalism major, and you attend workshops, and you maybe get a part-time job at a local paper, and you're getting published and learning that is meaningful progress.
Okay. Now, I know that there are a lot of summer camps and academic programs, and those are fine, certainly, but universities realize that there's an element of privilege to that. Not everyone can afford to spend several $1,000 on a summer program. And so not attending one of those is certainly not detrimental to your application. If you get admitted to a selective program, and you go and you learn and you grow, fantastic. If maybe you need to work over the summer to help support the family to help earn money for college, that's fine as well. There's nothing wrong with that.
In fact, it can be very, very good and show a lot about your character and your determination, and your tenacity. But what we really want to make sure of is that that's not all you do. All right, continue your love of reading, continue your love of biology, math, English or poetry, or whatever it is that you want to study, evidence that in your day-to-day life. Another thing you can do is start looking at schools. For those of you who have friends who are seniors who just went through the admissions process, ask them what they learned from their school visits, ask them what they learned from their research, and start to think about basic things, right?
Where do I want to be geographically because geography matters. There's a big difference between January in upstate New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. And I know it's very easy to say, well, if I get into a good school, it doesn't matter where I am. But the reality is that it does. It's four years of your life, and you will be spending most of your year there. So think about the environment think about signs do you want a large school or a small school? Do you want a research-based institution? Do you want a teaching institution, these things are very, very important. They impact a lot of different elements of your experience at the school. And we'll dig into those in depth a little bit later.
But you can visit these schools and look at them online. As I said, you can talk to seniors who have just been through the process. You can go visit schools that are nearby to you, right, it's fine. If you can jump on a plane and go visit schools over spring break or the beginning of summer. That's wonderful. But let's say you're not able to do that. You can go visit schools that are proximate to you. And you can see what does a large state school look like, and what does a smaller liberal arts school look like? Not that you're necessarily going to go to those schools, or maybe you will, but it will give you a sense of what that environment feels like. And you can, it's not apples to apples, but you can kind of use that to judge your potential experience and other schools.
Be sure to meet with your school counselor, and get a sense of how many students are they advising. How much bandwidth will they have for you? What is their feedback for you, because they've seen many, many students go through their office, they know what outcomes look like from the school, and they can give you some pretty good guidance based on your academic history, your extracurricular involvement, parents, you know, be sure that you're attending the meetings, if you can be sure that you are talking to the counselor, when and where appropriate as well build that bond.
One thing we hear sometimes from juniors is okay, my summer plan is that the minute I get out of school, I'm going to do my AP exams, and I am going to start writing my essays because I want to be done. And inevitably, you have juniors saying by mid-June, I'm all done with my essays totally done, done with the application process. And to me, that's a bit of a rush, right? How can you possibly write your essays and leave all of your summer experience on the table, and not talk about that? The other important thing, and we've seen this before with people eager to get a jump on the process is that until the universities post their essays online, they can and often will change the essay questions. And so the worst thing is to write all your essays out, and then open the Common Application when it resets and the beginning of August, and realize that you wrote entirely incorrect essays.
So we'll talk a lot more about essays later. But for right now, it's really about not rushing, staying focused on what we need to do one step in front of the other. Now is a very good time to think about what is your thesis. If for those of you who have not seen Steve Jobs's commencement speech at Stanford, I urge you to do that. It's on YouTube, and very easy to find. But what he talks about is, how looking backward is really the best way to figure out your life, right? How did I get here? And so we start by looking backward. Oh, because I liked this. And that led me to this. And I realized I didn't really like this, but there was an offshoot that took me down a different path that led me to a different path. And so as you're tracing your progress, then you can start to think about, okay, this is who I am. And now where do I want to be? Not in the sense of, what do you want to do with the rest of your life.
Because quite frankly, most people don't know that you can ask most people at some point in their life, any point in their life, really, what do you want to do? What do you want to be when you grow up? And they'll say, you know, I haven't entirely figured that out yet. So we're asking more? What do you hope to accomplish? Right? What matters to you? And how do you want to use University to achieve that, most students will say, but I don't know, most parents will tell me, I just don't know my child is interested in all these different things.
We understand that. And universities also understand by and large that when they admit you, many times, you will change your path while at university. And that's one of the best things about going to a great university, is that you're surrounded by all these bright, interesting, diverse people with unique viewpoints, professors, administrators, students, and you get there and it does expand your mind, it does change your path. And that is the beauty of going to higher education. Right. But we can't approach the school and say, you know, I really just have no idea what I want to do. I'll figure it out when I get there. Because all that shows is a lack of discipline. It shows a lack of foresight and a lack of preparation and planning.
So, what we want to do is at this moment in time, this is what I think I want to accomplish. And this is how I hope to accomplish it at your school, understanding that eventually, that may change. And no one will think worse of you for having done that. We also want to think about possible recommenders. So think about the classes that you love. Most applications will generally ask for a math or science recommendation and then a history or English teacher recommendation.
So think about that. Think about those teachers that have been meaningful to you and that have resonated with you, your high school may have a process in place where you fill out a sheet, you formally request a recommendation. And then the teachers sometimes will generate their own questionnaires, asking you about your experience, why you're applying to particular schools, etc. So we don't want to leave that to the last minute, we want to be very respectful of the process. We want to be respectful of your teacher's time so that they have plenty of time to complete the recommendations in the late summer when the Common Application goes live. So that we are not rushing them.
Because I promise you, no good recommendation comes out, of coming to your teacher at the very last minute and saying, Hey, I completely forgot about this. And it's due tomorrow, but can you write me a recommendation? self-explanatory. There's so much to talk about. If you're a junior in high school, this is really just a very high level. Start, we're going to break down a lot of these different things extracurricular activities, course selection, what to do over the summer, in future episodes, but for right now, what we want you to do is really kind of take stock, maybe map out the next couple months, start thinking about schools that are a good fit for you that works for your family that works for your budget, that work for what you hope to accomplish.
And really, I can't stress this enough. As you're thinking about schools, I know that there sometimes is a tendency to open up US News and World Report and look at the top 20 schools and say, I'll be very happy at any of those. But I think it's really important for you to be honest and self-aware in this process, to look at what it is that you want to study. Because not every school even if a school is top-ranked, may not have a great program in what you want to study. Whereas a lower-ranked school might have a fantastic program that accomplishes everything you want from your education.
So be selective, you know, be a sleuth, get in there, look at the courses that are offered. Look at what the faculty are teaching and researching and leading, look at conferences, look at exchange opportunities, look at all those things. Be very selfish. Say what do I want out of this, right? And start to break that down and map that out. And hopefully, your parents are able to be a resource. You can help guide you can help lay out and adhere to some kind of timeline or structure. As a parent, I understand how challenging that can be certain. But what we don't want to do is be scrambling in the fall. Once they're back at school as seniors the academic pressure is on the social pressures on they're busy. They're doing all the things that they need to do day in and day out. And then dropping the admissions process on them as well is a tremendous recipe for burnout.
So juniors, the best advice I have for you right now is Breathe, relax. You've got this we're going to be on this journey together. And I very much look forward to taking these steps with you. Thank you.
