The school year is rapidly coming to an end, and those backyard barbecues, beaches and long, lazy summer days will soon be upon us all. However, if you will be a college-bound senior next year before you put on that swimsuit and slather on the suntan lotion, you should consider what you can do over the summer to better prepare for the application season ahead.
There are two important steps that every college-bound student should complete before his or her senior year: The asking for the letter of recommendation and the writing of the long application essay are best completed during summer break.
First and foremost, before you leave for summer vacation, you need to ask teachers to write letters of recommendation for you. Colleges requiring recommendation letters generally want to hear from junior year teachers. As a result, these folks end up writing a ridiculous number of letters. The sooner you ask your teachers to write this letter, the more likely they are to say yes. Remember, there are hundreds of students in your class and a limited number of teachers. This is a great example of the early bird gets the worm. With that in mind, juniors should request those letters before going on summer break. Your teacher may not write your recommendation letter until the fall, but this shows how much you value and respect your teacher’s time and efforts. The relationship you’ve developed also will be fresh on both your minds, and you will have time to make your request in a thoughtful way rather than rushing through it next fall after 40 other kids have already asked the same question.
The next most important activity is perhaps the most dreaded of all – the writing of the long application essay. The best time to complete this often dreaded assignment is over summer break when students do not have a number of difficult courses, community activities, sports and life in general competing for their valuable – and yet limited – time. Most colleges will not be changing their writing prompts for the upcoming application season, so I encourage every college-bound student to go to commonapp.org or the individual college websites to discover what the essay questions and short response questions were last year and begin writing.
The long essay, as the name implies, requires more time with the task of writing. Do your composing in small doses over time: progress, step away, revisit, progress some more. Each time you start the next effort, read your work aloud to yourself (better yet, have someone read it to you) and revise on the spot. Hearing your work gives you a sense of the voice you’ve developed. Listen for tone, choppiness in sentencing, pronoun overuse and cumbersome sentencing – all mistakes I frequently make, but you cannot make in a college application.
The big “Do not’s” include the following:
Do not lapse into a listing of résumé items, all the sports you’ve played, your academic standout moments, pets you’ve owned, your favorite things in the world (unless they ask you!). Such lists will likely be a part of other sections of the application. In this essay, your task is to develop impressions and understandings about yourself for an uninformed reader.
Humor – well-chosen and used moderately – can add an enjoyable dimension to your writing. Do not, however, lapse into creating an essay where humor is your objective over thoughtful and reasoned revelations about yourself.
Avoid bragging; the dismissively critical; whining; haughtiness; aggressiveness; intolerance; the word “hate” in any statement; excuse making; blaming; colloquial negations like “sucks,” “stinks” or “lame”; hurtful sarcasm; and insincerity.
Work for: genuineness; a measure of awe and wonder; hopefulness; the tone of what’s possible; gratitude and appreciation; humility (genuine, not contrived!); caring and generosity; rightful pride; tolerance and openness; respectfulness.
Words to avoid if possible: a lot, a bunch, tons (as in, tons of work), kind of, sort of. The Exhausted Seven: great, nice, awesome, cool, important (unless you say why), boring and whatever (as a sweeping dismissal.) Use always and never sparingly, if at all; the true frequency usually lies somewhere in between.
The more prepared you are when school starts, the easier the applications season will be for you. Enjoy those long, hot summer days but do put some time and effort into preparing to apply to colleges.
Deborah Mendenwaldt is the college and career coordinator and a senior counselor at Durango High School. Reach her at dmendenwaldt@durango.k12.co.us.
