Yesterday, we released the 2019-20 version of our annual Collegewise Guide to the Common Application—it’s available here for free to anyone who wants it. But without the necessary context, more guidance and instruction can often increase rather than relieve stress. So for students, parents, and counselors, here are some suggestions to help you make the most of the advice we’ve shared inside.

Students

If you haven’t started your Common App, keep our guide handy and consult it as you progress through your application. It will be like having an expert over your shoulder to help you get it right the first time.

If you’ve already finished your Common App and have moved onto the revising and editing stage, use our guide to do a line-by-line review before you submit.

And if you’re happy with your overall application but just want some advice around a particular section or two, our guide can probably help you.

Parents

Kids should always complete their own college applications even if a parent will review them. But if you’re a parent and the official application reviewer in the household, our guide can help you assess where your student might need to do some additional application work before submitting. And more importantly, it will also give you a sense of which sections are strong enough as-is, which brings a great opportunity to give your student some boost-inducing praise.

High school counselors

• New to counseling and to the Common App? Spend an hour with our guide and you’ll transform from rookie to expert.
• If you’re an experienced counselor who’d like to brush up on your Common App knowledge, our guide will help you rediscover your expertise.
• Do your students come to you with questions about the Common App? Keep a link to, or an actual copy of, our guide nearby and use it whenever you need a second opinion.
• Share it with colleagues, teachers, and students.
• Post the link on your website or in your student newsletters.

Independent counselors

• Our guide will teach you exactly what to look for when reviewing your students’ Common Applications.
• Share the link with your students for them to use at home while they complete their applications.
• Our guide makes a great training tool when bringing new partners or employees up to application speed.

Continuing on my promise to spend my final month posting one lesson learned during this ten-year blogging streak, here’s day #2 of 31:

Good enough is “Good. Enough.”

We were really proud of version 1.0 of our Common App guide when we released it in 2011. But it wasn’t perfect. It looked like an amateur designed it (which was accurate—I was the designer). There were sections where we could have gone into more detail. The images could have been clearer. We probably could have shortened the overall length with additional editing. But we’d already spent dozens and dozens of hours creating the guide from scratch, then refining and revising. It already did everything we needed it to do. And to hold onto it even longer in the quest for perfection would have doomed us to an inevitable loop of changes that had long since left improvements behind. Once it was good enough, we released it. It was: Good. Enough.

“Good enough” can mean a haphazard, lazy excuse to release something unworthy of your time and effort. But used effectively, it can also help you push through the unsubstantiated fear that people won’t like what you’ve made unless you make it perfect. “Perfect” is a mirage. You can chase it but you won’t grasp it. It lets you off the hook of finishing. It starts as a laudable goal but eventually morphs into an excuse disguised as drive.

It doesn’t matter how good, great, or perfect something is if nobody gets to see, use, or benefit from it. Good enough won’t let you off the hook like perfect will. Embracing good enough helps you get the project out the door.

Our original guide wasn’t perfect, and neither were any of the subsequent ones. But each gets better than the last. We’re happy with good enough. And thankfully, plenty of others seem to be too.

If you want to produce better work (or college applications), try freeing yourself from the quest for perfect. Then work like crazy until you hit “Good. Enough.”

Writing a blog that dispenses advice about a ritual that repeats annually, like the college admissions process, means that while some readers have been here (and part of the process) before, some are going through this for the first time. The choice to write new material for a returning audience or to rehash old messaging that’s fresh for the new audience is an interesting balance, one that I may not always get right.

But as the Common App went live this week in what’s become an annual signal of the college admissions kickoff, I’d like to return again to an old message, and a few past posts to help this year’s applicants get off on the right application foot.

Extreme approaches work against you in the college admissions process, especially around time management. Procrastinating until the deadline forces you into application submission is a terrible strategy that will increase your anxiety, decrease the quality of the application, and perpetuate the feeling for the entire family that this is a process to be survived, not enjoyed.

But efforts to combat that procrastination shouldn’t cause you to overcorrect, either. Thoughtful applications and essays need time for reflection and revision. There’s no reason for any applicant to already feel like they’ve fallen behind. August is a great time to start because you’re so ahead of the curve, not because you’re already behind it.

Here are two past posts, one touting the benefits of starting early and another reminding you that too fast is just as ineffective as too late.

To get more done, do less.

To get people to listen, talk less.

To get people to read what you write, write less.

And please do the same with your college applications.

In their understandable eagerness to stand out, too many students want to inject more, more, more into their applications. They attach additional essays, send extra letters of recommendation, include work samples or press clippings or copies of awards. But all that “more” just creates a literally and figuratively bloated file. “More” isn’t what moves an admissions officer.

If a college specifically asks (and some do) for extra materials or information, by all means, provide what they’re requesting. But attention is always at a premium. Don’t try to cram everything you’ve ever done, tried, or experienced into the limited space of an application. The reader won’t be able to extract those things that mattered most to you in high school, and even if they could, they’ll be less likely to remember them when buried within all that other information.

What have you spent the most time doing? What are you most proud of? Where have you learned or grown during high school, and what experiences have impacted your four years there? Use the applications to clearly explain those elements of your high school career and what they’ve meant to you. Almost everything else will just distract readers from what you really want them to pay attention to.

Less is not more. It’s just more effective.

Seniors, if you’re finishing your Common Application to submit for January deadlines, our free Guide to the 2018/19 Common Application can help you make sure there’s nothing common about your app. From the essay prompts, to the activity listing, to the additional information section, you can use the guide for everything from an assist with that one section you’re struggling with to a line-by-line review of the application. You can get your free copy here.

Parkinson’s Law states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” For students with college applications that still need to be completed over the holiday break, I recommend you skirt that law.

Time (real or perceived) in front of you can chip away at your sense of urgency for a project. Even worse, it opens the door to too many excuses that slow or outright halt your progress.

“This can wait until tomorrow.”

“I don’t have any good ideas for this essay.”

“I’ll spend today just getting organized (but not doing any of the actual work).”

As those excuses add up, the work completed does not. And eventually, you’re up against the deadlines, stressed and scrambling to complete work you only recently had seemingly enough time to complete. And your holiday break transforms into no break at all.

Don’t let that happen to you.

Imagine your dream college guaranteed you admission provided you: (1) submitted all your applications one week from today, and (2) ensured every application reflected your best effort.

What would you do for the next seven days? You’d find a way. You’d finish applications that were as good as they could possibly be, applications that made you proud, and you’d still have plenty of holiday left.

Why not do that right now?

Imagine the relief you’d feel. Imagine the peace of mind of meeting that artificial deadline, sleeping on it, and coming back the next day for one more review, one last bonus time. Imagine how much better your applications would be if you put that much focus and effort into them for the next seven days.

And best of all, imagine the relief of pushing “Submit” with time left to enjoy a chunk of your holiday break.

Work expands to fit the space allotted to complete it. Skirt that law by giving yourself less space.

Seniors, if you need an extra boost of motivation to get you through a college application, try Dan Pink’s “Just five more” (questions, minutes, sentences in an essay, etc.). Trust me, the advice will work much better for you than the delivery style might (I could feel my 17-year-old self rolling my eyes). A little momentum might take you a lot further than just five more.

College admissions is personal. An admissions officer who’s assigned to your geographic territory, who reads your essays and letters of rec and the summary from your interviewer–they get to know the student behind the grades and test scores. To the degree you’ve shared, they know about your life, your circumstances, your challenges, and your dreams. And when the information is compelling enough to merit a recommendation for admission, they are personally invested, ready to go to the committee and plead their case (MIT describes this personal investment powerfully in this past blog entry).

So how do you think they take it if they find out you’ve misrepresented yourself in your application? UVA sums that feeling up with yesterday’s Tweet:

When they work to make it personal, they take the outcome personally. Make sure you’re on the right side of that personal investment.

If you’ve yet to finish (or even if you’ve yet to start) your college applications, Collegewise counselors Davin Sweeney and Rahsaan Burroughs are putting their combined 25 years of experience as admissions officers to good use in the following free webinar.

Seniors, It’s Not Too Late: Submit Pitch Perfect Applications When Time’s Running Out
Thursday, November 8, 2018
5 p.m. – 6 p.m. (PST)
Click here for more information and to register.

I hope you’ll join us.