This is the time of year when seniors get all their news–both good and bad–from colleges.  Some of those applicants across the country will, unfortunately, get all bad news and be left with no college choices.  This article reminds them (and the rest of us) that there is still plenty of room on lots of college campuses, like UC Riverside, UC Merced, Cal State Northridge, Cal State L.A., Loyola Marymount University, Whittier College and Mount St. Mary’s, to name a few.  It’s nice to be reminded that, no matter who you are, if you want to go to college, you (still) can go. 

Seniors have undoubtedly heard that an admissions decision from a college can
be revoked if a severe case of senioritis results in an academic decline.  But this month’s edition UC Notes Digest reminds students
that it is their responsibility to report such an academic decline
immediately. In fact, doing so might
even help your case.

Think of it like this. You wrecked the family car.  The
good news is that nobody was hurt.  The
bad news is that the car is totaled and there’s nothing you can do that will
make that fact go away.  Which smarter
move?  Immediately tell your parents
everything that happened, or keep it to yourself and wait for the inevitable
day when they notice that the family car hasn’t been seen in weeks?

Easy one.  Tell your parents.
Immediately.  At least you’ll get credit
for being honest. 

This
article isn’t saying that just being honest makes the academic decline OK,
but it’s a lot better than sitting quietly and hoping that the admissions
offices don’t notice that your grade in AP calculus was totaled beyond
repair.

My wife interviews freshman applicants for one of those Ivy League schools everybody wants to go to.  Last week, she got her list of applicants to contact and promptly sent each of them a personal email inviting them to schedule their interviews. 

So far, only one student has responded to her email.

If you’re a senior who just applied to college, congratulations—you’ve done the hard part.  But you’re not really done yet.  Colleges routinely contact applicants by mail and email asking you for additional information (or to schedule interviews), and you need to make sure you respond promptly and appropriately.

Here at Collegewise, we remind our students:

1. On your college applications, list an email address that you check regularly (and by “regularly,” I mean at least once a day).  And if your email address is something like wildncrazypartygirl@yahoo, get a new email address. 

2. Once you submit your applications, open every piece of mail and read every email a college sends you. Just because it’s not yet time to expect a decision doesn’t mean that mail or email isn’t important. 

3.   If a college asks you to send anything, to respond to anything, or take any action, do it right away.  Don’t rush to the point you get careless, but remember, once you apply to a college, you’re pretty much on stage.  Lagging in your response time doesn’t show a burning desire to attend.

4.   And when communicating with a college rep over email, remember that this is a professional correspondence; you are not text messaging a friend.  Spell carefully and use punctuation.  Do not compose sentences like “i really hope 2b at Princeton next fall! see u soon!”

Colleges (and my wife) are reasonable.  They’re not going to ding a kid just because he took an extra day to respond to an email.  But they’re also human, after all.  I won’t speak for my wife, but I know I would already like the kid who responded right away.  And the kid who wrote me, "sorry i’m writing u back so late i have been soooo busy w/ school," wouldn’t make such a good impression.