[Podcast] How can students stay organized during application season?

Sheila Akbar 0:00
I really strongly suggest that students set aside time to understand all of those things they’re going to have to do, all the pieces of the process and the little details, and then build that into whatever organizational system they’re going to use.

Sheila Akbar 0:33
Hi folks, welcome back. This week, as we start getting into the busy season of applications, we’re talking about how students should stay organized. Take a listen.

McKenzie Carver 0:45
This week’s question is a big one. There are many layers to this. Oh boy. So I’m excited to dig in. The hot topic of this week is how do students stay organized during application season?

Sheila Akbar 1:03
How do they, or how should they? So I’ve definitely seen a variety of things. A lot of students use some kind of tool like an AI tool to build themselves an organizer. I’ve seen people build their own spreadsheets. I’ve seen people have a long Google Doc, or they put it in their planner or their phone — the Notes app on their phone, really, is where they keep a lot of stuff. Which is interesting. Very interesting to me. But I think whatever system of organization they’re using, it should serve a couple of purposes. One is to be able to know at a glance where you are, what’s coming up next, what your priorities are. And two, the second goal it should satisfy is that it’s comprehensive. You don’t want to think you’re done and then realize, oh my gosh, there are like three more essays, or I didn’t do this thing, I didn’t request that, or whatever. So a lot of people think that the college application process is really just essays, but obviously there’s so much more that goes along with the application. The essay may be the piece that the student is focused on right before senior year begins, or this time of year as deadlines are approaching. But there’s transcripts, there’s recommendations, there’s even choosing which colleges you want to apply to. You might be sending test scores, you might not. And there are a lot of other questions that the application is going to ask you to respond to beyond just the essay questions. I really strongly suggest that students set aside time to understand all of those things they’re going to have to do, all the pieces of the process and the little details, and then build that into whatever organizational system they’re going to use. The organization system that is best is the one that the student is actually going to use. I can describe my perfect system, but if a student’s just never going to do that, then that’s not going to help them. I want them to use something, even if it’s not what I recommend. But what I do recommend is a spreadsheet. I love a Google Sheet for this because you are always looking at the most updated version and you can access old history. You can share it with people who may have input or may be able to help — like a parent, an older sibling, your high school counselor, or a private admissions consultant. Having all the people who can help you or have input onto what colleges you’re choosing, or the other pieces of the application, having it shared with all of them is really a helpful tool to keep everybody on the same page. And as an extra bonus, if you share this with your parents, they won’t keep asking you where things are. They’ll see it on the spreadsheet. They’re not going to have to nag you about it. That’s an extra bonus of having a shared organizational tool. That spreadsheet for me begins with the college list. The college list is really the roadmap for the whole endeavor. It takes research to figure out what colleges go on that list — I’m sure there’ll be questions about that we’ll answer on the podcast at some point. But building your college list on the very same organizer spreadsheet is going to give you a lot of efficiencies and be a very helpful reference as you go through the process, because you can be tracking what programs you like at each of those schools, what professors maybe you’ve talked to or students at that school, little facts that you remember from your tour or whatever. Keep it on the research tab as you build and narrow down your finalized college list. And then you can add in the supplemental essays for those schools, how many recommendations they need, whether you’re sending scores, whether you need to send official scores with your application or after you get admitted, whether you need to schedule a tour or an interview. You can have all of that information right on the spreadsheet next to your college list. It can help you see when we get to supplements, for example, what questions are overlapping and how you can build one response off of another. It can also help you create that list of priorities. Many students are going to be applying early somewhere. First, we need to decide where that is — is it early action, early decision, regular decision, or early decision two? We just did an episode about this two weeks ago, so if you don’t know what those things are, go back to that one. Once you figure out what each school offers and you decide how you want to prioritize your list, you can also prioritize your spreadsheet and the list of essays you have to work through in that order. I always want to start with my ED school because that’s the one we’re going to put the most work into, the one we’re really gunning for. But I create phases for all the schools so we know which ones we’re doing early and which ones regular. What are we going to worry about now? What are we going to worry about later? Knowing which schools are on our early list can help us think about, well, I’ve got these other schools on my regular list, and they ask similar questions as my early list. So I will write the early schools and then reuse that material in some way to work on the regular schools. There are also strategic planning efficiencies that come out of that. I’ve been rambling for a long time, but as you can see, this is a big spreadsheet. I even put a tab in there for the activity list because there’s such a tiny word count for the descriptions, and it matters what order you list them in. We’ve got to get everything out, capture everything that has been done over the course of high school, before you can figure out what’s at the top of my list, what’s at the bottom, what doesn’t even belong on my list. What am I trying to say about these things that would maybe echo something else I’m trying to communicate in the application? So I’ve got a tab for the activities. It’s big.

McKenzie Carver 8:10
There’s a lot to it — like a very big spreadsheet. Question for the activity list, and I know you mentioned you keep the supplemental essay prompts there too. Are your students doing any writing in that spreadsheet for those two things? Or are they writing on a Google Doc instead that’s linked to the sheet?

Sheila Akbar 8:30
That’s a great question. For the activity list, I’m having them write directly on the template. We’ll start with a big, rambly description of like why they joined the swim team and what they love about it and how they grew and special memories and awards or whatever. It’s just way too big. And then we’ll narrow it down once we decide what are the top 10 that we’re going to represent on the application. So I want them to write all of that directly on the spreadsheet. When it comes to essays, writing on a spreadsheet is like the worst thing you could do. So don’t do that. But sometimes we do a little brainstorming and I keep a shorthand note of which story they want to tell for each supplement. So for example, a lot of colleges ask similar questions — there’s one about your academic interests, one about your favorite extracurricular, an impact you’ve had on the community. I’ll shorthand that as like “community impact — volunteering at the soup kitchen” and list that next to the prompt for the school. Then I’ll list that again when that story comes up in other schools. So we have a key of what stories we’re telling where and where we’re reusing them. But I will also have a column that links to the Google Doc. And here’s another question you didn’t ask, but I’ll answer anyway — should we have a separate Google Doc for every essay for every school, or should they all be on the same document? I do a lot in Google Docs because of the shared nature, the ease of suggesting edits and comments, and always being able to access a version history — because maybe we make a decision, we think we don’t need that story, but actually we do. Version history is wonderful. I’ve come to liking to see all of the supplements and all of the schools on one single writing document. Sometimes the personal statement is on that same document. All of their writing is on one document. If they’re separating it, then all of the schools are in their own tab on one Google Doc. There’s a new feature within the last few years where you can add tabs to a word processor document. So we just have a tab for each school, labeled like “Duke ED,” “University of Vermont EA,” “UMass Amherst EA” — each tab is labeled with the deadline as well. That way, number one, we don’t have to go searching for a bunch of documents and not knowing what we called them. And second, because some of those essays are going to overlap, it’s helpful to have them all in one document. If I know I’m going to reuse the academic interest essay from one school for another, I can just go get it without opening another document. I find it really helpful also for when we’re feeling stuck about how to respond to a question — we can just click through and see what else we’ve told other schools that we haven’t had a chance to tell this one. All the content is in one place. But I will link that document to the spreadsheet where we have all the essay prompts and the college list and all that stuff. It’s a very interdependent system.

McKenzie Carver 12:31
But the spreadsheet acts as the source of truth — the place where you can go to find everything that will redirect you.

Sheila Akbar 12:37
Exactly. I’ve also taken to adding what I’m calling a project plan to the first tab of that spreadsheet. So the students’ main priorities are always clear — here are the things that need to get done by next week. And then there’s a checklist of everything else that needs to get done, what they need to ask their counselor about, what they need to ask their parents about. It’s just very clear. That is also very helpful for parents to see — oh, I can see what they need to be doing, I can help them with that thing, or here’s all the stuff we’ve already done and I can see where we are in the process.

McKenzie Carver 13:16
That’s really helpful.

Sheila Akbar 13:19
Some students are terrified of it, I will say. Some students just want to know what they need to do this week. They don’t want to think about anything else. And I’m like, great, that’s fine, I’ll hold that and you just focus on this. But some students want to know there’s a whole plan for the rest of the process. So it depends on the student.

McKenzie Carver 13:38
Right. In terms of organizing different priorities, is there a typical order you work through everything that needs to be done on the college application? Like, do you tackle essays first and then the activity list?

Sheila Akbar 13:55
Yeah. Again, that’s going to depend on the student and whether the student is working with someone. I mean, you’re asking me how I work with a student, but I imagine there are a lot of listeners out there who don’t have a consultant working with their student, or they’ve got limited resources — even their high school counselor can’t do a lot with them. So I want to answer both how I do it and what I recommend for people who are trying to do this on their own. How I do it: I like to start with the activities. That’s a place where students can tell me what they do in a typical week, and they mostly remember some of the activities from earlier in high school as well. But it’s an opportunity to start a conversation about why they did it, how they grew, whether there’s someone they met through it who is a really important person in their life — a mentor, a best friend, a kid they mentor. I like to start with the activities, just treat it as a working document. We’re making a rough list of what you do outside of school, what you remember having done since ninth grade forward. And I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions about it. In a way, we’re feeding two birds with one scone — we’re getting the start of an activity list, but I’m also brainstorming stories that could be great later on in the application. I start there because it feels easy. Then I go from there to — actually, I skipped a step. One of my favorite things to do with the student is, after we’ve gone through the activity list, I say: “Okay, you just told me why you did all of these things. Now I want you to pretend this is somebody else’s list. You don’t know this kid at all. All you know is this is what they do in their free time. What do you think this person cares about?” And then they start telling me — oh, they seem really competitive because they do all these sports and competition teams, or oh, they really care about their community, look at how much community service is on this list. Sometimes I hear heartbreaking things, like “oh, this is a kid who just does what their parents tell them to do.” I’m working with a student right now where she said, “I don’t think there’s any real passion here.” And I’m like, okay, we’re going to have to work through that. What I’m after there is a sense of their values, their drivers, and helping them realize that the walk they’re walking is going to shape the talk they’re going to talk to the colleges. What you care about is reflected in how you spend your free time. Nobody is forcing you to do any of those things. We all have limited time. So when you choose to do something over and over again every week for years, that must matter to you. And if it doesn’t matter to you, it’s time to make some adjustments. Or if there is something you really care about but it doesn’t show up in how you spend your time, that’s something to think about — how can we get that thing to show up more in your daily life? It doesn’t have to be a club you do for four hours a week, but if you care about it, you should spend some time doing it. Let’s match the action with the desire. So that exercise is really a bridge between the activity list and the essays, because we’re getting them to name some of their values. And at the end of the day, what we’re actually matching is students’ values and the college’s values. It’s never just a one-to-one — everybody’s using different language and it shows up in different ways. But once we start to understand those motivations and drivers and values, we can really start to say: if you care about community impact in all of these ways, this university is talking about graduating citizens of the world who solve the world’s biggest problems. That’s about impact. Now we can connect the dots and tell a story about how you’ve been making an impact in your local community, how you’re motivated by this, and how you want to go to a place where you’re surrounded by people who are also motivated by this, and how that’s going to launch you to whatever your future vision is. Also a long-winded way of saying — I start with activities and then I bridge it to essays that are really going to serve the purpose we’re after. If you’re doing it on your own, you could try to do that as well. It’s difficult to reflect like that if you’ve never done that kind of reflection before without external prompts. My advice to students doing this on their own is to start with whatever feels easiest. What can you tackle right now? Start there. That’s fine. Even if it’s the end of an essay — you know how you want it to end, you don’t know how it’s going to begin — that’s fine. Start there. Let’s get something on the page. If you feel like you want to start with a list of your activities, that’s productive too, and then maybe you can bridge it to an essay. I do like for students to look through the supplemental essays they’re going to have to respond to before committing to a personal statement topic, because these things can’t overlap. Sometimes their best idea for a personal statement is actually going to be a better fit for a supplement. So let’s brainstorm a little, map out the supplements before you commit to starting on your personal statement. It doesn’t mean you have to write all the supplements first, just think about them first, and then choose your topic for the personal statement.

McKenzie Carver 20:40
There are just so many moving pieces. When I read this question, I was like — are they asking about how they organize their time, the materials themselves, their recommendations? There are so many layers. I can understand why students are overwhelmed when they get to this part of the year.

Sheila Akbar 21:04
Yeah. You bring up a really good point — organization involves time, content, ideas, requirements. It’s all of these things. And not everybody is naturally organized around all of those things — we have to learn those skills. So I really feel for students going through this without some support. Hopefully you build a spreadsheet and that gives you something. Around the question of time, it might be helpful to think about how we organize our time around this. If students are writing applications right now because they’re a senior and deadlines are in a couple of months, my best advice is to do a little bit each day — like a half hour each day. Do something. Whatever feels like you can do it, do that thing. The longer you put off filling out the tedious details of your parents’ education or your school contact information or whatever, the more that’s piling up on you later. So just do some stuff, clear out the easy stuff, and then spend a half hour a day thinking about this essay or that essay, writing one or two sentences. It doesn’t have to be you write the whole essay in one fell swoop. That’s usually not how something creative happens. And these are essays you’re going to revise a couple of times — you might want to show it to a teacher, get their input, then revise it again. So just keep doing a little bit at a time. Also, don’t feel like you have to do things in sequence — like, I can’t start this thing until this other thing is done. You should really be working on everything in parallel. That also gives you more options. If you’re feeling stuck on your personal statement, don’t beat your head against the wall. Start a supplement or write your activity list. You’re still moving forward, and doing that other thing might help you resolve the block in the first thing. Time is important to manage because that deadline is not moving. If they’re not actually applying this year, you’re lucky because now you have all this advice about how to organize your time. I like to start mapping out as much as I can in the spring of junior year. Starting in January of junior year, you can create your Common App account and start filling things out. It will roll over on August 1st, but that information should still be in there — so you’re not wasting time by doing that. Glitches are possible, but the way they’ve set it up is that your information will roll over. I keep a dummy Common App account so I can see exactly what my students are seeing. I created this account about seven years ago and it rolls over every year.

McKenzie Carver 24:11
Still has both.

Sheila Akbar 24:13
Whatever, right? It’ll roll over for you. So you can start filling that out and get some of that tedious stuff out of the way. You can start making a list of your activities. You can start your college list research if you haven’t already. You can start collecting those requirements, looking at this year’s supplements. And you don’t have to write all of them and finalize them, but that’ll give you an idea of what they’re going to be asking. Those questions don’t change all that much, so you could start brainstorming and collecting stories for your content bank. When the prompts are actually finalized, you can be like, oh yeah, I know what story I’m going to tell for this. You’re not starting from zero at the brainstorming point. Your personal statement — you are you, no matter when you start that essay. And the prompts haven’t really changed much in the last several years. There is always one prompt that says write about whatever you want. So you can start writing your personal statement, or at least brainstorming it, before we get into crunch time of application season, which is fall of senior year. I really recommend getting ahead of a lot of those things.

McKenzie Carver 25:22
Yeah, especially because once school starts — once senior year starts — the time just disappears. Flies by. And you’re wanting to dedicate your time to other things — your final year on your sports team, your last year as president of a club. You’re going to want to be able to do that.

Sheila Akbar 25:43
Yeah. Let’s have some fun — that’s important too. And if you can plan ahead, you will have less stress and more time to do those sorts of things. I have a lot to say about organization. There’s something I said on a recent masterclass, which was: I know when it feels like everything’s on fire and you just have to go, go, go, it feels like you want to dive into whatever’s in front of you. But taking maybe two hours to make a strategic, intentional plan — to get organized — is actually going to help you go so much more quickly. You won’t have to hold so much in your head, the stress will be less, and you’ll do better. And this is what AI is for, honestly. You can just word-vomit into Claude and be like — okay, I’m applying to all of these schools, I know I have to think about all of these things, can you create for me an organization tool and a timeline plan for doing this? It’s not going to be perfect, and Claude doesn’t know your procrastination habits, so the deadlines it sets up might not be realistic. But that’s a thing that can help support you in that planning and organization process. And I think it’s a perfect use of AI. Don’t use it on your essays — use it to get set up to write your essays.