How to Apply to the College of Your Dreams

Every student in high school has college on their minds. The United States has several hundred colleges to apply. To get into the college of your dreams you need to go through certain step that i am about to take you through. High School Students in their junior year should seriously begin to start thinking about college. The first necessary step is to get in touch with your high school college mentor or advisor. You should have a sit down chat with them and ask any questions you may have about college and the process you will go through. The most important test for getting into college is the SATs. To prepare for them, every student should at least buy themselves a review book or take a review course offered by Kaplan or Princeton. You can take the SAT’s as many times as you want. Usually the colleges will look at your highest verbal and math scores but be aware that you must send every score you get on the SAT’s to the colleges which you apply to. To register for the SAT’s you can go to the college board’s website and register online to a test center near you. If you are applying to any private schools you should also take the SAT2 subject tests.

Another important step is writing the college essay. The college essay will definitely be your most important piece of writing in your high school career. This must be one of the best pieces of writing you have ever created because it will be counted heavily by colleges. The college essay should be creative and catch the reader’s attention.

Once you have completed these steps you will also need to get a high school transcript of your grades. Your average will be looked at by colleges to see if you have taken hard courses and what grades you have gotten in all your classes. Then you need to get big yellow envelopes to put your essay, and transcript in. This envelope you usually give to your school who will mail it out to the appropriate college that you address it to. I strongly recommend that all students get at least 2 recommendations from teachers that they received exemplary marks in or they were very friendly with in high school. You will also need to get a recommendation from your college advisor. Depending on your school’s policies, your teachers might mail out the recommendations without you ever seeing what they wrote down and mail it to the colleges. They will also ask you for self addressed envelopes to mail these letter to the colleges with the college address on them. Another suggestion is to get a few postcards and self address them to yourself. You can include these with your teacher recommendation letters or your college essay to see if you university you are applying to got the materials you sent them. This is really quite helpful because it is one less thing you have to worry about knowing that they have in fact received the papers you sent them in the mail.

Finally there is the research part to selecting which colleges you want to apply to. I suggest getting a Kaplan or Princeton book on a guide to the various colleges in the U.S. You should thoroughly research any college you are interested in. You should also contact your college advisor to see if he or she has any suggestions for you.

You should visit the colleges you are interested in and then all you have to do is wait for a month or two to finally get the acceptance letter in the mail.