Fatal Mistake #1

You Don't Know What "Prepared" Really Means

Beware this error if…

• —You've been known to procrastinate, especially on big assignments
• —You do your best writing at the last minute
• —You usually make a good impression, so you figure you'll pretty much wing it on the interviews

You'd be amazed at how many stories I've heard like the following one.

Bob's mother called me the day after early applications were due. "He doesn't want to show me his personal essay," she said. "He says he didn't even start writing it until the night before the deadline and then he got sick of everything he had to say. So he just sent in whatever he had! He doesn't even remember if he ran spell-check. Are we in trouble?"

Yes, Bob's application was in trouble indeed. If the application season is a race, then Bob had collapsed on the ground with the finish line in sight. When I hear a story like this one, what I hear is not laziness. It's not exhaustion or an "understandable" feeling of being overwhelmed. What I hear is a lack of preparation.

Not that I blame anyone who runs out of time or patience for a college application. The fact is, no one is naturally prepared for this process, which asks you, as a high school student, to do things you would normally never choose for yourself.

• Chatting with a strange adult you may never see again about your future (aka the Interview).
• Documenting your high school life of preprinted forms, to be read by more strangers, most of whom you will never meet (aka the Application).
• Waiting outside an all-night post office in the middle of winter, clutching envelopes that need postmarks (aka the Last-Minute Deadline).

These strange rituals of college application don't come naturally to anyone. You need to prepare, but that's not news. What you haven't heard, I'll bet, is what prepared really means. Most of all, being prepared means pacing yourself, making smart decisions about when and how you will work on your application before you ever sit down to write an essay, or fill in a short-answer question, or meet with an interviewer.

There are two aspects to keep in mind when pacing yourself, and they may sound contradictory.

• Your application is a long race like a marathon
• Your application goes by in a flash

How can this be? It may sound impossible that your application is both of these things at once, so let me explain what I mean.

Pace Yourself (Part One): Your Application is a Marathon

Half of mastering the college application process is recognizing just how long and challenging it will be. The first of several standardized tests may begin sophomore year with the PSATs. But from the point of view of your transcript, the process starts even earlier, as early as the end of eighth grade, when you pick your ninth-grade courses. After adding up the time spent on tests, meetings, essay drafts, campus visits, and just plain waiting, most seniors would agree that the application process lasts, on averageÉnine thousand years.

No wonder Bob felt sick of it by the end.

The trick to pacing, whether you're a marathon runner or a college applicant, is not to push yourself too hard. You could probably walk for hours, all day if you had to, but you can only sprint for minutes. Why? Because when you walk you naturally find a sustainable pace, one that doesn't leave you out of breath or build up lactic acid in your muscles. In the same way, I suggest you work on college applications at a walking pace, a comfortable pace. Of course, if you're going to do that, you need to plan out your time.

1. Get started early. Send for applications during spring of your junior year. (For quicker results, download applications from the colleges' Web sites.) These are usually ready by mid-July. In the meantime, even before then, you can at least download the Common Application.

   Once the school year ends, it's time to begin filling them out. Will you feel like it? Probably not. You may feel as if you'd rather have cavities filled. So make it easy on yourself. Commit to one hour each weekend. Just one hour.

   That first day, just fill in all the nitty-gritty, obvious stuff. Put in your name, address, phone numbers. Get all of that factual information entered. I don't care if you're watching television while you do it. Just do it—easiest parts first.

   Start making a list of activities for your "brag sheet." This is the list of all your extracurricular activities. You may find you don't remember everything at first. Put down all you can think of, then add to it as more comes back to you. For now, put down everything you've done. You can always cut the list down later.

2. Commit to one work session a week. Which is more productive at the gym: working out for forty minutes three times a week for three months, or working out for twenty-four uninterrupted hours without a break? Either way, it's the same numbers of hours, but the first approach could get you into shape while the second approach could kill you. in the same way, trying to cram in all your application work right before the deadline could wear you out like poor Bob, but working steadily once a week throughout the summer will put you in a good position for the fall and winter. So commit to one work session per weekend, always at the same time. (Or if you know that you're more productive during the week, then pick the time of the week that feels best for you. But pick a time and commit to it.)
3. If you miss a week, don't give up. When I tell an applicant to work an hour every summer weekend, I expect that he or she will miss a couple. That's all right, as long as you get back to it the next week.
4. Once you have the factual information filled out, start trying out ideas for the personal essays. In Appendix A: "Writing the Essay," I describe in more detail how to pace yourself while writing essays and short-answer questions. If you can write a first draft of your personal essay by following this once-a-week method, then the rest of application will feel easier.

Of course, most applicants don't work this way. Many rely on a dangerous motivational technique. They wait until their backs are up against a deadline, and then they use fear to push themselves through the unpleasant work. You might say that this crisis approach has three parts:

1. Avoidance
2. Panic
3. Mad rush to the finish

Sound familiar? It's a popular approach. But why? First of all, it gives you something to do with your anxiety. If you deny how new and nerve-wracking this experience can be, then you channel all that anxious energy into racing for the deadline. Second, it makes a long, slow, and sometimes (let's face it) boring process into something rushed and exciting.

The trouble with procrastination as an approach is that rushing leads to sloppy, incomplete work. No one can maintain a sprint all the way through a college application, and when you rush, you tend to make careless mistakes, like leaving out part of the application, repeating yourself in different essays, or missing deadlines. Your thinking, too, becomes messy and immature. You think much better, more clearly, when you give yourself time to think.

"So all right," you may be thinking. "I get it. The challenge of the application process is that it's very long, like a marathon, so I need to learn some techniques to pace myself. This way I'll have something left over at the end, when it counts most, and I can finish strong."