Everything I wish I knew When I Applied to College 2024

This post compiles some general advice I would give my past self at the beginning of the college admissions process. This advice is based on my experience as an applicant and student and advice I've absorbed from others. This is in no way perfect advice, or necessarily right for everyone.

1. Applying to 20+ colleges is SUPER draining. I applied to 30 colleges during the application process, including my safety and match schools. Some of these applications, especially the ones for safeties, were super easy and breezy. Doing QuestBridge helped make the T50 school application process easier, but their deadlines also made it more difficult in other ways. If you're an FGLI student, I DO recommend you apply to a lot of 100% aid schools. However, it's going to be HARD. Don't take it for granted just because you have the common app or the Questbridge app.
2. Not everyone writes essays the same. Some people on this sub recommend working on a single essay for 1-5 months straight. Personally, I spent under a week on my personal essay, and it turned out wonderful. Some people have different needs in the writing process, and some have different strengths. Focus on reaching your perfect essay, not anyone else's.
3. Find safeties YOU LOVE! Don't just apply to some local schools you know absolutely nothing about! Go on tours and, apply early and get your financial aid packages and negotiate them up with the help of your guidance counselor. Turn your safeties into places you can see yourself having fun, affording, and thriving. If you DON'T do this, and suddenly you find yourself rejected from every reach and/or match you applied to, you will be royally screwed.
4. You don't HAVE to go to your match schools/state flagship. Let's say you don't get into your reach and are left stuck between your state flagship and your safeties. A lot of people just go with their state flagship. I just want to remind you (especially if you've followed #5) that you DO NOT have to go to your match schools just because they're more competitive or more highly ranked than your safeties. Analyze your final choices with care. Pick the school you think suits you the best, in every way, not just the one that has the lowest acceptance rate.
5. Get extra help. I did almost the entire application process completely alone, without help or guidance. Part of that is due to my home situation, but beyond that, I didn't realize how many resources are out there for low-income students to get extra college counseling assistance. Get a mentor in the FGLI discord server, or get a counselor from Strive for College or College point. Or, even, ask this sub or discord server for help with your questions/problems. If you're not low enough income to qualify for these programs, reach out to teachers to edit essays, and don't be afraid to set up tons of meetings with your school guidance counselor.
6. Find safeties with merit scholarships. These merit scholarships can be awesome, and many even have full-tuition merit scholarships, which combined with federal aid, can give you nearly a full ride. Small, less-competitive private schools are often overlooked, but if you get a good merit scholarship from them you can actually make them fairly cost-effective.
7. Separate from aid appeals, aid can be negotiable. I'm not saying you're going to call up northwestern and make this work. But, at your safeties, you're probably going to be one of their top applicants. Many of them will do A LOT if it means you'll go there. My school guidance counselor had a lot of experience with this working great for her in the past, and as a solo student, I was able to do it effectively as well. This process usually depends upon other schools having given you better aid and merit packages, but you can make it work without. Usually, you schedule a meeting with your AO to discuss your financial aid. In that meeting, you bring up other institutions that have offered you larger scholarships or more aid. You also follow up by highlighting your achievements and what makes you a competitive applicant and then asking if they have any extra aid available they can give you. Many times, they'll come back with a better offer. This isn't foolproof or anything, but from personal experience, I can tell you it's very much possible to do. If you have a good guidance counselor, you can have them sit in on the call with you to support you and advocate for you as well. Again, this won't always work! But it's usually worth a shot.
8. SPEND TIME RESEARCHING!!! I did not do this. More like, I didn't know where to start. I kind of just based my decision to apply to a school on some statistics and photos and pamphlets and their ACT score range. It sounds pretty stupid, but I had no idea what I was doing. Call admissions offices and ask questions, add yourself to mailing lists, check out specific niche reviews, do virtual tours, do as many in-person tours as possible, talk to current students and alumni, look at photos, look at graduation outcomes, look at the myintutiton and other aid calculators, do interviews, and anything else you can think of. I recommend most people spend their summer doing this and then focus on the actual applications in the fall-winter.
9. Go on any in-person tour you can. Even if it's just for your safeties or matches, or even a school you're only a little interested in. They are SO helpful and SO informative and demonstrates the climate of a school so perfectly. A single tour allowed me to move a school from the bottom of my safety list to the absolute top and allowed me to move a top safety to the absolute bottom. I am hoping in the future to make a guide of good questions to ask while on tours or meeting with AOs, based on my experiences.
10. Questbridge is helpful, but not perfect. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't have done the match, and instead, ED'd to a school and EA'd to more schools. The match is so highly competitive, it's insane. Some schools have over 250 match applicants and only accept 10, a number much lower than their usual acceptance rate. Unless you feel super strongly about your strengths as an applicant, it's kind of a giant waste of precious time you could be using on college apps. Also, ED really can help you out in admissions. When a school knows you're definitively their top choice, the way they analyze you as an applicant changes. In addition, most QB colleges offer the same exact aid as the match scholarship if you're admitted.
11. Don't be scared of interviews. Interviews are a fantastic way to show that you're a charismatic and interesting person and attach a real person to the application. SO many people are hesitant to take interviews, and I completely understand. However, even if you don't have a good answer to a question, if you remain positive and creative regardless you will come off great. It also gives you a better insight into the school. Even if schools don't explicitly say they have interviews, it can be great to reach out via email to request one. I had an experience where (due to questbridge, kind of) I missed the deadline for an interview for a college. By emailing my AO, I was still able to set one up, and the school itself ended up admitting me later on. Obviously, a single interview doesn't make me get in, but this one, in particular, felt very helpful and meaningful to me. Essentially, it never hurts to reach out.
12. Take a break. Yes, I mean it. Those posts may seem stupid to some of you, or like they come from someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. I DO know what I'm talking about, (at least, I applied to these kinds of schools and got accepted to some), and taking breaks and time to rest actually (usually) makes you MORE effective and efficient when you return. Allow yourself to have moments to think about things other than college admissions! You're in your LAST YEAR OF HIGHSCHOOL!!!!!! Please please please make it meaningful! In the long run, you'll regret missing the fun activities when you were young more than how many T20s you managed to apply to. If your applications are keeping you from having a moment to breathe, then maybe you have too many.
13. Don't be perfect. Perfection is not a person. You can't be perfect. Don't try and make yourself seem like a perfect god in your application. Letting your personality and the truth of yourself shine in your application is so important. Don't let yourself have 0 social life just to try and get into a T-20. Not only is it not worth it, but it's not going to help you get in. You are going to become a piece of burnt toast by the end of this process, and then also probably get rejected all over the place. ( I actually had a conversation with a Dartmouth undergrad and Harvard law school alumni, who used to be involved in their admissions office (Dartmouth) and later did alumni interviews. (He was super old, and also kind of racist, so take this with a grain of salt) He said that one of the biggest things they looked to do is to weed out the boring applicants with no social skills or life outside academia. Again, he was old af, and this was so long ago, and I don't really have any proof that this really happened, but I do think there's at least a taste of good advice in there. Colleges don't really want robot students, so don't force yourself to be one. )