Advice for Rising Juniors
Five Tips for Juniors
Whee– here we go! Junior year is when the proverbial rubber hits the road. You are taking more AP classes, moving up the ranks in your sport, and learning to run a meeting as a club officer. Half of your high school story has been written, and the next half lies before you, ready for your pen.
My oldest is a junior this year, so after all my years of advising families on how to best take advantage of resources in high school and prepare for college applications, I walk on this journey with you as a parent now too.
So what do I tell my own son? What would I tell you? Here are my top five tips:
1) Prepare well and early for standardized (SAT and ACT) tests. That said, don’t pursue testing if it is not the right option for you.
Know your landscape on testing. We are in a test optional world, and I predict it will remain so. It is a huge advantage for most colleges to not require test scores– it increases the number of applications, thereby driving up selectivity, and allows colleges to shape the class exactly the way they want without regard to test scores.
If you are a student who knows testing is not a good fit because of attention or anxiety or other test-taking challenges, I encourage you to skip this step. I mean it.
For everyone else, most students are ready to prepare for and take tests in the summer before or fall of junior year. If you have completed Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry, you have learned the math you need.
NB: Certain schools have reverted to requiring the ACT or SAT (or never went test optional): MIT, public schools in Florida, and the top public schools in Georgia. We are watching this trend.
How do I know which test to take– SAT or ACT? Does it matter?
Step one: assess which test is a better fit. Take a practice SAT and ACT (timed) to ascertain which test is better for you with regard to your skills, timing, stamina, and psychology. Schools do not care which test you take, so find the one that is better for you.
How long beforehand should I prepare for the SAT or ACT?
Plan to prep for 12-16 weeks ahead of your first test. Work back from there on the calendar, but I strongly recommend that juniors take one or two tests before winter break. This gets you time to course correct if you need to take more tests or switch tests.
How should I prep for testing?
You can prep on your own– you can sync your PSAT score to Khan Academy for adaptive learning– with a private tutor, or through a group course. See my Resource Room for the books I recommend.
Pick your registration date or dates and plan to to take one or, if possible, two tests in a row when you are ready. Most students take these tests two or three times. The vast majority of schools will superscore, so your goal is to achieve the highest cumulative score, not necessarily all the highest scores on the same date.
Your prep should include at least a handful of full, timed practice tests before the real test date.
Don’t forget about the October PSAT! If you are a strong test taker, this is the test upon which the National Merit scholarship is based. Read more about the National Merit scholarship and the NMSQT/PSAT here.
2) Map out your next two years of coursework now and do your best work academically.
Nothing, yes, nothing, matters as much to a college admissions officer as your transcript. This is what a reviewer is asking herself as she reads your transcript:
Which courses did you take?
How rigorous were they relative to what your high school offered and relative to what your peers took?
What are your grades?
Did you have an upward or downward trajectory?
My advice is this: take the most challenging classes that make sense for you and do well in them.
Specialize if it makes sense. If you know you are interested in engineering, take AP Physics not Bio, given the choice, sign up for the Intro to Engineering elective, and learn CAD. If you are preparing for a career as an artist, try to take AP Studio Art in your junior year if you are ready, and load up on every art class available for breadth and depth. Don’t forget AP Art History too.
Plan this year’s and next year’s courses now. Make sure you have time to take the right courses at the right time.
If you have a specialized skill or talent, this is the time to work on your portfolio and auditions so you are prepared by next August. Pre screens and portfolio reviews come very early.
CTK pro tip: Although most high schools only report final grades on the transcript, colleges will almost always request mid-year senior year grades. If there is a notoriously tough course at your high school, you know, the one that all the high-achieving kids get Cs and Ds in first quarter (I’m looking at you, AP BC Calculus), consider taking it junior year so a college doesn’t see a low mid-year grade your senior year.
Speak with your counselors or schedule a 20 minute mini-admissions consult with me for guidance selecting your junior year coursework.
3) Start researching college online and in person. Understand where you fall for reach/target/safety.
Every family has a different approach to school research: some want to visit every potential school on the list; others are focused on a few key schools. Time and finances constrain most of us, but junior year is not too early to book official tours. I suggest you visit schools of different types as soon as possible: large, small, public, private. Start with schools that are easy to get to, including ones in state. Do not fall in love with any one school at this stage, but rather work on understanding which factors you care about most.
I took my own advice this summer and visited RIT with my son. He is researching art and design programs, and we were on vacation an hour away, so we booked a campus tour and visit to the art and design school. We were impressed! It still may not make the list for fit, but seeing a school that we did not think was a top choice for his interests gave us a benchmark against which to measure the schools we think will be at the top of the list.
Plan visits ahead of time and try to get a few schools in one visit if you are traveling out of state. If you have a specialized interest, ask ahead of time if you can meet with a professor or have a tour of the facility.
Ask yourself key questions as you do your research
Know your budget and what the real cost of college will be for your family. Build an affordable college list.
Know which schools track demonstrated interest and “demonstrate” as needed. You can ask a school what counts, and typically the following are strong showings: registering for and attending a tour, registering for and attending a virtual presentation, attending a local presentation in your high school or city, opening emails from the school, and visiting the school's web site.
Take detailed notes. I’ve created a free template for you to capture your research notes. You can save a copy of CTK Research Notes and modify for your own purposes using this list of questions.
4) Get to know your teachers well this year– you will need strong letters of recommendation for college.
Importantly, it is typically junior year teachers whom you select to write your letters of recommendation, so this is the time to speak up and speak out. Ask for help, volunteer for projects, and take the time to attend conference hours.
A letter of recommendation is not just for the perfect student (perfect students don’t exist, if you didn’t know). Your strength may be that you struggled at first and then worked hard to improve. Or you may have been a strong team leader for group projects, or been helpful to the teacher.
Speaking of that, if you have a favorite class, you can volunteer your time as a teaching assistant next semester or next year.
Many colleges will accept “other” letters of recommendation in addition to the two academic letters, e.g. from a coach, a music teacher, a supervisor at work, or a faculty advisor. These can add helpful color to your application, so do not discount the value of those.
5) Think ahead to summertime: work, classes, skill development, and internships.
We have this conversation about high school in terms of college admissions, but really this is about your life. Which skills do you want to develop? What do you want to explore more? What do you want to know about that you don’t yet know? Use the rest of high school in class and out of class to learn about yourself. The more you know about yourself, the better prepared you will be to make decisions for the next stage of life.
Things you may not have considered:
Internships and summer programs often have applications starting in early winter, so do your research now.
Some schools have a National Honor Society chapter for academic achievers, so watch for that application in late fall or early winter.
Keeping track of your activities now can save you headaches later. And as you do what you do, do it for the right reasons. Colleges are more interested in seeing you develop in activities than in piling on club after club.
Colleges love to see independence and creativity: start that STEM summer camp, notice the need around the corner and volunteer, work that after school job. Don’t get fooled into thinking that spending money on experiences will make you more attractive to colleges.
Oh, and let’s have some fun, shall we? Happy, healthy teenagers will be successful, so take good care this year in the pressure cooker of junior year. I’m right here cheering you on.
Related Blog: When should I take the SAT or ACT for the first time?
