How to Prepare for College: Junior Year
This article was originally published on Socratic Summer Academy’s blog.
- Take time to study for and take the SAT or ACT!
- Take AP courses and follow up with the exams!
- Make a college list and tour schools that you want to go to!
- Research colleges, programs, and scholarships that might interest you!
- Start thinking about the theme for you Common App essay!
- Not a Junior? Check out our advice for sophomores!
- Read more about the SAT on our blog!
What to Do in Junior Year to Boost Your College Chances
For most high school students, the ultimate trajectory to college is looming. The college application process is lengthy and requires students to be thinking about their high school pursuits as early as freshman year. Here are 5 things to do during junior year to best prep yourself for college applications and admissions.
Study for the SAT and/or the ACT
Junior year is the best time to start taking standardized tests for college. Over the summer before your junior year, try to take practice tests and study for the exams, and over the course of the year, take a couple actual ones until you get a score you’re happy with. Taking tests like this during junior year is a lot less stressful and time consuming than last minute test taking and studying during senior college apps season.
Take AP classes and take AP tests
If you want to take advantage of college courses and skip some introductory classes, try to follow up on your AP classes and take the exam as well. This can reduce the number of course requirements in college and allow you to take a lighter load of classes in college. Taking AP classes and doing well on the exam also looks great to the admissions officers and can help boost your chances.
Start creating a college list and go on tours
The best way to get into the feel of college application season is to begin looking at potential schools. Research a couple colleges and visit them over the summer or winter breaks. If you aren’t able to visit every school on your list, try to cluster certain colleges into specific types of schools. Obvious categories would be things like big research universities vs small liberal arts colleges, but categories can also be comprised of certain qualities of characteristics of the school, such as “a lot of campus culture”, “academically focussed”, “big sports culture”, “No/a lot of Greek life”. Visit one or two schools within these categories and get an idea of whether you like these specific qualities; use this information to narrow down your list to around 10–12 schools and be sure to visit as many as you can.
Research colleges, programs, scholarships
Although you may be set on a couple of schools and don’t want to continue searching, it is always important to keep up to date about schools’ programs, activities, and current events. This information is not only useful for yourself to see how interested you are in certain aspects of the school, but will also come in handy when applying to schools and writing about why you want to go there.
Start thinking about essay ideas
Junior year may be early to start writing essays, but towards the end of the year you should start thinking about what themes you want to address in your writing. I suggest specifically getting the Common App essay out of the way during the summer before your senior year; this way, over the course of senior year, you only have to worry about writing any supplementary and scholarship essays. It can be useful to finish it early so you have some direction for the other essays.
