How to Prepare Early for College
When preparing for your college applications, it’s not a big secret that you should start early, but what exactly should you be doing? This guide will help you be smart with your limited time to set yourself up for the best chance at college admissions, but more importantly, help you become a happier and more effective version of yourself (which is actually something colleges want to see as well!) So here are a few critical areas that you should cultivate.
Increase your capacity.
Your capacity is shorthand for how much you can handle at any given time. If you have three tests, a quiz, two essays, and a project all due in the same week, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. Add in extracurriculars and family obligations, and you will begin to appreciate the need to increase your capacity. Like many things, your capacity can increase by practicing specific skills. That’s why the same scenario might be just an average week for a college student because she has better organization, execution, and communication skills. Improving your capacity is a great way to prepare for college early.
Organization. One of the biggest challenges with college applications (and higher-level classes in general) is the sheer volume of tasks, materials, and messages to juggle. This is why personal organization is essential for building a strong foundation.
You can practice getting more organized in your physical and digital lives by applying a simple rule we like to call “everything in its place.” With this rule, everything has temporary transition states, but eventually, it ends up in its own consistent “home.” This applies to emails that need to go from inbox (transition) to labeled and archived (home) or your socks going from your feet to the laundry basket to the washing machine (transitions) to your sock drawer (home). Everything has its own place, and everything should return there.
Execution. Some people are just better at getting things done. This ability is actually a combination of many skills and habits, but it’s something you can improve with intention and practice. To improve, you will need some way to measure your progress qualitatively or quantitatively, and that requires goals. Without a goal, you won’t be able to know if you’re becoming more effective at execution. To begin your journey to improve your execution skills, check out this other guide on how to set good goals.
Communication. We live in an interconnected world, so your ability to express yourself clearly and concisely and also understand others thoroughly and efficiently will ultimately increase your capacity as you save time communicating and reduce waste from miscommunications. We suggest focusing on your written communication because of its ubiquity (i.e., it’s everywhere) and its capacity to receive feedback (e.g., you can review an email much more quickly than a conversation). Also, as a former English teacher, I’m biased in believing that improving your writing is a stepping stone towards improving your speaking.
You can practice your communication in a few ways, but all of them require you to receive feedback on your writing. The simplest is just to review your own writing yourself, but you can also ask for feedback from whomever you are writing to. Simply ending your emails with a line that says, “Please let me know if anything is unclear,” can point you toward miscommunications. Lastly, I’m a big fan of using AI writing support like Grammarly for instant feedback on my grammar, clarity, and tone. Of course, it’s imperfect and sometimes confusing, but the technology has come a long way since basic spellcheck.
Build your personal portfolio.
Even though portfolios typically apply to students in the arts, every student can benefit from using this approach. A portfolio is a curated collection of your work that highlights your abilities, achievements, and even your style. Even if you never turn in a formally packaged SlideRoom portfolio, you should think about your achievements the same way an art student thinks about her art pieces. What does your portfolio of achievements say about you?
On a practical note, you can start building your portfolio of achievements as early as 9th grade. Colleges typically only care about things you’ve done in high school, so there is no need to put too much pressure on yourself before then. If you’re a middle school student reading this, we suggest you spend time exploring and trying things out.
Showcase. A good portfolio's most crucial quality is showcasing your best work. “Best” can be defined however you want, but you generally want a balance between raw impressiveness and personal significance, with the personal side weighing a bit more.
Regarding impressiveness, ask yourself these two questions: Through which activities have you had the most significant impact? Which activities are the most unique and uncommon? For significance, ask yourself these two questions: How much does this activity matter to you personally? What are you most intrinsically motivated to do?
Curate. While it might be tempting to think that quantity is a quality all its own, admissions officers have finite attention and memory. This principle is even baked into the application process itself, with the Activities section of the Common App only allowing up to ten activities, with descriptions of those activities limited to just 150 characters.
Knowing that you will ultimately need to curate your portfolio, you can save a lot of time by curating your current activities. This means going for quality over quantity right now and only going deep into the activities that you care about.
Narrative. Last but not least, a narrative arc is one of the most essential qualities of a great portfolio. In other words, does your curated showcase have a story to tell? Yes you are showcasing and curating, but all of that should be done for the purpose of crafting a clear and compelling narrative.
Why a narrative? Because stories are memorable. Humans evolved to pass information in the form of stories, so our brains are hardwired to prioritize information if it follows a narrative structure.
Get to know yourself.
This is the most overlooked skill in modern K-12 education but is an essential component of college applications. Colleges love asking deep personal questions like, “What brings your joy?” “What does being educated mean to you and why?” or “What matters most to you and why?” Those are real essay prompts from Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford, respectively.
You probably don’t know yourself as well as you think you do. Just try tackling one of the essay prompts from earlier and you’ll quickly realize that it’s not easy to come up with something that isn’t horribly cliché or incredibly cringe. What you’re thinking is probably cliche because it’s impersonal and generic, like the universal plot to a run-of-the-mill feel-good sports movie. What you’re considering is perhaps cringe because it’s inauthentic and not well worn yet, like a new pair of shoes, it still feels foreign.
Society is high-speed, noisy, and all about consumption. We hardly have time to reflect on our experiences and think deeply about who we are and how we relate to the world. But that is precisely how you get to know yourself better. In the same way you’d get to know anyone better, you have to spend quality time with yourself on a regular basis.
The single best way to get to know yourself better is to keep a journal. We have a whole series on journaling that covers why it’s so valuable, what you can journal about, how to build up the habit, and what tools you can use.
Conclusion
Preparing for college is about more than just meeting deadlines and checking off tasks—it’s about developing skills that will serve you both in the application process and beyond. By increasing your capacity, building a personal portfolio, and getting to know yourself, you are positioning yourself for success in college admissions and cultivating habits and self-awareness that will make you a happier, more effective person in the long run. Remember, colleges are looking for more than just high achievers; they want to see students who are self-reflective, organized, and capable of personal growth.
