Sometime in June, the last bell of the school year rings. HECK YEAH! Sophomore or junior year has been a grind. You’ve been counting the days until you’d have the freedom to sleep in, practice your free-throws, and spend long afternoons at the boba shop with your friends. And now that day is finally HERE!
I’m going to tell you what I tell even my most hardcore workaholic test and college prep clients: it’s really healthy, even necessary, for you to spend at least some of your summer break resting and having fun. Straight chilling is good for the spirit (and for your Halo ranking), sure—but moreover, restoring your mental and emotional reserves will help you hit the ground running once September comes.
That being said, it’s wise to put some of your summer towards strengthening your college admissions odds. Skipping a whole summer’s worth of time can really slow down your college process momentum and come back to bite you in Senior fall. So let’s help you figure out how to optimize your summer break…while still reserving plenty of time for R&R.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. What to do the summer between sophomore and junior year
B. Start making your college list
C. Decide between the SAT or the ACT
2. What to do the summer between junior and senior year
A. Assess your SAT/ACT progress
D. Keep exploring your passions
3. Conclusion
College Process Plan: Junior Summer
Here are three key summer goals before 11th grade begins.
A) Explore Your Passions
Sure, more concrete prep for standardized tests and college apps also has a place here. But don't let these take up so much time that you don’t have any left to find yourself. After all, how can you know which colleges would be great fits for you if you don't know who you actually are?
Make a list of all the activities that appeal to you, whether you’ve tried them before or not. Then, use the summer to explore the new ones (and further cultivate your known interests). Formal and informal “extracurriculars” both count! For instance:
Interested in art? Make it a point to visit your local museum often; join a figure drawing class; or start making collage greeting cards and sell them in local shops.
Serious foodie? Try bringing some of your cupcakes to the local farmer’s market; make TikTok reels reviewing local restaurants; ask your mom if you can head up the family’s vegetable garden maintenance for the summer.
Find yourself fascinated by politics? Start attending your local town halls and challenge yourself to speak on issues that affect you; see if you can volunteer at a nearby political representative’s office; or join a current events discussion group on MeetUp.
The idea is to sample each of your interests to see if you want it to be a bigger part of your life or not. If you find that the answer is “no,” that’s fine—try another one next!
2) Start drafting your list of colleges
Your list doesn’t yet need to be set in stone, but by the summer between 10th and 11th grades, you should at least be seriously contemplating which schools you want to apply to. Your college list will shape which standardized tests you need to take, how high you need to score, and your overall test-prep strategy—so you need to generate at least a rough list this summer. Some questions that will help you narrow the field:
What region of the U.S. (or elsewhere!) do I want to live in?
How big of a school do I want to attend?
What academic subject might I want to concentrate in?
Do I have a deep passion that I already know my college needs to be able to foster? A competitive debate team, say, or a marine biology major, or excellent dance facilities?
These are just a few ways to start off your thinking! If you’d like more guidance on how to develop your list, I’ve dedicated a whole post to the subject. Remember, putting together your college list is all about you: who you are and what you want to do with and during your college education.
3) Decide between the SAT or the ACT
The first rule of the test-prep process? Work smart: don't do more work or spend any more time than you have to. If you do, you’ll drive yourself crazy and risk burning out before you get the score you need.
But here’s the good news: you can cut your prep time in half simply by deciding whether to take the ACT or the SAT first, creating a plan while you’re still feeling relatively mellow, and sticking to the plan even when you’re not feeling mellow. (An Ace the Test: Game Plan™ makes this decision easy!) And making that choice before junior year begins will let you make it with a clear head and give you a jump-start on the busy year ahead.
What to Do between 11th and 12th Grade
1) Status check: how much progress have you made towards your SAT/ACT goals?
First, I’d like to give you props for how far you’ve already come: by the end of your junior year, you’ve progressed from deciding between the ACT or SAT to actually taking a standardized test or two! Good for you! Now it’s time to put some intention behind your next steps.
When your final exams and your last attempts at the SAT or the ACT are done in June, take a break from prep while you await your scores, and then assess where you are according to your test-prep plan from a year ago. Do you have the scores you need already? Do you need another attempt at the ACT or SAT? Figure out which tasks you can now cross off your list and where you need to focus anew.
2) Finalize your college list
After spending all of your junior year working on the SAT and ACT and thinking about the college process, you now need to lock down your list of where you'll actually apply. Hopefully, you’ve taken several tours, done lots of research, and have a pretty good idea of what your SAT and ACT scores will be. But before you can start filling out the Common App and writing all those supplemental essays, you need to have an idea of how many schools you’re applying to and what type they are. Make sure your list includes a combination of test score-appropriate schools, “reach” schools, and “likely” schools. If you plan on applying Early Decision to a college, you need to start thinking about that as well, since you’ll need to have that application done first.
3) Get a head start on the Common App
This is the single most important tip I want to give rising seniors about their summer vacation: write your Common App essay (or “personal statement”, which can be repurposed for many non-Common App applications as well) before senior year starts! Unless you want your senior fall to be more stressful than any other semester of your life thus far, do your future self this huge favor.
Ideally, you’d make time for the following in June, July, and August:
Create a Common App account
Fill out the App’s basic information
Craft a thoughtful, compelling activities list, AND
Write and rewrite your main 650-word essay until you’ve got a final draft that sings.
Your college counselor and/or private tutor may still offer some substantial feedback on your essay in the coming months, so it likely won’t be 100% “finished” yet. But it should be engaging, typo-free, and representative of your overall personality and passions.
4) Speaking of which....keep exploring your passions!
Last but not least! While you’re busy planning the rest of your life, you need to continue to HAVE a life. Keep going with the activities that excite you: take another class, jam, work, intern, volunteer, create. You get the idea. BE the fascinating, excited, intellectually curious student you’re trying to present yourself as on your apps. It’s these passions—the pure fun of doing them, and the desire to keep pursuing them—that will keep you motivated through the marathon of test prep and college admissions, and ultimately, they’re also what will get you into the right school for you.
Conclusion
You don't need to work on your applications/test prep so hard you never feel the sun on your skin over summer break! But using them to keep your energy and focus flowing towards the test score you want and the school you want it for will help keep you sane during those crucial, busy junior and senior years. Good luck, and know you can always reach out if you need help making a plan that makes you feel comfortable and confident!
