The Timeline Is the Reason Or, Why Asking Seniors âWhere Are You Going?â in November Isnât Possible (Yet)
Mary O'Malley Nov 24 READ IN APP Every Thanksgiving, right around the moment someone pulls out the good tablecloth and announces one of three types of potatoes are ready, I tend to want to offer one small public service announcement: Please donât ask the teenagers in your life where theyâre going to college. Not because anyone means harm â truly, these questions are asked out of love. Theyâre asked because adults are proud, hopeful, curious, and excited about the next stage of a young personâs life. But thereâs a gentle truth we sometimes forget: the question doesnât match the timeline. Most seniors simply donât know yet. And theyâre not supposed to. So letâs pull back the curtain, kindly and clearly, on what this time of year actually looks like for high school students. Where We Are in the Admissions Cycle (Hint: Not the âdecidingâ phase) To understand why students canât answer the âWhere are you going?â question, it helps to understand where they actually are in the nine-month admissions cycle. AugustâNovember This is the application phase. Students are writing, revising, editing, uploading, submitting, organizing, managing recommendations, and meeting waves of early deadlines. It is full, demanding work â and they are in the thick of it. November Most Early Action and Early Decision applications have just been submitted. A few decisions may come from schools with rolling admissions, but nothing close to a complete picture. December Some Early Decision and Early Action results arrive. For many students, this brings clarity. For others, it brings more questions. But it is still far too early to know final options. JanuaryâFebruary Regular Decision deadlines land. Students continue writing and submitting. Most admission decisions have not yet been released. March The majority of decisions arrive â often within a two-week window.