I’m a junior. It’s May. Now what?

First things first – survive junior year! Right now, you’re likely slogging your way through your final assignments and tests and enduring a gauntlet of IB and AP and final exams. The Maycember chaos is real, and adding your college essay to the mix in the midst of this mayhem is not a recipe for success. But once the smoke clears, the grades are logged, and you can breathe a little easier, then you can start to turn your thoughts to the application season ahead.  

In May, it can be helpful to familiarize yourself with the platform you’ll be using to apply to college – The Common Application. First, create an account at www.commonapp.org. Your guidance counselor may have already helped you set up your account, but if you don’t have one yet, get one. You can use this time to start snooping around and becoming familiar with the site. Within the Profile section you’ll find my favorite tab – Writing. Here is where you will see the prompts for the Common App Personal Statement, almost always referred to as the Common App essay. You can see the prompts here as well.   

For now, your only job is to get a sense of the workload ahead. Read through the Common App essay prompts – just to see what they look like! You don’t have to make any decisions; just see if any of the topics speak to you or cause any ideas to bubble up in your brain. Finally, if you’re really an overachiever, you can go snoop around on a few colleges that interest you. On each university’s individual page, you can see if they have any additional writing requirements, often referred to as supplementary essays. It’s important to note that any school-specific content on those pages will reflect the school’s requirements during the 2024-25 application cycle. Which is the one that just completed for all of your graduating senior friends. Which is not yours. The Common App site won’t “activate” for your 2025-26 application cycle until August 1. 

So why should you look at a bunch of old content that doesn’t apply to you?

Because I said so! And because it will help give you a sense of what the schools on your list will likely be asking you to write. For example, if you’re applying to University of South Carolina, Auburn, University of Colorado Boulder, and University of Kentucky, your writing workload will be on the lighter side. You’ll have your big Common App essay, and one 250-word supplement for CU Boulder. One big essay and one small one. Not bad at all. But if your cocktail of schools looks like this – UNC, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, University of Wisconsin, and Wake Forest – you’ve got a little more on your plate. One big essay and 14(!) supplemental responses. 

Knowing how much writing ahead will help you plan accordingly. And knowing what kind of questions a school has asked in the past helps give you a sense of its flavor and values. Then, you’ll know going in that NC State is probably going to want to know why you want to pursue your given major. You’ll know Tulane and Duke and University of Michigan will ask “Why this school?” You’ll know Wake Forest is probably going to ask about books and for your Top 10 List. And if UChicago is on your list, you’ll know their prompts are flat-out wild: We’re all familiar with green-eyed envy or feeling blue, but what about being “caught purple-handed”? Or “tickled orange”? Give an old color-infused expression a new hue and tell us what it represents. 

So it’s May. Get through junior year. Breathe. Go to Cook-Out with your friends. Work on your tan. Then, hop on Common App and do a little snooping. A little information gathering. A little thinking. No big deal.