Preparing for Portals—One Month to Go!

An hourglass filled with blue sand in front of a calendar

Many rising seniors spend their summer and fall semester preparing college application materials. Typically, this includes a resume, activities lists, personal statement (long essay), short answer supplemental essays unique to their chosen colleges, and special departmental, honors, and scholarship essays. Some students, like art or music majors, may submit a portfolio or be required to audition or interview. Most schools will also require or accept recommendation letters and evaluations from teachers, mentors, and community members.

These materials, along with other “hard” information like standardized testing scores, high school transcripts, information about the student’s school and district, and personal and demographic information are submitted to colleges to help their Admissions Officers evaluate students as potential candidates.

However, no matter what materials colleges and their programs require, there is a significant component that all applicants will have to complete: the application portal! Portals are where all relevant materials are entered, uploaded, and submitted. There are various types of portals and strategies for entering information to showcase yourself in the best light—we’ll break some of these down in the sections below.

Differences between applications

The two main portals most students will utilize are the Common Application and Coalition Application. Both portals allow students to input their general information once and send it to multiple different schools. Common App allows students to send applications to 20 schools total while Coalition does not have a limit.

Many Texas students will also be familiar with Apply Texas, which can be used to apply to any public Texas school in addition to some private schools and community colleges.

Other schools have independent portals that they host and manage to facilitate a more individualized application experience. Some examples include MIT, the University of California, and Georgetown. These platforms have different requirements than most: MIT and the UCs don’t require a long essay, the UCs give students the space to report 20 activities (twice as many as the Common Application), and Georgetown offers alumni interviews to all applicants.

Timeline

The Common Application opens August 1st, 2024. Most other portals will share this opening date. By the time portals open, students should have prepared the majority of their materials. It is important to create an account and check out portals as soon as they open to confirm essay prompts and other requirements for the year.

For example, some colleges release their upcoming year’s application prompts near the start of summer. Others will leave the previous year’s prompts up without confirming that they will remain the same for the upcoming year. Some colleges do not upload their prompts online at all, meaning students will either need to search for other records of previous years’ prompts or wait until portals open.

Students working proactively on applications over summer can usually be confident that prompts will not significantly change from year to year, but it is crucial to adapt prompts or write new essays if necessary as soon as possible. Most students will fill out 2-4 application portals for a total of 8-10 applications on average, so it’s even more important to stay on top of all requirements.

Types of deadlines

While application portals will open at the start of August, colleges offer different deadlines to accept, evaluate, and release decisions back to students. It’s important for students to understand the different deadline types because they will need to plan ahead to be able to dedicate significant time toward building their applications.

Factors like higher acceptance rates among early applicants or the potential to be deferred rather than rejected play a role in the strategy of deciding which deadline students will utilize. For example, Rice University’s class of 2027 had a 16.5% Early Decision acceptance rate compared to 7% for Regular Decision—a 2.4x higher chance!

This may seem like A LOT, but don’t worry, you don’t have to tackle these application portals alone! If you need help applying to your colleges this summer, consider signing up for B2A’s Gateway Program, where you will be assisted with applications for FIVE schools. Our trained B2A counselors can assist you with filling in your activity descriptions to create a unique theme, brainstorm essay topics to highlight your best attributes, and offer suggestions for your artistic or research portfolios.