If you are like me, then you are already stressing. It is not even a month into summer but all I can think about is that this is my last summer at home before I graduate. I am planning on attending college in the fall of 2017, and I just keep thinking about everything that needs to be done to apply to colleges in the next few months. But, I have been able to keep it together with deadlines for myself and getting organized, so here are a few tips that I have used that will help the application process go (hopefully) without a hitch.

1: Make a master list of colleges you are applying to. Rank them in order according to how much you want to go to those colleges- basically, your top 1-2 should be dream schools and the rest should be more realistic but you still want to apply.

2: With that master list, put a dash next to each college and list the application deadlines. Once you have that down, you should feel some relief- at least now you’ll know when to procrastinate those essays and when you really need to crack down.

3: Continuing with your master list, make bullet points for each college with descriptions about what scholarships specific to that university that you want to apply for, and the process for which you will have to go through to apply for those scholarships. I know this sounds tedious, but once you get to the point where you are actually submitting applications and essays, you’ll be thankful you have bullet points to check off and to help make sure you didn’t forget anything that could cost you (literally and figuratively).

4: Your last duty to do with your master list will be specifically involving applying to those universities on the list. You should list which application each university uses, and what essays they will be requiring (AKA- Prompts and the word counts for the essays). That way, if two prompts are fairly similar (which actually happens quite often) you can just adjust essays for the prompts of other universities. So then, instead of writing an 800-word essay and a 750-word essay, you will just be writing one and editing it to fit the other, similar prompt.

5: Make a résumé about yourself. This will be a laborious task, but it will be worth it when the admissions officers read all about how you pioneered a  project that helped local animal shelters or led a task force at the school that helped crack down on littering. However, do not include too many details here- those can be saved for your essays, and admissions officers really don’t want to read all about littering for a half hour when they’re just trying to understand what you’ve done around your community as a student. Just include a section about your education, where you tell them your GPA, class rank, and all that fun stuff and then continue with a section about your work experience. Then comes the hard part: your activities and leadership. Here you will list what activities and positions you held throughout your high school career, organized by grade. With each activity, include the time you spent doing it each year- for example, 3hrs/wk/32 wks/yr. Then go into a section about your honors and awards you have received throughout high school, things like honor roll or NHS inductions. You can also split this section up into academic and other sections like a sport or volunteer organization you were a part of if you have multiple awards from a certain area. Finally, end with a section about your community service- listing the amount of service hours you expect to have by the time you graduate, along with the activities you have been involved in to get those service hours- listing your years you have been a part of those activities and how many hours you have gained (or expect to gain) from those organizations.

This really is not a checklist you can count on for answers about where to apply or how to get that magical scholarship that will make your dreams come true; this is just an article that will aid you in how to get organized with planning how you are going to apply. There may be a few things left off this list, and that is okay. A lot of the things you will be doing to apply this fall won’t be available to you until September or October- like certain essay prompts or scholarship requirements. If you want, you can do all of the items on this list now in order to save yourself from stress during the fall, or if you’re having a busy summer and a lax fall, then do the opposite. What this whole process really comes down to is one little phrase: the choice is yours.