Increasing Efficiency and Effectiveness with a September - August Junior Year Workflow

THE BACKGROUND

I wish I had a great story about how I came up with this idea - maybe an inspiring conference session or an awesome book about project management - but the honest truth is that I stumbled upon it by mistake!

During my first six years as an IEC, I was also the Director of College Counseling at an independent school in the Washington, D.C. area. As my side business grew and I became busier, I realized that it would not be possible for me to keep up a hectic fall schedule with my IEC clients while I was also dealing with the insanity that is a school counselor’s life during the fall season: meetings with families and college reps, writing recommendations, editing essays, proofreading applications - you name it! I know that a lot of you have been there, too.

Fall 2013, in particular, hit me hard. I was balancing a lot and felt exhausted, but I wasn’t quite ready to jump into being an IEC full time, either. So, I decided that I needed to better leverage my summer break. As the school year progressed, I began to tell most prospective clients that I would only commit to working with them through the process if the student would commit to finishing all application and essay work by the end of the summer before senior year - in other words, when I had full-time availability. I was still able to take on a few “traditional” seniors with whom I met after school, but most of my workload was redirected to the summer months.

THE REALIZATION

My new “get everything done by the start of senior year” method ended up being a success: I worked hard during Summer 2014, but it made a huge difference in my own work-life balance during the fall. Beyond that, though, it became clear that there were many more benefits than my initial desire to shift my own workload around. 

Ultimately, I noticed that Class of 2015 students who finished up with me in August 2014, before their senior year began, were happier, less stressed, and - wait for it - they actually had a higher likelihood of getting into their top choice schools!

Another year passed and I took the same approach during Summer 2015 with Class of 2016 students. Once again, stress levels were lower, clients were happier, and while they hadn’t heard back from schools yet, I started the 2015-2016 school year realizing that I was definitely on to something. The one concern I had, though, was that it wasn’t optimal to have students cramming everything in during the summer months; instead, it made more sense to have them working backwards over a lengthy period of time, with the goal of finishing the last task before returning from summer break. 

In a true aligned-with-the-stars moment, I went to NACAC in San Diego a few weeks later and learned that the Common App® was about to introduce a cool new process called “rollover.” The rest, as they say, was history. I remember walking around the exhibit hall feeling like I had just won the lottery! That was a game-changing moment for me and really helped me finalize the workflow I have had in place since then.

THE OVERVIEW

While I start the college counseling process with many students before their junior year, we typically do not begin chipping away at tasks until September of junior year at the earliest, and the first task is always the same: the Common Application®.  Because I live in a state where one of our public flagships is Coalition-exclusive (don’t get me started..), many of my students have to complete that application as well. If students are even remotely up in the air about applying to a school requiring the Coalition, we wait so that we do not perform any unnecessary work.

We also begin to create school lists in the fall and of course work on those throughout the year, along with the usual tasks that most IECs complete during 11th grade: course selection, summer planning, standardized testing check-ins and more. Students complete their Common App® essays during the winter of junior year and then move on to teacher/counselor recommendation prep work in early spring. In late spring/early summer, they work on some generic essay material that can be re-purposed in various supplemental essays, regardless of topic.

I have a meeting with each family as soon as we have final junior year grades and test scores, and we finalize the college lists at that point. I also use that meeting as a checkpoint at which I confirm that each student is finished with their Common App®, Common App® main essay, Coalition App (if applicable), and all of the recommendation prep work for two teachers/ one counselor. From that point forward, we keep a master list of student availability, final college lists, and supplemental essay prompt releases. Multiple times per week, we update our database of early supplemental essay prompt releases and contact students immediately if a school on their list has released prompts early. We are then able to help them knock out any supplemental essays released in advance on blogs. 

Most students get to August 1 having about half of their essays fully complete and finalized, and the remaining essays aren't as hard because we have a lot of material that can be repurposed. I have them roll over and update their Common and Coalition Apps at home in early August with my specific rollover guides, created and released just for that purpose, and then they come in to review the work in person during scheduled meetings. We also discuss a plan for writing and repurposing content for the rest of the essays, which they do with my essay coaches during the month of August. In late August, they come in for a final review of everything and are able to submit before they head back to school.

THE RESULT (STUDENT PERSPECTIVE)

Students and parents love this method because:

  • My approach forces students to get their head in the game and start EARLY! Procrastination is not an option. This means that parents and students aren’t fighting at home (about college stuff, anyway!), because everyone is on the same page and working on the same team! 

  • The 12-month implementation period is a longer period of time than most students would naturally spend on their application materials and essays. Since it’s so spread out, students can take care of everything at an easy pace without feeling stressed out about impending deadlines.

  • The lack of application/essay stress during senior year is great from a quality-of-life perspective - it’s not fun to have to balance admissions-related tasks with what is typically their most rigorous extracurricular and course load … and we all know how important those first quarter senior year grades are! 

  • Students with all of their application materials in early have a natural, unintended leg up on applicants who do not. I know that this is sort of a hot-button issue for many people. I also know that it makes it really hard for school counselors when their students push for materials to be sent early. And lastly, I know that just because students benefit from this at certain institutions doesn’t mean they benefit from it at all institutions. Yet - I really believe in my core that I am right about this, on the whole. I feel that there are two main reasons why the advantage exists, and I don’t think either one of them are intentional: one is simply a matter of the admissions officers being less rushed and having more time to read through the file carefully. As for the other, I believe that human nature is such that we make judgments unintentionally. In my opinion, there is no way that an admissions officer can’t have a preconception about the type of student whose RD application is fully complete by September 1, months before others have even started. 

For all of these reasons and a few more smaller ones, my goal for each of my students is to have them DONE with all of their applications and essays by the time they go back to school during senior year. 

THE RESULT (IEC PERSPECTIVE)

I initially came up with this plan as a solopreneur IEC trying to balance my side hustle with my day job, so it’s a no-brainer that this method has major work-life benefits for any school counselors venturing into the IEC world.

What I have since realized is that it can also be extremely advantageous for a larger IEC practice with a team, like the one I have today. Spreading out the work in a seasonal manner keeps my staff busy (and paid!) all year long, which lets our practice take on more clients - we have a steady flow of work without the peaks and valleys that prevent other practices from scaling. And after our seniors submit their applications? We balance our introductory junior work with an entirely new cohort of "late start seniors" - the students who, for whatever reason, did not start the process until the start of their senior year are now in a panic. Most other IECs are full, but we have plenty of time and happily take them on! Maximizing our time in this way essentially doubles the clientele that we are able to serve in a given graduating class.

Today, this approach has become a core part of how I run my business; every single stakeholder benefits, from parents and students to my staff and me!

NEED ANY HELP IN ADOPTING THIS METHOD?

Helpful InformationColleen PaparellaDC College CounselingProfit, Scaling, Work-Life Balance, Students, Workflow