Stage 4 of 7
Execution
Prepare early, not frantically.
- Timeframe
- Summer before senior year through fall of senior year
- Primary goal
- Get ahead over the summer, then execute the plan without last-minute pressure once fall begins.
- Reading time
- 18 minutes
- Effort
- ~10–12 hours over the summer, then ~15–20 hours across the fall semester (the most effort-intensive stage in the journey — essays alone take real revision time)
Quick Start
If you only have 10 minutes, focus on these three priorities:
- 1Finalize the college list and draft the personal statement before senior year starts.
- 2Once fall begins, decide your application plan — Early Decision, Early Action, or Regular Decision — before the earliest deadline.
- 3Request recommendation letters formally, with real lead time.
Stage Snapshot
This stage covers two connected phases. The summer before senior year is about getting ahead — finalizing the list, drafting the essay, setting up applications — while there's no deadline pressure yet. Fall of senior year is about executing what's already prepared: submitting, requesting letters, filing aid forms, and tracking everything in one place.
Families who use the summer well tend to find fall genuinely manageable. Families who skip it tend to find fall genuinely overwhelming — not because fall is inherently harder, but because it's absorbing work that could have happened months earlier.
Arriving here already in the fall, without much summer preparation?
That's alright — start with the Fall priorities below, and treat the Summer ones as catch-up tasks rather than skipped homework. Everything is still doable, just on a more compressed timeline.
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