One simple trick to do NOW to simplify applying to college (even if your kid is only 7)

No … the idea that at some point I would have to help her fill out a college application.

And I remembered my college applications from years before -- lots of lines and boxes. Late nights and desperately trying to remember four or more years back …

Ugh!

Then a friend of mine recommended I do something so simple -- so easy -- and I know that applying to college is going to be just a little bit easier.

And now I’m sharing it with you ...my Master College Application List plan.

AND -- when you finish watching, grab my free template that I made just for you to go along with the video.

Transcript

Hello, ToriAnn Perkey here!  From my homeschool to your homeschool, let's talk about how you can make applying to college for your homeschooler just a little bit easier even if your kids aren't even old enough that you're even really thinking about college -- 6, 7, 8, 9.  I'm going to teach you a simple trick that's going to make those applying years so much easier right now.

I wish I'd known this trick when my kids were little, but I didn't get started until a little bit later. So, I want to save you some grief and some pain because the reality is applying for college is a big deal, and it takes a lot of work, and colleges are looking for way more in your homeschool kids than just what classes they took. They want to know about their leadership. They want to know about their extracurricular. They want to know about the kid. They want to know if it's the kind of kid who's really going to fit into their school environment. 

And because of that, there are applications across the board regardless of what school you're trying to get into are going to be asking questions about a variety of different topics and if you wait until your kid is 16 to start applying for college and you're trying to remember everything that your kid did that you could put on this application, talk about freak-out zone.

So, right now no matter how old your kids are, I want you to do this. I want you to create a master document either in Google Docs or Evernote or wherever you keep these kinds of lists, and I want you to start just writing down the things your kids do.

Now, you don't have to do this every day or even every week, but I recommend you put a reminder on a calendar or a phone, and look at it at least once or twice maybe three times a year. And as your kids get older, probably you want to do it more often.

Now, what do you put in this master doc? What do you put in this document? Because you're going to use this document when it comes time to apply for college. Years and years later, you're going to use the things on this list to fill out this master application.

So, what do you include on the list? Well, here are some ideas of different categories to include, and I'm going to include a link with this video, and you can download a free PDF that's going to walk you through all these steps as well if you would like that. I want to give that to you because ... well ... it's super fun to make that kind of stuff.

Okay.  So, what do you need in this? Well, the first thing I would put on the list this master list -- the master college application list -- is the books that your kids have read.  Now, if your kids are anything like mine, I'd assume that they're such voracious readers that the list would be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books long. You do not have to write them all. What we're looking for is the classics. The ones that are going to show that they're well read, they're well educated and that they have really kind of moved through a variety kinds of literature both fiction and non-fiction.

If they have certain magazines they read regularly ... Popular Science or National Geographic or whatever ... you can include those there as well. So, you're looking for a list of books and other things that they read that are classics. If you have certain religious books that your kids are reading on a regular basis, I would include those as well.

The second thing that you want to put down is activities. What are the things that they've done? These are activities in a school setting like with a local homeschool co-op or maybe if they've gone part-time or extracurricular things like orchestra or rock climbing or dance or whatever your kids have been doing that outside of academia that makes them more well-rounded. You can list those, and you can list the years that they've been doing them because that way you can show that they did it for 5 years or 2 years. That's just going to be information that's going to be helpful. So, I just list the year they start and then it just keeps going from there.

You can also list the leadership positions they've had, whether they've had a leadership position in like a student council setting in your school co-op, whether they've had leadership at church, whether they've done it in the community, whether they volunteered somewhere -- we can talk about -- volunteering can go in a couple of places, but you can certainly put those down. 

Any service opportunities -- this is where volunteer would go in two different places. If they cleaned up something. If they did an Eagle project … that's a huge one! But if they're engaged in any kind of service even small service projects, write it down. You can use potentially that later, and you don't know, so you're going to write it down now.

Any classes that they've taken -- you don't have to get super detailed but starting in about 7th grade, I would start writing down. And I recommend that you just write down every class that your kid is in. And if you are radical unschoolers and there's no classes, then you want to describe what school looked like in a way that you can kind of remember the major projects they were engaged in or the major activities that you did as a family so you have some kind of transcript building material later on.

You want to write down another category is awards and achievements. If they're given an award because they win a contest or because they win something at an event, any awards, any achievements, if the local community honors them in some way, you want to write those down. Any jobs that they've held. Any entrepreneurial type things that they've done, you can totally include those. And those are just some of the categories that I recommend. 

So I would go through, and I just would create bold headings and then I would just be plugging stuff in. It might be totally empty if your kid is 9 or 10, but as they get older -- 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade --you'll start to fill those in. And if you see a gap, then you know that might be something you want to encourage your kid to do so they come across as more well-rounded when they are getting ready for the college application process.

So, once again this is just an easy simple way to make the applying part so much easier. I have a free PDF that you can grab at the link below or above wherever it is so that you can access this information so you don't have to … like if you're listening this in a place where you can't scribble that down … and I'll have some details about the different categories and some examples. 

I think it's going to be super helpful. It's going to make your life so much easier. Go do it right now.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and from my homeschool to your homeschool, I give you these tips and tricks and resources every week so that you can be a super successful and confident homeschool mom.

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