When to Send an Update to your Colleges

Seniors have, at this point, sent in applications to many, if not all, of their colleges. They may have applied Early Decision, Early Action, Rolling or Regular Decision and are awaiting the news to come back. However, if there is new good news to share with their colleges, there is a smart way to do so. It could perhaps tip the scales in their favor.

New accomplishments, awards, accolades, etc.

Of course applicants filled out the Activity section of their college applications, and probably even included a resume. However, for many students, this was done weeks, if not months, ago. If a student has a new accomplishment or award, it makes sense to share this news with the colleges. Students should send an email to the Admission Representative that they have been working with. If they don’t know who their Admission Rep is, or don’t have contact information for them, they can look it up. I also recommend CC’ing the college’s general Admission email address. Students should make the email short and sweet, let the college know they have new information and would like it added to their application. Then, list the accomplishments or awards with a brief description. Colleges may or may not use this new information in their decision process, but it certainly won’t hurt, and may even help.

Grades

If colleges have deferred an applicant, or have not yet reviewed their application, it’s important that students send updated grades to those schools (if they are good!). Typically, high schools do this on their own; they likely have a process and procedure around automatically sending first term and/or first semester grades to the colleges a student has applied to. But, it can’t hurt for students to ask and make sure that grades they are proud of are sent to the schools they applied to.

Continued Interest

Students who were deferred by a top choice school can update that college about their continued interest and hope that they will be accepted at a later time. Students can write what we call a letter of continued interest, and this is a great place to include recent accomplishments and provide an update about high grades. Read more about a letter of continued interest in this previous blog post.