How do you ensure that your application is completed on time and accurately?

Speaker: How do you ensure that your application is completed on time and accurately?

Jerome Cole:I think that's very important; the first thing I want to say to students and parents is, it is critical that you get that application turned in on time. So the first thing that you want to do is you want to identify what is the deadline and that's something that you have you'll have to guess; that it'll be printed on the application itself; the college will post that on their website; so that's the first thing is to identify the deadline.

The second thing is to review the application; get a sense of how much time, how much energy is going to take for you to complete it. A lot of times, students who look at an application and they'll determine. All this seems fairly simple; I can probably get this done in a day or two. Okay, that's fine; what you don't what to do is say, well, let's do on Monday. I know I can do in a couple of days, so I'll wait until Friday and I'll work on over the weekend and I can put it in the mail Monday, it'll be on time. That would be a mistake.

What you want to do is determine how much time and energy it's going to take; then set a deadline for completing it. Always allow when time for something unexpected to occur. So some school assignment comes up; you are participating in a play and there is an extra dress rehearsal, etcetera, etcetera; there are lots of things that go on in student's lives when they are completing these applications. So always build in some extra time and the one thing that I would say to all students when it comes to completing applications, the earlier you get it done, the better.

There is no penalty for submitting an application in early. In fact that should be your goal is to do it early, but identify what the deadline is; identify how much time you are going to need to complete the application and then set a realistic goal, planning for those unexpected occurrences to popup from all end.