Senior scramblers.
I'm about to start getting them. It's July 31st. Most of my students not only have their list shored up now, but they've already got a solid idea about their Common App. We're in the process of developing a skeletal framework for the essay, if we haven’t already started to refine it.
The students who arrive in August tend to be scramblers, but they're still at a completely different level than the students who arrive in September and October. In September and October, students often don't realize the extensive preparation they haven’t done.
A student who hasn't done anything toward college applications (which takes a LOT of work, time, and focus) before the fall of senior year may be academically college prepared, but are they college-ready?
Scramblers are at high risk of becoming one of the four students who don’t return to college after freshman year. These are the 25 percent who go off to school because they think they need to, or they're told to, or they're herded to, when they should be the student who has someone saying, “Hey. Let’s hit the pause button and take some time to figure this out.”