What happens to my college application after I submit it?

Before we even review your application as an admission committee, our operations team will work with you to make sure we have a complete application file from you that includes not only the materials that you submit to us directly but also the materials that your high school counselor submits and your teachers submit. We'll check over all of this, and if there's anything missing, we will absolutely reach out and let you know. Just make sure that you check your email and be in touch with us as you have missing items to complete.

Once we have completed your application the first member of our admission committee to review your application is your territory admission counselor. I suggest that you check in with your territory admission counselor and just make sure that they know who you are. For example, here at Grinnell College, I'm the admission counselor that works specifically with students from the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Texas, the Carolinas, and more. if you ever have a question who your counselor is, I would just google search whatever school you're applying to and something like "territory admission counselor" and you should find your way to that information. You can also just call into your admission office and ask who your counselor is. Anyone would be happy to help you.

When we're reviewing your admission file, I want you to know that every single word you have submitted to us we read multiple times, and we talk about it with each other a lot. All of the care and intention that you put into completing your application is very much reciprocated in the reading process. Ultimately we make decisions as a group, as an admission committee, about each file.

Again, as we're reviewing, we really want to try to understand your application within the context of your learning environment. We do not want to try to compare you to some imaginary benchmark out there, so as much context as you can include in your application to really understand who you are and what kind of school you're coming from. If we ever have any questions though, we will be sure to reach out to your high school counselor to get more information.