At this point in the year, many seniors have submitted at least one college application (it’s ok if your daughter has not yet submitted, as no deadlines have passed), and they can expect colleges to notify them acknowledging that they received the application. Most colleges will be emailing directions on how to set up the student’s portal. The portal will be specific to each college and will be the student’s personal communication center with that college. Please encourage your daughter to get in the habit of checking each of the college portals weekly throughout the college process. 

Keep in mind that colleges are receiving thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of documents daily and they often get behind in updating portals. It can take up to two weeks for a college to download a student’s documents and update the student’s portal. Very rarely is anything missing! Almost always when we call the college, the documents are there and have not yet been processed (one of the colleges we called on November 2 was processing documents that they downloaded from Common Application on October 19, and they told us that it could still be several days until the “missing transcript” notification was removed from the student’s portal). Please don’t panic if you receive an email or portal notification saying that something is “missing,” especially if the email has arrived within two weeks of submitting the application. Encourage your daughter to see her College Advisor during lunch (we are available at a table outside of the Counseling and College Center every day except Fridays), and we can reassure her that nothing is missing.

Also, if your daughter applied to colleges using the Common Application, she can see when colleges downloaded our School Report (which includes the official transcript). Please do not request for an additional transcript to be sent to the college if they are on the Common Application. 

Finally, some colleges and universities are requiring students to submit a SRAR (Self-Reported Academic Record), regardless of whether or not a transcript was submitted. Students need to be checking their portals and emails frequently, as colleges often notify students about the SRAR after they have received the student’s application.