It would be nice if everything always went as planned. In the ideal world, you pick your favorite school, apply early action or early decision, and get accepted in December. End of story.
Unfortunately, things don't always work that way. You might get deferred. You might get rejected.
As a result, for better or worse, you need a back-up plan. What are you going to do in case you still need to keep applying to colleges?
You could just take a wait and see approach. You could decide you'll only work on other applications after you get your ED or EA result.
Or... you could start to plan ahead.
Think about applying Early Decision 2. Do you have a second top choice? If so, see if the school has an ED 2 deadline in January. Those results come out in February.
Make a list of the schools you would apply to Regular Decision. The list of schools should be balanced between "reach," "target," and "likely." (People sometimes use different terminology, but the idea is always the same). Some schools that are really hard to get into; some schools that are in the right range for you; and some schools you think you will definitely get into. In total, aim for 10 to 12 schools.
Write some of the supplemental essays for your RD schools. It can help to have a head start. Best case scenario, you'll never use them.
Not ready to write? Just make a spreadsheet. A list of every college with the corresponding supplemental question will help you see patterns across the different applications. You might see that the type of answer you wrote for one school is applicable to a question from another school. Bingo! So worst case scenario, the task ahead might not be so bad after all.
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