A December checklist for seniors

Six things worth confirming before winter break starts, because most of the people you depend on are about to be unreachable for two weeks.

Confirm your recommendation letters were actually submitted. Not requested—submitted. Log into each portal and check the status individually. A teacher who agreed in October and then got buried is the most common way a complete application ends up incomplete.

Verify your transcripts arrived. Counseling offices process requests in batches and close entirely over break, so a request made on December 20th may not move until January.

Get the FAFSA filed if it isn't. January and February bring priority deadlines for state and institutional aid, and doing the form in the calm of break is far better than doing it in the week it's due.

Check your email—including spam—for anything requiring a response. Some programs send verification requests or interview invitations with short windows, and a December message sitting unread until January has ended real applications.

List every January deadline in your calendar now, with alerts. You will not want to do this on January 2nd, and several of the biggest awards of the year close within days of school resuming.

Then actually stop. Burnout in December is common and costly, and January is dense. Two weeks genuinely off is a better investment than two weeks of low-quality work you'll redo anyway.