Firstly, it should be noted that not all decisions will be given to you at the exact same time.  In fact, the decisions for Early Decision and Early Action applications are typically sent out to prospective students before the deadline for Regular Decision.  In the case you receive your Early Decision letter back and the decision within is an acceptance, you are now legally bound to the school in question.  You cannot apply to any other colleges, and you must cancel any applications you’ve already sent.  In the case the decision within is a denial or deferral, then you should continue to apply to your Regular Decision schools.  Importantly, receiving a deferral means you still have a chance to be accepted in the spring.  In the case of Early Action applications, your results will not prevent you from applying Regular Decision to other schools, and unless you are very happy with going to one of the schools in question, you should still send out other applications to be returned in the spring. 

Once spring rolls around, you’ll be left with all that is needed to make your own final decisions regarding colleges.  Unless something terrible has happened, or if you neglected to follow my earlier advice and didn’t apply to any safe schools, you should have some colleges that responded to your application with an acceptance.  From here, you can simply pick which of these colleges you’d like to attend the most.  There is a good chance that none of these schools will be the one you wanted most, and choosing where to attend college can often be a game of compromise.  No college is perfect; all of them have their pros and cons, and you can never fully tell if a college is perfect for you if you haven’t actually attended as a student yourself.  What you’ll need to choose is which of the colleges offered you think you’ll be able to thrive at the most, and ultimately, this is a very personal decision. You may want to create a ranking of all the colleges you applied to in order to make the decision easier when you get your results, though these rankings often change with time.

When you do eventually decide on a specific college, you should make sure to go through the process of sending your initial deposit to that school.  This is one of the very first steps in the process that will ultimately lead to you starting classes in the fall, though that process can be very unique depending on the school you choose and must be followed according to the guidelines set out by said school.  Additionally, you should make sure to message any of the colleges that accepted you but which you decided not to attend and inform them that you’ve chosen a different school.

With all of that in mind, the final step in your college application process should be to congratulate yourself for ensuring said process.  No matter where you end up going in the fall, I can guarantee that you’ll make some fantastic memories there.