A measure of my impending insanity -- the pre-college spreadsheet

Parent Cafe
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<p>I just threw report cards and awards in a school file. The one thing I didn’t do and should have was write down the awards for which all he got was a medal. My son kept all the medals hung on his closet door. Three years later we had no idea what green stood for or what event he got it in. </p>

<p>Additionally, I also found that there were a number of awards my son received in class at school, he would stick in some notebook and I never actually saw them. I was cleaning up his room today (tossing high school papers) and discovered one of his National Latin Exams certificates in one, and his ACM scores in another.</p>

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<p>vballmom, unfortunately, my state doesn’t require any support past age 18, even for college. I had the child support going into a 529 because I know some men come to resent paying child support and I didn’t want exH to be one of them. Plus, I figured he wouldn’t be putting anything aside for college on his own otherwise. (So far, that appears to be the case.) Another consideration, which I didn’t really think about at the time, is how S would feel should his dad not have had anything to offer for college expenses. </p>

<p>ExH isn’t a bad guy; he just doesn’t plan, nor think much about the future. I send him links, info, articles on rare occasions, and under the terms of our divorce, he’s supposed to give me a copy of the yearly 529 statement, but … I know not to get my expectations up.</p>

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<p>mathmom, </p>

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<p>That requires paper organization, and all I can say to that is “AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!” :D</p>

<p>(Well, one other thing, too: kudos to you for doing it!)</p>

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<p>owl: Great that you’re here and that you want to be involved. Those are two big plusses for your S.</p>

<p>Having said that, if you subject the poor kid to too much organization and detail, he may just grow to feel that he has lost all control over his own life. Think of yourself as a guide, and let him make the decisions–what courses to take, what summer programs to attend, etc. Biggest problems in our house occurred when DW tried to push DS into things he just didn’t want to do. I think it’s one of the laws of teenage physics:</p>

<p>“For every parental push there is an equal and opposite reaction on the part of the teenager”</p>

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<p>yayverily, all summer program and course selections are his. As are ECs, unless they are family ECs (such as soup kitchen duty, which we all do together). I might make a suggestion and tell him why I think what I do, but these things are up to him, and I’m happy to support his decisions.</p>

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<p>Excellent! You definitely have taken the right approach. Good luck.</p>

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<p>I’ve got your back, owlice. My kid would tell you that my obsessive organization actually KEEPS me from bugging her. When she got around to filling out apps or building her brag sheet, she was oh-so-grateful to simply go to the paper files, or look in the email or docs files for the info she needed. </p>

<p>Don’t confuse organizing things with pushing children. They don’t necessarily go hand in hand.</p>

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<p>I think D is also grateful that I started keeping that binder for her. When I told her what I was doing, she looked relieved that her paperwork would be somewhat organized. Now if only I could do the same with my own stuff.</p>

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<p>Good for you owlice!</p>

<p>I belong to Obsessive Organizers Not-So-Anonymous too! So what if Microsoft Excel became my “BFF” and CC my “addiction” for several months. My research and industry made my D’s application process come senior year a breeze for her.</p>

<p>But I must say that you’ve got me beat–I didn’t set up our “command center” (complete with jam-packed filing cabinet, giant wall calendar for all deadlines and to-do’s, bulletin board with color-coded post-it’s, etc. etc.) until my D’s junior year. (We weren’t really even dreaming about college in any tangible way until then though I did keep a record of her academics/EC’s/awards, etc. as suggested by her GC.)</p>

<p>Honestly, with a full load of AP’s, and in/out of school EC’s, and volunteer work, and a part-time job when was she supposed to do all of this research? I don’t know how some kids manage all of this completely on their own–it’s overwhelming.</p>

<p>When catalogues and emails came pouring in, I began to set up folders for the colleges of interest to her. We had 3 cartons and began sorting by yes, maybe and no. After a few months, she settled on about 3 dozen schools that merited further scrutiny. I set up folders for each of these schools for her. Each folder contained various statistics, comparison admissions data, info about location, housing, food options and student life, any unique things about the school, outcomes for graduates, and print-outs of major requirements, interesting courses, research opportunities and professors’ bios for areas of interest to her-- plus financial data and whatever else I found relevant to the school and the process. </p>

<p>By the end of August, before her senior year, she had a place for one-stop-shopping, which also included DVD’s I purchased of college tours/info sessions from Collegiate Choice–which helped to remind her of what these places looked like. She used this and advice I gathered from CC members to narrow down her list to about a dozen schools. She’s the kind who is interested in everything and got excited by something at every school, so narrowing her list was a chore. It was take it off, put it back on, and take it off again over and over again. She finally settled on schools that best met her top five necessities.</p>

<p>I believe that if I hadn’t laid the groundwork for her, she wouldn’t have had the time to work on all of those apps and compulsively write and re-write half a dozen essays for the Common App and all the supplemental essays, as well. She had most everything completed by the end of September. She found her senior year even busier than her junior year, so she was relieved to have the app process behind her while most of her classmates were still in agonizing overdrive.</p>

<p>The funny thing is that after all of the research, planning, work and hemming and hawing at the very last moment (and I do mean last–the deadline day for ED apps) she threw caution to the wind and went with her gut and applied ED to the school that, I suppose, gave her butterflies! So, by mid-December she had her happy ending–an acceptance and a financial package enabling her to attend a top LAC.</p>

<p>I don’t take credit for that outcome–that was all her–I was more like the executive assistant to the CEO who helped to grease the wheel, so-to-speak! </p>

<p>And frankly, without CC (and the lovely, knowledgeable people who took the time to share their experiences and advise us) we may well have gotten lost along the way.</p>

<p>Best of luck to you and your S (he is lucky to have you on his side) from an unapologetic organizational freak! ;)</p>

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<p>BAfromBC, you’re hired! See you and your folders in 18 months!! :D</p>

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<p>all we did was this</p>

<p>one folder for certificates, letters of recomdenation, and misc papers</p>

<p>one folder for test score reports, transcripts (grades), other classes taken, school information</p>

<p>one for ECs, and out of school volunteering, etc</p>

<p>she started a brag sheet/resume and updated it periodically</p>

<p>that was it</p>

<p>worked fine-</p>

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<p>I’ve been keeping the chronological binders with transparent page protectors, into which all of my kids’ paper goes related to school, EC’s, family activities, etc. The active binders are on a shelf above my desk (for convenience- and it’s near the door so sometimes I put programs or whatever in the binders before I take of my coat), and the binders of previous years are on shelves in another room. When they were preschoolers, I’d intended to use what I’d saved to make nice scrapbooks, but now that sons are ages 16 and 21, I believe the binders will just remain as memorabilia archives exactly as is. </p>

<p>Last year this thought occured to me: why do I keep binders of my kids stuff and not of my own stuff? Where is my scrapbook, my memorabilia? It’s in random files and binders of volunteer work, holidays, family photos, and etc. Does anyone keep their own personal adult scrapbook/archive, and how do you do it?</p>

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<p>owlice - a tip…for a college info. spreadsheet…it’s helpful to also track the INCOMING contacts from the colleges… type (email, phone, mail), who (what department & title), and date of contact. that sort function is a handy dandy tool…sort by date of last contact, sort by name of school, etc.</p>

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<p>I keep a folder with certificates, awards and list of various ECS/community service and another folder with SAT scores. I <em>do</em> save copies of the school curriculum, as sometimes classes are no longer offered by senior year, or for when colleges ask if it’s an honors/post-AP, etc. (MIT asked for all of this stuff and we were glad to have saved it.) This was also useful when a couple of classes S took were listed on the transcript one way and were actually another (S described the class/sequence, and the GC backed it up via school report and rec letter). S included this in an “Additional Info” section which he attached as a pdf or sent as a hard copy along with his apps. We also saved job descriptions, got school profiles from the GC for previous years (so we knew what info the college would be getting about S’s HS), etc. Ditto the recommendation on good writing samples.</p>

<p>S maintained the resume, which was a non-trivial task. He included it with every app, including those who wanted “just the highlights.” His rationale was that the longer resume would fully explicate his long-standing interests and pursuits between that, the essays and recs, would fully develop what he had to present.</p>

<p>We did have to chase down AMC/AIME scores, but happily, it is possible to get those from the USAMO folks!</p>

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<p>you can mae yourself nuts by coming up with this colume and tracking that contact</p>

<p>and that can get you caught up in minutia and miss the bigger pictures</p>

<p>I say less is more in the college hunt- a few simple folders, print out the page of dates directly from each colleges website- that usually has contact info, etc. glue it to the front of that schools folder, get a big calendar and put dates there as well, set deadlines AHEAD of college deadlines, don’t get all excited by each piece of mail, they are meaningless, except for inormation</p>

<p>and as far as contacts…put any “real” mail in each college of interests folder, created a folder in email for those contacts etc…</p>

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<p>speckledegg: After years of filing away my kids memorabilia, I had a brief lull in the action and started the same system for myself and H. I have something like 7 notebooks with the transparent sheet protectors filled chronologically with our stuff. It was in definite danger of basement mold syndrome, so I am glad I brought it up when I did. When a notebook gets filled, I just fill up a new one with the page protectors and put things in as they show up. </p>

<p>Sometimes life is just too crazy to do this, so I might get a pile accumulated, but then a lull comes along and I put them right in. I rarely look in the books, but when I do I enjoy it immensely. For example, I was able to put my hands on my and H’s old copies of SAT, ACT scores from the 60’s – didn’t share our results with the kids, just looked. Amazingly, our scores were pretty much the same as theirs. None of the four of us ever did any test prep. Maybe much of this kind of test aptitute is inherited.</p>

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<p>I use the binder/transparent sheet protector sytem for a few other filing projects. I have binders for clipped recipes, quilt patterns, home improvement projects, and warranties/receipts for major purchases (appliances, electronics, etc.). These are in addition to the one I keep for D. I haven’t started one for S yet as he’s still young.</p>