<p>I am a Junior, and I am involved. My parents have basically nothing to do with it. They know I am enthusiastic and basically just let me do my own thing. My mom told me to write down all the colleges I am considering so we can visit them. My GC isn't exactly a help, so I rely mainly on information from the internet. I think I probably want to attend the University of Arizona. We will be visiting sometime over the summer, and again after I am accepted.</p>
<p>My daughter is interested, but is in "rest mode" right now after SATs and APs. Right now she's more interested in summer plans (doing an internship and getting a paying job), but I imagine when the new Common App comes out she'll start focusing (or panicking).</p>
<p>My D is not quite as involved in college selection as I would like, but I am sure it will all work out. Some of that comment comes from looking down the road and seeing how little time there is for college visits (too many sports, activities, job, etc) and how few we have seen to date. Some of the visits require flying and I can't seem to pin her down on her schedule. She, too, seems in "take a breath" mode after AP, ACT and SATs. Finals are soon enough on the horizon and I am sure she really would rather just not think about it right now until school is out and lacrosse is over. I have to relax b/c she does seem to pull it all off in the end. Hard to do sometimes, especially when there are two other kids but nice to know I am not alone!</p>
<p>The spring schedule is exactly the reason my son and I started the college visits at the end of summer prior to the start of junior year. After having had to do the rush visits with my older one I realized something wasn't right!</p>
<p>When are the GC's at the schools going to wake up and look at a calendar? If you wait for PSAT scores to come back, Christmas holidays, and Jan/Feb snow and ice you are faced with maybe three months of looking at colleges while they are in session and then you take away AP, SAT/ACT testing, College spring break, spring sports, performances and the avg. student is left with looking at colleges with maybe three dates! </p>
<p>I have a time line from our GC's office for my son's junior class that starts in Feb. of Junior year with, "meet with gc to discuss senior year course selection and future plans" It isn't until April that college visits are mentioned and that's also the time they say to make a list!</p>
<p>Kathiep - I know I will start sooner with D2, however, D1 had absolutely no interest during sophomore year and it would have been a waste of time. She stayed/visited many college campuses for athletic events v. college visits from freshman year through the present. However until recently, college was so far away in her mind it did not really register. D2 who is a freshman, has already poured through the books lying around and already is more aware and interested. I would even add on visits for her now, b/c she is that interested. My 12 year old S even knows how to analyze the stats in the books, just from osmosis! We all learned a lot on D1, but in fairness, she just wasn't ready to start all of this until after Xmas of her junior year. Might have been different if she wasn't the oldest, but that is how it played out.</p>
<p>Sorry, didn't mean to sound critical because we didn't start looking at colleges or even really thinking about them until Jan/Feb of my daughter's junior year. </p>
<p>In fact, my junior son would never have chosen to go visit colleges as soon as we did if I had not have nudged. And I nudged because summer visits did not work well with my daughter and I realized that it just took one visit to open the door to college thinking, so why not open that door sooner? I knew that it would be harder to find a few colleges that fit with my son because he's pickier then my daughter and his stats were lower. </p>
<p>My point is (at least from our school) that the time line that the guidance counselors seem to take as a good one is to not start looking until way too far into the junior year. I just don't understand why they don't say....at the end of soph. year start looking through the fat college books, make up a list over the summer and then do visits starting in Aug. or Sept......</p>
<p>S runs hot and cold on college planning but has some pretty specific wants so the list has been fairly easy to make. One thing that helped is that he visited campuses while doing a summer program at Penn state last summer (pre junior year) w/o parental interference and was able to formulate his own opinion. Decided small was not for him.Decided urban without a traditional campus was not for him.
Interesting twist just occurred..we were in Arizona (ASU) for D's graduation..S hasnt been out there with us there since Parents Weekend of her freshman year..he became quite interested in the campus and we made up our own tour for him.It wasnt on his list since they don't have the specific major he wanted.But it might be now!</p>
<p>Kathie..I agree that GCs and families often don't even start the preliminary first steps until late in Junior year. That is so late that it means cramming visits in overlapping with the application process. I would much rather use junior year to formulate college criteria, making a college list, narrowing it down, and visiting the colleges, plus getting all standardized testing done (at least once for each test needed to apply). That leaves senior year for the application process. Think in terms of junior year as selection process, senior year as app process. The timeline we used started in Sept. of junior year and we bought the big college directories for my D's 16th birthday which was also the first day of junior year. Once the list was formulated ,we mapped out the visits for the entire school year because her schedule is chockful with ECs and other commitments. We also had a timeline to guide us for the junior year and first semester of senior year that we created to fit her situation. My other D did not start until half way through tenth grade which for her was equivalent to JUNIOR year, later than I would have liked to have done and in fact, made it so we were unable to do that many visits that year. This was only cause she had asked to graduate early and so I HAD thought we still had her junior year coming up to do all that stuff. Then HER process was overlapping my senior D's process....oy! Glad it is all over.<br>
Susan</p>