Hi All - We are beginning the college search and I am wondering about “college coaches”. Does anyone use them / are they effective and worth it? I feel that the best way to truly determine fit would be having my son talk to a current college student. Do others agree that is the best way? Any other ideas? I don’t think the visits have been personal enough.
Hi Jonlax22! I think that it can be telling to speak with current students but it is kind of up to the luck of the draw if this student will be a good representative of what your son will experience if he went to that school. I think a better way to tell fit might be to read about if a school has the things your son wants academically and socially on paper. Big or small school. Strong departments in the major he is interested in. If the professors he would study with in that department have videos online, do they seem interesting and are they good speakers? Fraternities or not? Close to home or far away? A lot of required courses or more freedom of choice in what to study or a mix? I think that college is largely what a person makes of it and within reason, a person could be very happen at dozens and dozens of colleges.
Lots of people posting here may have suggestions.
As far as “fit” goes, consider what you and your son consider important:
A. Cost (net price after financial aid grants or scholarships) and related matters (e.g. would financial aid change based on anticipated family financial changes or other kids entering or leaving college, or would some merit scholarships have a high risk of loss due to high GPA requirements to renew or limitations on changing major, etc.?).
B. Academic content, such as major availability (including whether there is a difficult or competitive secondary admission process to major after enrolling), required major and general education courses, available electives in and out of major, content and rigor within courses, external accreditation for major or courses for specific post-graduation goals (if applicable), preparation for and success rates for any external licensing exams for specific post-graduation goals (if applicable), special features like co-op programs or study abroad, etc…
C. The experience and environment, such as class sizes, class formats, instructor types (tenure-track versus adjunct versus TA), residential versus commuter, whether residential students tend to live on campus or not (or only in frosh year), weather, distance from home, region or location, aspects of the surrounding neighborhood, extracurricular activities, religion, fraternities and sororities, level of alcohol (or other recreational drug) use, study abroad programs, etc…
D. Prestige, alumni network, and similar name-related effects.
You could pay – or get a TON of expert advice here, free of charge. Unless your child has special needs/admissions issues, I would question the worth of a college adviser. Most of the information he/she will give you is available online and through sites such as this one. A friend who never went to college hired one for his daughter… and got $2,000 worth of really pretty uninspiring advice. (For example, he suggested University of Hawaii… for a kid with budget issues.)
So is your child a sophomore or junior? If a sophomore, I recommend holding off until next year. If a junior, a private advisor MAY be useful. I ordinarily wouldn’t recommend one, but things are different now. If you want to go private, try finding someone word of mouth, or on Facebook and the like. Stay away from anyone who wants to charge $5000. I personally think the upper limit for such advice should be around the $3000 mark, tops.
But frankly, you can get great advice here, free. Try posting in the College Search and Selection forum. Give us a good idea of what your child wants in terms of locations, majors, vibe, and other important considerations.
Talking to current students is great, but without knowing what type of college he is interested in, it’s a big shot in the dark. Come up with a list, and then contact schools of interest.
Thank you, Linda! He is a Junior, going to be Senior this Fall. He has a decent idea of the 10 or so schools that he would like to apply to. At this point, it is mostly a matter of how to boost his applications to get into those schools, and then how to choose the best fit once he hears back. The post idea when we get to that point is good.
Ideally, all of the applications should be to good fit colleges. For example, they should all be affordable, or have a realistic chance of affordability by merit scholarship (in which case reach/match/likely/safety must be based on the merit scholarship rather than admission), have the academics that he wants to study and which match his post-graduation goals, and preferably be a desirable environment. The affordability fit can be researched beforehand with the college’s net price calculator, and the academic fit can be explored on the college’s web site with course listings, major programs, faculty rosters, etc…
As the parent, do not wait until next spring to determine the financial constraints. Do the financial planning now if you have not already done so, and clearly communicate to him about what financial constraints there are. Run the net price calculator on the web site of each college of interest to get an idea of whether its net price may be affordable.
In terms of boosting his application…he wants the best possible ACT score or SAT score…and GPA. His ECs should be things he enjoys and wants to do (don’t add things to pad a college application resume).
Things not mentioned but were important to my kids.
- Location. Does he want urban, suburban, small town? Close to a city or out in the country!
- Size. Some kids really want a huge college. Others want a small one.
- Things to do. Some kids want a college with great sports teams, or a good orchestra, or great clubs. What does your kid want.
- Distance from home. Some kids don’t care how far, and others do.
- Cost. Your family needs to be able to pay the cost to attend. If your kid loves NYU but your net cost is $70,000 a year and you can not pay that...it won’t work. There are net price calculators on every college site that you can use.
- Gut feeling. Sometimes it’s just a gut feeling when a kid walks on a college campus...and they know “this is one I like”. Or not.
- Areas of interest. Does the college have majors that the kid likes.
- Be realistic in terms of potential acceptances. Every kid should build their list from the bottom up. This means...find a school they like, would be happy to attend, is affordable, and where they have a great high chance of acceptance. Do this first. Then add schools to the list.
It’s easy to find reach schools.
Thumper1’s advice is very good, especially #5 (cost) and #8 ( being realistic with your safety school). I’ll add a few points.
My daughter got that gut feeling about the school she ended up attending but my son never did when visiting. Both believe that they attended the right school for them. Visiting a school is quite a different experience than being there full time and going to classes. I’d be sure to visit a couple of schools but don’t worry if you don’t visit all the school’s you are interested in (this would have been my advice even before Covid19).
Read a school’s student newspaper to get some feel to what the students think. Most are online and you can Google them. Not perfect but it’s free info.
You can find out a lot about a school’s “numbers” and their admissions focus by looking at their “common data set”. Google it to find it. You should also look at the school’s 4 year graduation rate. Some, even good school’s, are horrible. A 5th year with a 4 year scholarship can be quite a financial burden.
Don’t be just a “joiner” as far as ECs go. It will be obvious to admissions that you were just trying to pad your application. Do what you like and value quality over quantity.
Choosing a college is a process. It will be fun at times, frustrating at others, bewildering at even others. You’ll end up choosing a path and never knowing if another path would have been better or worse, so just enjoy the path you take.
I agree with this entire post but want to add regarding number 5, if your child really loves a school and has the stats and this school offers great merit which would make attendance possible to apply with little to no expectations. The answer is always ‘no’ if you do not try. My daughter was discouraged from applying to a few schools because of the sticker price and the fact that they are not known for being generous with merit. I allowed her to apply because I didn’t want her to have regrets and wonder if it ever would have been a possibility. Well, in one case which just happened to be NYU. She received the deans scholarship, full tuition for 4 years and the balance was within our budget. Had she not applied she would never have known. Just speaking from the perspective of being a person of faith.
But note that graduation rates are mostly based on student characteristics. More selective colleges with students from wealthier families tend to have fewer academic and financial dropouts. But that does not help the student who barely got into a reach college that is at the very edge of affordability. Similarly, the top merit scholarship student with a full ride is much more likely to graduate in 4 years than other students at the college who may find the academics harder and need to work lots of hours to pay for school.
Re 4 verses 5 years. Correct about some students just not wanting to face the real world and having parents who don’t mind paying for another year of college.
However, there are schools where class availability limits one’s ability to get out in 4. My son went to one of those colleges. It was a shock to me that at freshman parent’s orientation the department head stated that the 4 year grad rate was 15%. Not what I wanted to hear. Sure enough, he had class availability issues and took 5 years to graduate. It was a state school and we were full pay. He did end up with several more classes than the minimum which actually helped him in his field, so the extra year wasn’t a waste. Just wish I knew a little sooner to plan for it financially.
The best way is to call the intended department office and ask. Grad rates can vary department by department within a college.
What would be more useful is if graduation rates were reported in comparison to predicted graduation rates based on student characteristics. Some colleges overperform or underperform their predicted graduation rates, but that is not obvious based on raw graduation rates due to the dominant effect of student characteristics.
Also, “class availability issues” are often student excuses when they just don’t want to take the 8am section that is the one with open seats.
Can you give us an idea of the schools he is seriously considering? What about his stats? That can help us figure out how to boost chances at relevant colleges.
Class availability was a real issue at my son’s school. The head of the department acknowledged it. It was due to funding issues combined with a late in term drop date. Some students would drop a class if their grade was poor and then retake the class. This was a particular issue with the first in a sequence of classes.
My son has been an early riser all his life (he didn’t get that from me) and would have had no problem with an 8am class.
The school should have done what other schools commonly do, which is to limit access to the majors that require the overflowing classes and give scheduling priority to those in the majors that require those classes.
They could also penalize those who do an unexcused late drop (i.e. without medical or other “good reason” defined by the college) by allowing them only to register for the wait list for the repeat class, allowing them in the class only if the waitlist clears after the first day of class. Or just make the drop deadline the day before the add deadline.
Agree that the college could do a lot to get the 4 year grad rate up. They are now doing so and it has risen. My point is that you need to ask about that and plan or select accordingly.
I am generally in the camp , a coach makes your life easier but at a cost, and next year is really new territory for them as well as you. I have not used one for my 2 kids bc I am open to spending the time to do the research and would rather have the cash to spend on something else. The rule of thumb in my house is , you have to apply to one of our instate schools as a safety, after that apply where ever you want, schools you should get into , reach schools, really reach schools, and do not worry about list price BUT college is a investment in their future and decisions will be made after the aid packages are in with the acceptance letter. My son got into U of Minn business school, a top 25 B school, we are OOS and the cost would have been around 55K a year, they offered no aid, so full pay, our instate flagship would have been about half of that and their business school is top 75. U of Minn was off the table bc of cost ( and distance and the fact we did not get to see it), my kid got to apply and was thrilled to get accepted but when we as a family looked at their aid package , it was an easy decision to drop them from the list. Use this board as a resource, it is very helpful.