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<p>When she was 13, my daughter told my husband and me that she wanted to be an epidemiologist. His response was, “What is that? Some kind of skin doctor?”</p>
<p>With DD#1, we were at a college fair (that I forced her to go to) and while all the tables for the southeast schools were 19 deep, the poor little Wyoming table had no one at it. I pick up a brochure and said 'Oh, we can afford this" and she never looked back, didn’t apply to any other schools and is totally happy there.</p>
<p>For DD#2, we looked at several schools she was invited to by the coach, but nothing was calling her to attend. She had talked about going to a service academy, but she never got any calls back and the interest just faded. One day I was on the computer and read that a school in our state, where 2 boys from her high school were going to play lacrosse, and for which I had read an article in the WSJ about a special dorm they had, and that had a chapter of my sorority was starting a woman’s lax team. I said ‘Hey, that school we keep reading about is starting a team.’ She went online, filled in the recruiting forms and the coach got back to her in about 30 minutes. There were 2 other schools on her list at that time, but really it was all over. She visited about 6 weeks later and it was like the sky opened up and the light shined just for her. She’s also very happy there.</p>
<p>So that was how their ‘lists’ were made, and I did make the suggestion both times.</p>
<p>My D had very specific criteria… No farther than a 10 hour drive from home, no more than an hour’s drive to the ocean, I good Biology program not geared to pre-meds. And of course, we had to be able to afford it and she had to have a reasonable shot at getting in. With that info in mind, I helped her come up with a list of colleges to investigate further, she came up with final list of schools to apply to. She neede help narrowing the field but then took it from there.</p>
<p>@bookworm We have friends and friends’ kid majored in ChemE. So my D knows the field even before high school. Also, it was her junior AP Chemistry teacher got her interested in it too. It is common that kids has no idea on what to major even by senior, but it is also not unusual for any junior to have an intended major in their mind as college application is right around the corner. Nevertheless, around half of the students would graduate with a degree different from what they had in mind initially. You could be more skeptical if an elementary or middle school student tell you his/her intended major in college. But for high school junior, it is not abnormal. Of course, it would depends on how the family prepare the kid for a career. If the parents never ask the kids what they want to be early on, they would not even think about it until very late.</p>
<p>By the way, my kids are bookworms too. They read around a dozen books every week since early grade schools until they started high school.</p>
<p>I came up with a list of schools that had the major she was interested in, she decided which ones made the cut. </p>
<p>Several posters have mentioned the role that schools have played in getting their kids to start thinking about and doing research on colleges at a young age. Some counselors are surveying/ helping kids make their lists. (I assume these are small and/or private schools?) If your kids go to a large public school, where each counselor is dealing with hundreds of students (and the counselors’ main job is to deal with “problems,” not college applications), your kid might get a quick check senior year to see that transcript requests are in and that’s about it. So, if the student isn’t really getting any college planning at school, parents who care are going to do this at home. Kids whose parents are not experienced/knowledgeable about the process would be at a disadvantage without parental involvement.</p>
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<p>On CC, in affluent public school districts, and at private schools, we live in a bubble. I’ve seen it so often on my kids’ travel hockey teams and it is sad. I have learned to tread lightly with my advice, but it is shocking how little some schools help and how uninformed most parents are. </p>
<p>Yes, our school is very small (~300 including grades 6-12). The difference is that rather than being private or affluent, it is public and specifically geared to minority, low-income and ESL kids. With the support of a foundation it works to get all the kids and families-they will even do home visits-educated about college options. We’ve sent kids to some of the selective colleges often mentioned on CC, to early/dual enrollment programs (like my D wants to do) and so on. In contrast, the public middle school D would have been assigned to had counselors see the kids maybe 3 times a year-here they are imbedded in the curriculum so by senior year kids and counselors know each other really well. They also have guest speakers come in, and the entire high school is going to the national college fair tomorrow. It’s one reason I love this school. </p>
<p>She has, but has been open to suggestions. I sent her to a summer program last year that had a huge college fair, and she met representatives from various schools, and has been reading about them. We’ve been casually visiting campuses since her freshman year, enough to give her an idea of what type of school she’s looking for – not too big, liberal, strong science programs but also strong in the liberal arts. That said, there will most likely be schools that will be added b/c of tuition exchange and (hopefully) NMF status. GC at the HS have not been a resource for us, since they mostly push local and the state flagship school.</p>
<p>@carlson2 - totally understand about the GC pushing the local schools - that was the case for us as well. Thankfully both my kids came to the process with strong ideas of what they wanted in a school (maybe being faculty brats helped). For both kids, I provided them with a starter list of schools that met their criteria and were on the tuition exchange list (making sure I had a few schools that offered TE to almost everyone). They explored the schools on that list, took some off, added some on their own or based on teacher recommendations. It worked out wonderfully for D, still in process for S.</p>
<p>“But I don’t think a college list generated solely by the parents is the way to go-and some here DID make the only list their kids considered.”</p>
<p>What if the parents do know the kids well and when the kids vet the list, they don’t come up with anything particularly new or novel? </p>
<p>I am a big proponent of using one’s resources wisely and fully, and in my kids’ case, I (and my interest in this area) WAS a resource (aided by the fine folks on College Confidential), so I see no reason not to have used it.</p>
<p>PG, I’m pretty sure I’ve said several times now that parents can be a source of suggestions. What rather baffles me is a student who takes NO interest in defining their own list. A kid looking over what mom and dad put together and really looking into the specifics is NOT just acquiescing to his/her parents ideas. Though as well as I know my kids I am not inside their heads and there may be ideas they find important I might not know about.Thus my list would likely be different from one of their choice(s), I get that some parents are just that much in tune with their kids, and the kids find nothing new to add. It’s-again-a COMPLETE LACK OF KID INPUT I have been talking about.</p>
<p>Our GC was useless as well, except for providing transcripts. She had never heard of any of the LACs that D applied to (Really? A GC on the west coast who never heard of Whitman?). But i don’t really blame her; due to budget cuts, she had a caseload of more than 400 seniors. </p>
<p>I knew that my DD’s list of colleges would be dictated by our ability to pay…so it seemed foolish to give her a college guide and simply say have at it. She applied to only schools which met 100 percent of need, State schools, or big National Merit Scholarship schools. From that preapproved list she could pick and choose, then come to me to run a Net Price Calculator. She had some fabulous choices and is very very happy at an excellent, affordable school.</p>
<p>DS had one college on his list - suggested by a friend who was planning to go there. It was really a good fit as well as being a true safety, but I encouraged him to have other options in case he changed his mind. He ended up also applying to the directional where his girlfriend goes (but after campus visit it was obviously not strong in his area of interest) and two local colleges that I suggested that offered the major he wanted and were commute-able. He’s now attending the original first choice school. Interestingly, neither the state flagship nor local big U were ever mentioned. </p>
<p>I made the initial list for K1 and K2 as they were both overwhelmed by the range of choices, and counseling at our HS is fairly limited in this regard.</p>
<p>My S had one school on his list and that was one of our state’s flagship. I took him to a college fair and walked around he then added a few more to his list. I then found this wonderful site and added two more. He has since visited the colleges and the two I added are on the top of his list. </p>
<p>Our son generated his initial list a couple of years ago based on feedback from some school programs (maybe skills assessments and interests???) in middle school AND frosh/soph year in high school. His list was modified by us only in terms of tacking on a couple of schools that were in our affordability range with and without scholarships,etc. The school he’s decided on was not on the list!!! not on any!!! </p>
<p>To put this in “historical” context, I think that as parents we should review how we developed our own lists of schools to which we applied. Growing up in L.A. and attending a public school, it was easy for me to think about attending UCLA or another UC campus. Three of my sibs graduated from UCLA, a fourth from Caltech.</p>
<p>As for me, I was given some advice from an uncle who was a college prof. I put together an initial list based on his advice, including some colleges I had never heard of. Several were on the east coast and one on the west coast: Reed, which is where I attended. </p>
<p>I went to the public library to consult college catalogs. I wrote to the admissions office requesting “applications and forms.” Pre-application college visits? Largely unheard of in those days, and not practical for me. The first time I set foot on the Reed campus was when I moved in.</p>
<p>What I sensed then was that the choice wasn’t going to determine my life course. I was college-bound. I could become what I wanted to become. But I didn’t want to attend UCLA – I wanted to broaden my experience. Probably I would have attended Cal if I hadn’t chosen Reed. I think my son had the same sense: he was his own person, would get a lot out of college but it wouldn’t define him or his (ultimate) career. My daughter was a different case because she wanted to attend a highly specialized type of college: art school. That one required a lot more research, visits, and so forth. My kids, however, grew up in a very different information era from when I was applying to college. Far more information was available in books, magazines, and on-line. Many parents, too, are apt to reach for more information than they ever did when they were applying to college. (Participants on this website are not typical of all parents.) But I never bought into the idea that the choice of a particular college – as opposed to the broader choice to attend college – was life-determining for most kids, including my own.</p>
<p>{do you think they would all freak out if they saw the application packets we had to fill out??}</p>