<p>I've now been through the college admission process twice and I have a few bits of advice in addition to all the other good advice you'll get from other parents. This is what I've learned.</p>
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<li> Be brutally honest with yourself about your kid, over and over again.</li>
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<p>They are who they are, and they can become the best they can be, but they can't become that person you think or want them to become just because you try to imagine them into being. Shoe horning their laid back, lead from the bleachers personality into an intensive LAC so they'll "discover" their inner need to obtain a research PHD and become the department chair's pet project will backfire. Even if they say yes to applying to 8 schools like that, notice that their extracurriculars are stage crew not stage manager, math tutoring not math research, and go to the big state u open house without rolling your eyes. Then be glad when your child chooses the economic safety school for its other merits (size, breadth, spirit, sports), is happy beyond belief, and finds his happiness in teaching not chasing the fields medal.</p>
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<li> Be brutally honest with yourself about the schools -- what they tell you and what you feel.</li>
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<p>Your kid (say, S2) hates to write. But he also hates crowds and large schools, and most small schools are LACS. Some of the most attractive for his academic interests keep taking about "writing across the curriculum." You keep tuning this out, there are so many other important considerations ... scholarships, location, majors, facilities, learning supports, liklihood of acceptance, food... until finally, everything is in place, you are about to decide... and you say to the first year chemistry professor, "Surely you mean by writing in chemistry 'lab reports'" and he answers, "No, surely we mean by writing in first year chemistry several RESEARCH PAPERS AND ESSAYS." And the learning disabilities meantions as an aside that even the calculus professor assigns essays and papers. Back at the hotel you and your son consider early check out!</p>
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<li> Be brutally honest about the effects of time and change.</li>
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<p>It is a long, complicated process. We will learn things about our kids and ourselves that we did not and couldn't know before. Our kids will grow and learn about themselves. Make sure there are a range of schools on your kids' lists that are not just "grade/score" safeties but what I call "size/location/taste" safeties. Your student is as likely to change his or her taste in schools as to not be able to get into a reach school! Also have an economic safety or two. Often the economic safety and the grade/score safety are the same, but that might not be the case. A more midling school on the east coast may cost way more than a more academically challenging school in the rural midwest. An urban oriented student might prefer to be in an easier to get into bustling downtown school than a rural ivy. You catch my drift. Slice and dice the list to allow for growth, and to allow for reaction to the experience of visiting the schools closer to the time of making a decision.</p>
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<li> Be brutally honest about reality -- the forces you can't control.</li>
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<p>Economics and competition are the common and obvious ones. From the beginning work from the assumption that your student is qualified to attend every college to which he or she applies, even the furthest reach (otherwise why bother applying?) and so is every other student who applies. From that point on the decision is out of your students' hands -- the student has already done everything possible to: live a good life and to show the colleges the qualities that make that student an attractive applicant. No matter how it turns out, your student will be fine. Your student needs that confidence from the beginning, at the same time he or she is working hard to put together the best application possible to meet his or her goals. But we don't control the applicant pool in any given year, the popularity of any given college, the economics of tuition versus salary versus availability of need and merit based aid, nor state school tuition rates and tax bases. We don't control scandals at our HS or bad teachers senior year or horrible GC. Or sicknesses or layoffs. And -- we don't control the rate at which our kids mature, or the degree to which they panic or need to step back and retreat from this process, or disengage, or screw it up. Crooked and broken paths can get us to our goals as well -- more slowly and with greater difficulty, but often with better stories!</p>
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<li> Visit, visit, visit.</li>
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<p>Money is often an obstacle here. Many HS students, however, need the concrete experiences in order to make the decision making and goal obtaining behavior real. If you live near any colleges you can start the process as we did, with "substitute" colleges. Winter break of junior year we visited a bunch of colleges that never made it onto any relevant list of schools for S2, but they were "stand-ins" for a long while: Johns Hopkins - All they every talk about is work, national reputation, highly ranked school. Goucher College -- small pretty LAC with artsy feel in a metro area, right in suburb, near transit. McDaniel -- more mainstream feeling LAC in small town that felt like regular mid America, could walk to Doritos and take bus or shuttle to strip with fast food and Walmart. Then we could compare...X campus would be more like Goucher, but town more like McDaniel. You get the idea.</p>
<p>However, with both kids, it was very much the visits as close to decision time that really helped ... especially visiting to confirm the final choice or rule out the all but final choice(s). They knew themselves fairly well by April of Senior year. And the relief we all felt that they were as sure as they could be about their decision was worth making that visit (although not all can do it).</p>
<p>I am sure others will have advice around this time of year. I'm long winded, I am sure from here on in, others will have nice short bulleted tips!</p>