<p>We are dealing with an age-old problem, but for this household we've never had this before. Girlfriend/boyfriend thing. The problem is, my son--a senior--is under the spell of a young girl who just left for Stanford today. She got into all her colleges, such as Yale and Princeton and I forget the long list. But my son hasn't even graduated yet. AND he still hasn't applied.</p>
<p>Here's my frustration: he has done almost nothing about colleges. Yes, he visited a few. But, those essays and supplements are far from being ready. He wrote one essay which he says he loves, but I know it's not sufficient to submit. In fact, he really needs to start over again, but he seems like he's ready to give up before he even starts. He tells me he'd be happy anywhere, so not to worry if he doesn't get into any of the schools that piqued our interest.</p>
<p>So what to do? Maybe this happens in every household every day of the week. I'm just frustrated b/c he doesn't seem to understand the big picture. I need your advice!!!</p>
<p>My nephew refused to apply to any place where he had to write an essay. He applied on-line to his home-state U on the day before Thanksgiving, and had his acceptance in the mail a week and a half later. This U has numbers based admission and he fell into the category that guaranteed admission. Three years later, he’s still very happy there. One application, one acceptance, and it was all over.</p>
<p>Nowhere is it written that your kid has to apply to a bazillion schools in order to have a happy life.</p>
<p>You feel some how this has to do with the girlfriend? Or is he just like so many boys (or seniors) having a hard time to get going? He said that he’d be happy anywhere. Would you be happy to pay for “anywhere”? If not, have you told him? Have you told him how much you are willing to pay? I have told D2 (age 15) that we wouldn’t be paying full sticker price if she couldn’t get into certain calibre school, she would be going to our very nice state school. If your son couldn’t get himself together to put together his applications then I am not sure if you should be prepared to pay for “anywhere” school. Worst comes to worst, he’ll go to “anywhere” school then transfer when/if he cares more about it.</p>
<p>Do you think he is afraid to be rejected from the schools she got into? Or is he just sad/depressed that she’d left? Otherwise, what does this have to do with the GF?</p>
<p>Contrary to what it seems like on CC, most kids don’t have their stuff together in September… Not saying that you have nothing to worry about, but if he has any kind of draft of an essay written, he is probably ahead of most of his peers…</p>
<p>Yes, we are dealing with the same thing in our house. It’s very frustrating. Honestly, I think some kids (esp. boys) can’t see past next week and really don’t care where they go. My son’s GC said a lot of them are walking around saying ‘they don’t care’ right now. The process is very overwhelming to a lot of them.</p>
<p>It might make you feel better to know, we had a 2 hour college counseling meeting at school last name with all parents and seniors. I was much relieved to learn that MOST of the seniors have barely started on the process. I thought my son was the only one.</p>
<p>To assist son in process, on the advice of GC, I am making a list of deadlines and what each school requires. I will hand it to son and remind him of upcoming deadlines. We will also require him to show us that he is working on his applications. The GCs at school are pretty good about keeping up with the process (to some extent). Beyond that, there’s not, in my opinion, much you can do. Try to help them from getting overwhelmed with the process but in the long run, it’s their responsibility.</p>
<p>Although, there are a lot of kids who are happy to go to the State U. My son’s best friend only applied there, got in and is very happy. I’ve seen a lot of kids apply to tons of schools, accept at one, go for a year and then transfer to another school. It’s not the end of the world if they decide after the first year that the school is not for them. Some kids just need some real-world experience and a little maturity.</p>
<p>It’s only Sept. Many top students don’t even start on their apps until late Nov./early Dec. Many other students start on apps in Jan. or Feb., something that’s possible to do if one is applying to any of the many schools that have late deadlines and are easy to get acceptances to.</p>
<p>You can’t judge the world by CC. The students and parents here tend to be extremely bright, motivated, and focusing on gaining acceptance to schools with acceptance rates that are very low.</p>
<p>It is early to be able to predict this, but if it ends up that your son continues to procrastinate after, say Dec., it may be that he’s not yet ready for college. That’s true particularly of many males, who take longer to mature than do females.</p>
<p>After taking younger S around to colleges and making sure he knew how to apply, I left the applications itself in his hands. He said he had top choices, but their deadlines passed, and the essays and apps that he was working on never were finished. After the deadlines passed, on his own, he applied to Americorps, and ended up taking a gap year volunteering with Americorps, living at home and paying rent.</p>
<p>Without my help, he applied to colleges during his gap year, and now is a rising junior dean’s list student active in several productive ECs.</p>
<p>I really don’t get the sense that the GF has much to do with your son’s disinterest. I think the whole process of organizing and doing college apps is daunting to most kids. None of it feels “real.” They are just starting their senior year of high school which is “big stuff” to the kids. They just can’t imagine a “different life.” They are focused on their varsity team, or whatever activity they are now “top dog.” For both my boys, getting the safety applications that don’t require much work and a didn’t require an essay really helped them. Not only was it easy, the apps are “pre-filled”, getting acceptances in late Sept/Oct takes an enormous amount of pressure off the kids. Our state schools public and closer privates are generally all over the kids at our school with those pre-filled apps. I often wonder where the heck they get all the info. At that point they are “ready” to complete a few apps that require effort. Also, it’s early in the school year and most schools will start talking to seniors in earnest over the next couple weeks/months regarding college and apps, etc., and once all the kids are getting in the groove so most likely will your son. BTW, my oldest ultimately went to his safety and is happy as all get out and will graduate on time so don’t discount those easy, early apps either, make sure they are choices your kids would willingly go to and you would willingly send them. There is a small group of kids on CC who eat, breath and live their entire high school focused on college, but believe me they are a minority and their angst tends to “feed” fear in parents that their children are somehow abnormal and nothing could be further from the truth. The other “truth” is that there are many, many kids who do simply pick a college or two, apply and go. Especially the more popular state schools that many of their classmates go to and those that “know” your school and the GCs. None of which diminishes the kids that go this route.</p>
<p>I had 2 kids go through the college process back-to-back. While it’s true that most kids don’t really get the process moving until very late in the fall, there’s much to be gained from applying to just one early action/rolling admission school now. Momofthreeboys is right.</p>
<p>I’ll admit to pushing both of mine to doing this. In both cases it was a safety. But the experience of going through a complete application process was invaluable. The “first essay” wasn’t their best. The “first application” wasn’t their most complete nor did it showcase their particular talents as well as later applications did. But what it DID do was get them started, get a decision early (both admits–a HUGE stress buster), and a draft of something to build from.</p>
<p>Additionally, S was much more difficult to get motivated to take the process very seriously. It appeared to me that most of his male colleagues were less organized/focused than the girls (but not all). I’ll also admit to being behind the scenes, nagging about deadlines. But there’s no doubt that having the initial one created was an enormous step forward in creating a template for what became some much better application packages that followed. </p>
<p>Strongly urge your S select a safety school that does rolling admission or offers early-action decisions. It really really helps.</p>
<p>Good advise from all of the earlier posters. For some kids this can be an overwhelming process because they are dealing with multiple schools, various requirements, different deadlines, etc. Help him by taking it one step at a time. Step #1 – Does he have a list of schools to which he will apply? If not, have him pull it together before he/you worries about essays, applications, deadlines. Step #2 - Once he has his list (and it doesn’t have to be an enormously long list), then help him list the requirements and deadlines. Make sure his list isn’t full of only reach schools – but it sounds like that may not be an issue. Step#3 - Start working through the requirements – having him take one or two at a time. If the college’s on your son’s list are on the Common App, this could be quite easy. If not, it will take a bit of time to fill things out. On the essay – I’m not suggesting that you not take the essay seriously, but how much you focus on it should relate to how important it is to the admission decision. Clearly, essays are very important to reach schools where you have to stand out and show your stuff. Less so if you are applying to the local state university that admits 90% of applicants. Maybe enlist your son’s English teacher to read the essay and give objective feedback. </p>
<p>It is still early, so don’t panic. I understand your frustration because my daughter last year also seemed to think she had all the time in the world. When I laid out the timetable for her and how much she needed to do by when, she finally got it and started working. One motivation was telling my daughter that – “trust me, you don’t want to be spending your Christmas vacation doing nothing but college applications and essays”. She ended up getting all of her apps in by around Dec1 – and was quite happy that she was free after that – unlike many of her friends who were spending New Years Eve getting their 1/1 applications in!</p>
<p>My advice is to take this in steps. This is what I’m doing with my senior son who is applying to Calif State Universities and privates. Since the CSU deadline is earlier and requires no essays or Letters of Rec, we are focusing on that first. We have our “college talk” once a week and at that time we create a short action item list. We discuss it, and agree on what needs to be done. Last week, it was: 1) go on CSU Mentor and print out the application to see what it will be like 2) go to your counselor and ask how your transcript gets sent to the school 3) see if the teacher you want to get the LOR from is back from maternity leave or if you will need to e-mail her 4) think about whether there are other teachers or adults you would like to be LOR’s from, etc.</p>
<p>Luckily, one of his first essay assignments in English AP was the college essay so he is on the second draft of that now. He came up with the idea of what to write entirely on his own and just asked if I wanted to read it, which I did. He did not ask me to edit it, and I know it is in the peer editing stage in his class and then the teacher will have his chance with it. </p>
<p>We discussed retaking the SATs and I left that up to him. His reply was “I don’t know” and he hasn’t brought it up again. I told him about the test dates and the registration dates. For the CSU’s we will be sending his scores from May. I explained the stats from the College Board about what percentage of seniors that retake it improve, what stay the same and what decline. I also gave him my opinion that if he didn’t prep for it and take it seriously, most likely his scores would not improve. </p>
<p>He did all the “tasks” of our first week college talk on-time and lagged on another and got it done yesterday. We are going to have our next talk this week, and I plan to continue plugging along like this throughout the process. </p>
<p>This is how my son works best: shorter talks not long lectures, breaking up tasks he is not familiar with into very doable steps, keeping the conversation productive and even, and not getting upset with him if he doesn’t do everything exactly according to how we talked about it. </p>
<p>All kids are different and this is the approach that works best for my son. I suggest trying a couple approaches with your son and see what makes him tick. Good luck.</p>
<p>I echo the other posters here that September is really early for most kids, even many of the high achievers. I would have loved it if DS had done a lot of college app preparation during the summer before his senior year, but there was no way that was going to happen.</p>
<p>DS decided to apply to an early action school that he was interested in that had a deadline of 11/1 as his “safety” so this got him going in early October getting everything together for the Common App. He really liked the idea of not having the “will I get accepted anywhere” stress. The big push was over the Christmas break. He put together a schedule of what applications to do on what days and ended up applying to all eight schools on his list, plus a couple scholarships, on time.</p>
<p>By the way, my sons both think the Common App was a pain in the you know where. They much preferred the schools that had their own applications. They say the common app asks to many irrelevant questions, too much cutting and pasting, too much everything and then when you think you are finished, more stuff for the individual colleges…lots of eyeball rolling when they had to keep asking questions about my husband and I and where we went to college and what we do for a living, what our “title is” and all kinds of miscellaneous info that kids don’t cart around in their heads…that kind of stuff. So maybe start with one of the more straightforward public school apps that just gets the basic info about the kid and lots of yes/no questions and has an essay and a short answer or two that they can do without having to have a parent standing there to answer “parent stuff.”</p>
<p>Thanks all for your advice. I think a lot of the dilemma I’m facing has to do with senior year pressure. He has a really heavy load of schoolwork, plus he’s now an EIC for a newspaper. Of course this is exactly why he should have gotten it all done during the summer, but we can’t go back. He’s a good kid, but I also don’t think he really thought of college during the fun of summer. College was just too distant.</p>
<p>And yes, I do blame his GF. She was very demanding of his time, and since she didn’t have school pressure, she was pretty single-focused on him. Of course, he was to blame in this department too; he loved all that attention.</p>
<p>In terms of timing: he’s planning to apply to a few schools EA. I’m sure once one goes out, the reality of college will hit him. I’m thrilled that he doesn’t have to retake the SATs, so that’s one less worry. I suppose he’s farther along than his brothers/sisters, so i should be happy.</p>
<p>Bribery is wonderful. It works best when it’s a great treat for a small step (also called positive reinforcement in the animal training world). Keep in mind that YOU are the one who is currently frustrated, so we can actually call it “going for the win-win scenario” as in “Darling, your mother is freaking out because it is nearly Sept 10 and I am just certain that all the colleges will be taken by September 11. So, if you do questions 1 to 5 on the Common App by 10 p.m. tonight, I’ll hand you a $20.” Then go have a cup of tea. Outrageous humor, reasonable expectations, decent payoff . . . he might go for it.
Good luck!</p>
<p>I also suspect that once they get one or two out the door the process will seem a lot less scary and overwhelming. Not having to retake the SAT is a big bonus. Most kids are still trying to get those few extra points.</p>
<p>I think the piles of college literature on my kitchen counter and the fact that the mailman seems to bring more everyday gets to be a bit overwhelming. Through a great deal of frustration on my part and a great deal of growling by my son, we managed to get it down to 5 schools. I put each school in their own folder with a cheat sheet on due dates and basic college stats. and the rest just went into a big box. </p>
<p>I got him to apply early to one safety school (no essay required) and they came back in August and said he was accepted. Great, I thought now we can focus on the others. But nooooooo, now he has no interest in going through the process because he is already in and why bother with the hassle? Grrrrrr. </p>
<p>I wonder if he will step it up when his friends start taking about the really great schools that they are applying to?</p>
<p>“But nooooooo, now he has no interest in going through the process because he is already in and why bother with the hassle? Grrrrrr.”</p>
<p>Maybe he really is happy with his safety. If so, let him go there and be grateful that you and he are avoiding extreme stress this senior year. When I taught college at a 2nd tier public, some of the best students in our school’s history were those who had done exactly what your son wants to do. They went to our college, stood out in all of the classes and ECs, had a marvelous time in the college and went on to fine jobs and careers. </p>
<p>Students don’t have to go to match or reach schools to have fulfilling college careers. It’s only on CC where students are applying to dozens of schools and stressing to get into reach schools. Most students across the country act much more like your son.</p>
<p>“Students don’t have to go to match or reach schools to have fulfilling college careers. It’s only on CC where students are applying to dozens of schools and stressing to get into reach schools. Most students across the country act much more like your son.”</p>
<p>Northstarmom, you always seem to have such great advice. Last year my son, wife and I stressed through the whole college app process. He is a 4.0 student and was accepted at many big name universities. In the end he felt his safety was the best fit.</p>
<p>He’s only been away at school for just a couple weeks now. Already has joined a club and took a leadership role. Also, has signed-up to volunteer at a career fair and other events. No doubt he made a good choice and is very happy.</p>
<p>edit: Oh, I forgot to mention he also got a research position. Something that is very rare for a entering freshman.</p>
<p>Northstarmom -I think you are absolutely right. He is happy with his choice and he will probably do better there than at a school that is too tough for him. I just wanted him to have at least 3 acceptances so he could evaluate and choose the best one. But in the end it was “ME” who wanted this not him.</p>
<p>Most of these CC kids seem to be in a league of their own and it is easy for me to forget that they don’t represent the majority of kids.</p>