<p>My daughter is a freshman in HS (technically will be a sophomore in 7 weeks when the school year is over :)) My daughter, her best friend and mom and I visited the Seattle college fair in October 2013. To say it was informative and overwhelming is an understatement. The girls were in information overload by the end of our walk around the fair. The one state they focused on was Montana and announced they wanted to attend a small college. So, we decided to rent a 27ft RV over spring break and do the Montana College Road trip. We visited the four main colleges - Univ of Montana, Carroll, Montana State, and Rocky Mountain. This was such an eye opener for all of us with the information that we acquired (ie closed campus, open campus, small but spread out, and small). Truthfully, the whole experience was priceless and I can't imagine waiting until the end of junior year or even starting senior year. My daughter now knows what the colleges are looking for and can work towards that goal. I believe this trip will benefit her greatly when the time comes (it will be here sooner than later) to start filling out applications. </p>
<p>@flynnceo,</p>
<p>I agree wholeheartedly, DD and I started the process in the fall of freshman year. We took the train to a college fair with a bunch of other girls who were juniors/seniors. I found out about the fair from the internet & invited as many as I could. Everyone said I was nuts, being over zealous, a helicopter parent…lol. But guess whose having the last laugh now? Don’t let anyone dissuade you, trust me, they will try! Just ignore them and remain focused…</p>
<p>Thank you 
I know that I can breathe a little easier knowing what we know. </p>
<p>We are going on a trip this summer so that D can look at a group of colleges she has her eyes on. She will be a sophomore next year too. We think it’s important for her to see if her interests match the reality in case she realizes she wants to go in a different direction. </p>
<p>We started early (first trip soph year for D2). My kid is a college freshman, and told me she is the only girl she knew in her graduating class who didn’t cry at some point in their college admissions process due to the stress and difficulty of it. She is also super happy at her school.</p>
<p>Just be sure you are running the Net Price Calculators for each school your kid is interested in so you have some idea what the costs are (available on each college’s financial aid website page). Of course the costs will go up in the new few years (my suggestion is to guess 4% increase per year, and just look back again when they get to be juniors). No point in getting excited about something you can’t afford…</p>
<p>9th grade is too early for this. Quotations from the above posts such as “the girls were in information overload” and “whose [sic] having the last laugh now” don’t make it sound any better. Let the kids be kids.</p>
<p>Personally, I think freshmen year is too young but if it’s what the student wants, go for it.
I didn’t start until about junior year. Never stressed about the process and had a great undergrad experience. </p>
<p>I think sophomore year isn’t too early if you are going far afield. Romani, didn’t you end up attending one of your in-state public universities? For kids who are going to look further than that, it is a lot more leisurely to combine visits with other travels over a couple year period before fall of senior year instead of cramming it all into junior year and a frantic fall of senior year. Now… I will say, what a kid thinks they want freshman year (Montana!) might be completely different by the time fall of freshman year. Ninth graders generally lack the maturity to think about the real things they are going to want out of college, so latch onto something like location because that seems more tangible to them. Still, seeing a few different size and type of schools probably didn’t hurt them.</p>
<p>The one thing my kids got out of at least one visit sophomore year was a concrete idea of what this ‘college’ thing was that they were working so hard toward. And one of my kids thought she could do better than the college we visited sophomore year, and put the petal to the metal her junior year and in test prep so she could apply to better schools.</p>
<p>@snarlatron,</p>
<p>You know not what you speak of for our family and for our life’s circumstances…again, for all of those folks who said it was too early etc etc etc…who is having the last laugh now??? DD has had an amazing college admissions outcome, especially for a kid who is first generation, low ses etc…had it not been for that early start, and arming ourselves with the tools that were needed to be a viable candidate, she would NOT be in the shoes that she is in now. This is my kid and I did what was best for her. Not what is best for yours. </p>
<p>Yeah, starting earlier than the spring of junior year is smart. I used to think starting before that was stupid, but honestly, it’s better to go into this prepared. </p>
<p>That being said, a freshman does not need to decide which school they’ll apply to ED or select a top-choice, but if they know what kind of school they want, it helps. Technology schools want different things than art schools, universities want different things than liberal arts colleges, selective schools want different things than state schools, and I could keep going on. </p>
<p>A general list of application necessities is easier to manage as a sophomore than as a senior. For instance, if you want to go to technology school, maybe you should take AP Calc in junior year instead of senior year. I read a blog post by an MIT student who said that he knew he wanted to go to MIT since he was in middle school, and he planned out his high school career to be able to do that. And guess what, he got what he wanted.</p>
<p>@Violet1996,</p>
<p>Exactly, I read that same blog post by the MIT student. What many people dont understand is this, many kids grow up on college campuses due to their parents being alums and they go to games, events, and when their older siblings go, they are immersed in the whole college world…they know what it feels, tastes and looks like. For a vast many, college is a foreign place, so introducing it early plants a seed…so they know what is expected when it’s time to apply. They have something to aspire to. I’m not saying that all kids are like the latter, but I know that’s what I wanted for my dd. </p>
<p>We visited Harvard in the spring of her freshman year. We toured, sat in on a class & attended the admissions talk with David Evans. She was then able to plan out her high school classes from that point on. When she would become weary of the rigor, I would ask her…what do you want in life? I would remind her about our tour of Harvard. It always gave her steam to press ahead when her peers were having “fun”. She didn’t apply to Harvard in the end, but she applied to and was accepted to some pretty awesome places. No loans. Her friends who spent the last four years having fun? They didn’t fare so well and may have to attend the local CC which is more like 13th grade. </p>
<p>Look, CC is full of posts about kids (or their parents) planning out how to “package” themselves for college beginning in HS. How is touring colleges any different or worse?</p>
<p>As I’ve mentioned on many threads now, my D’s 6-12 school has a college and career readiness program that has kids starting to think of options past high school from 6th grade on. Rather than cause them undue pressure it actually helps DE-stress and mystify the “process” as it’s called here. So it’s not out of bounds for a 9th grader like mine to have an idea of what they want to do for a career and where they might want to go to college. </p>
<p>We live in Seattle so it’s not unusual for kids and families to be on one of the many college campuses around here for some event, school-based or otherwise. But since our daughter wants to explore schools at the opposite end of the country, we’re not planning on waiting until her junior or senior year.</p>
<p>We’d prefer that she see what the area and the colleges she has in mind are like before placing all her eggs in one location basket. We’re doing all the right things according to CC-looking at large, small, public, private and different sized cities. If she decides to apply to any of these a few years from now, great. If not, she’ll at least know where NOT to keep looking. And she HAS a plan, a prospective major, and knows exactly what each college costs and roughly what we’d have to contribute, absent any scholarships.</p>
<p>People think we push our D, but trust me, SHE pushes US. She’s gone well beyond what her school asks of 9th graders in the college readiness program-this trip was her idea. But she still gets to be a kid.Just this morning she was hunting Easter eggs.</p>
<p>We started summer before Junior year. It was really a good experience. It got her fired up to improve GPA junior year and to prep for SAT. The only downside is that unless you take lots of photos or keep a journal it’s easy to forget the specifics about colleges when application time comes. Also colleges requiring or requesting interviews usually won’t let your student do so till end or junior year. So, just be prepared to have to visit twice or more! One school we had to travel to 3 times! But in the end, that’s the school she chose.</p>
<p>Yes, int, I did- like the vast majority of students. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Who says I didn’t? I have plenty of threads from back in 08ish to prove otherwise 
</p>
<p>It wasn’t like I went to my state school, decided “yup, this is it!”, and was done with it. I looked at literally hundreds of schools and had a list of about 15 that I ended up wanting to apply to. I visited a dozen or so schools my junior/senior year. I went to my state school because that was the best fit for me, my family, our finances, and our circumstances. </p>
<p>We took my DS on a tour of one of the state flagships in the summer between 9th and 10th grade. He enjoyed the tour and it helped motivate him when he started to procrastinate on high school work. It also helped for him to see the crowds on the tour and realize it’s competitive out there. He’s a junior now and we just finished more serious tours this Spring Break. He also still has plenty of fun in high school.</p>
<p>I think it’s fine to look at colleges in the freshman year. I’m not sure it’s necessary to do the formal tour. It’s nice to expose them to small, large, state flagships, national privates etc. They really won’t know the scores of their standardized test until their junior year so we’ve not pushed the idea of liking or disliking a specific university until we had a better idea of what their qualifications will be. Our oldest D knew what she wanted to study since 8th grade. So when we looked we always made sure that any school had that program. Visiting schools she determined that she wanted to stay within a certain number of driving hours from home but she didn’t want to be too close so she created her “donut”. D2 (rising junior this summer) is less clear about what she wishes to study. We will do our informal tours this summer and formal tours over her junior year. </p>
<p>We our 8th grade daughter along for the college visits last summer for my other daughter before her senior year. My 8th grader had no interest in the campus visit at all. However, she did have a feel on the difference in campus setting. I think the second child would be more informative and well prepared by the time they apply to college anyway. I wish I had made my older daughter explore a bit more on other schools. She has been too much focus on the in state flagship from the beginning and not very willing to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>We’re doing both formal and informal tours. The formal ones are for the schools she REALLY wants to apply to, because we have some questions specific to her plans that are not answered on the websites. The informal will be for schools right in the area that were not on her radar until we started planning the vacation. It’s all driven by D, not us.</p>
<p>I started researching colleges online my freshmen year extensively, but it’s hard to know about grades and SATs to see where you match up. I think the time to start visiting would be the summer before Junior year all up until the fall of Senior year and then in the Spring for Accepted Students Visits. I know it was important for me to see different types of schools in different locations to see what I wanted, but I needed to be realistic about money and scores. One school that I loved and was a dream, but didnt even end up applying to (for reasons about the fit of the program) made me work harder and gave me motivation to improve my scores. </p>
<p>I would echo the comment that before junior year, it’s best to focus on the type of college when you are researching and visiting. You can probably do this without taking a lengthy trip–visit the nearest big state U, a small LAC, etc. You need to avoid the risk that your kid will fall in love with a school that may end up being unattainable–or that they will be turned off prematurely by a school that may be a good option later.</p>