<p>Personally I’m not a big fan of starting early. Every situation and every student is different but in general it doesn’t seem like a great idea to me. From 14 to 17 a person or their preferences can change a lot … especially when you consider the adult version of a person starts developing around 13 … the 17 year old self is A LOT further down the road than the 14 year old version and likely had changed quite a bit.</p>
<p>SecondToGo was exposed to colleges when FirstToGo was going through her search. His thoughts at 14 centered around D3 schools to be recruited for a specific sport. The 17 year old version of him was not interested in playing sports in college and did not even play that specific sport anymore.</p>
<p>Checking out local schools or dropping by for a quick look if you happen to be there make a lot of sense to me … making college specific trips (and spending bucks) … in general, not so much. To me at that age discussions about what in high school keeps options open for the college search coming in a couple years is all that is needed for most kids to keep them on track and not bring the college thing on them sooner than needed.</p>