My son is in the process of taking the ACT and SAT and I avoided having the scores automatically sent to any colleges. You want to have the option of sending the highest scores possible, so I would wait until they take (and possibly retake) the tests to select the scores you want sent to the colleges. You will have to pay a bit more to do this, but it can make a huge difference in the end!
How much junk email and snail mail do you want to receive…and for how long? You will get lots of useless marketing materials from colleges, and most of it will be useless for your kid. In addition, it’s impossible to get OFF of those mailing lists once you are on them.
The schools send marketing materials to just about everyone. Our kids got this junk mail from schools that they didn’t have an ice cubes chance in hell of getting accepted.
When you visit a college of interest, yes, do a tour and info session and DO sign in at the admissions office.
In terms of opening emails…I seriously doubt that any student is or isn’t accepted based on the number of emails they open for a particular college.
What might…MIGHT matter is meaningful email responses or correspondences from your kids. Some colleges do send emails with an interactive response component.
The best thing your kid can do is get great grades and great SAT or ACT scores…and write great essays, and have great letters of reference. And decent ECs. Do those things.
But first…set your family college budget for each year.
An FYI. Many colleges don’t have score choice. If you submit your SAT score…ALL of your SAT scores are sent. You don’t get to pick which ones you choose to send.
It’s hard to look for schools if you have no idea about the major (which happened to us with both kids, both strong in many areas… top 1% test scores). For the first kid, we hired a college coach - it did not work out very well, but it was due to challenges specific to that kid. For the second kid, it was hard to get any hints about major (even though we parents, as engineers, thought engineering might be a good fit). So we started a playful game of “what majors are NOT appealing”. Initially he kidded “NOT interpretive dance”, then “NOT pottery”. Eventually he admitted “NOT English”… so we were on a roll… and over time he arrived at math/science/engineering. OK - now we had something to work with! Today he’s a software engineer.
appreciated for your detail sharing
The question and all responses are very important. I just finished the process with my only child and I would have done things a lot differently. At the top of the list is to target having the right mix of schools and majors decided by the end of junior year. The difference between acceptance rates in Early Decision and Regular Decision, and in major at many schools is significant. She would have been able to apply to fewer schools(less stress and save me money) and would probably have been accepted to a few more. I knew she was a smart STEM student back in elementary school, so making it a practice to visit campuses in middle school, more for environment and fun so she could start developing preferences, would have avoided applying to schools she had never visited, which in the end, did make a big difference to her choice.
Most of the mail your kid will get from colleges will be junk mail. However, you shouldn’t always disregard all the mail you get from colleges as it could alert you to a school that you didn’t think of that may be good for your kid. For D and S we never would’ve really thought about Linfield until we got a brochure from them in the mail…that said, my kids also got mail from a lot of schools they had no interest in (Westmont, Catholic University) or couldn’t get into (Hello Yale!)…though we did enjoy looking at the all brochures, they make for fun easy reading!
We had the first kid – who would not qualify for any big scholarships – go to community college. Then she transferred to our in-state flagship for her last two years.
For the second kid – we went on the hunt for big merit because of her test scores. I made a long list of schools that I thought would come through with full tuition or full tuition plus scholarships. She added some (unaffordable) schools.
Then we whittled down the long list to 7 finalists (to apply to).
The college counselor at her private HS was very helpful keeping the students on track to get in their applications, and complete their essays. The counselor was NOT helpful in understanding our budget, or helping our kid understand – both were very invested in elite schools.
No. 1 had NO a priori list of colleges. He had excellent test scores across the board, and very good but not perfect grades. He was a state champion debater. He was very math-competent. He didn’t want to visit colleges before applying. And he didn’t read any college guidebooks.
There were a couple of obvious public universities to apply to, basically state flagships. He was opposed to emphasizing Ivy schools. So how to compose a list? I composed it, while getting his approval. Two instate publics, three liberal arts colleges (one was my alma mater). He had never visited the college he attended until “admitted students’ day.” One thing that made this easy was that he trusted his parents’ experience (I am a career academic). Also, we had saved enough money (augmented by donations from the grandparents) to pay the costs at any college. UofChicago turned out to be great for him.
My older two kids were really easy. Both had identified a state school pretty early in their lives (a sports thing) and that is where they wanted to go. They got in (thank goodness) and that was that. Kid #3, not so easy. After a meeting with his GC (who was also the GC for my two older kids) for two hours, he had a starter list based on his general interests and scores. But that lit him on fire to pin down a major. He jumped off of his favorite class (chemistry) and spent about 1000 hours watching job shadowing clips of various occupations related to chemistry on YouTube. He settled firmly on a major which whittled down the possible schools quite a bit. He is status conscious, so he picked about five from the top 20 programs in the country to visit (we have seen two so far) and fortunately our state flagship is among the top 30, which he would be happy with if he doesn’t get into any of the more prestigious schools. He has the luxury of strong grades and scores so all of the schools are at least in the ballpark. But my guess would be he ends up at our state flagship!
Can’t resist a little shamless promotion of the college guide thread! Seems it would be helpful to the OP.
@TiggerDad it would be great if you could copy and paste your mini-review there, it will be a good addition!