Also-- after your child takes the PSAT, even in grade 10, colleges will start emailing him and sending him brochures, so he will start hearing about lots of colleges.
Actually, I strongly suggest not checking off that box on the psat that inundates your mailbox with college marketing info. One, you don’t need all that wasteful stuff coming to your home. Two, i think it’s better to target a search based on the criteria your family wants to focus on, not glossy brochures. Pick up a copy of the Fiske guide. You and your son can read through it independently and flag schools that sound appealing. Once you start narrowing down by region, size, potential majors, things will start clicking.
To also manage the marketing overload from colleges, set up a dedicated email account for your son specifically for the college process that you both can access.
Thanks everyone! Waking up to great advice. Our school offers the PSAT for Sophs so he will take it. He’s already taken the ACT and SAT for placement into NU’s summer programs so we have a pretty good idea of what his final scores will be. I’m thinking we may swing by some schools in the spring to get some initial reactions. He’s been to NU, U Chicago, and UW. That’s not much of a mix though. One initial reaction is that he didn’t love how U Of C is surrounded by the city. Maybe we visit DePaul or Loyola and then put city schools off of the list if he doesn’t like those campuses either. Baby steps!
Add uic, Lake Forest and perhaps Lawrence to your visit list?
@mamaedefamilia That video is crazy perfect for him! Washington probably too far away for him but that’s the correct vibe. I watched Reed’s video the other day and I was almost weeping it would have been so perfect for me. Why is college wasted on the young? I would be such a better college student now! Anyone curious? Here’s Reed’s video. I just watched it again and had to get tissues.
@homerdog I’m weeping too. Reed wouldn’t have been my school, but a couple of others we saw along the way would have been, including, quite possibly, where my son landed. WHAT WAS I THINKING? (Oh right. I knew NOTHING.)
Since your son is the outdoorsy type, here are some suggestions of schools to look at (many LACs but that’s what I’m Most familiar with):
Bates
Bowdoin
Colby
Colorado College
Dartmouth
Middlebury
St. Lawrence
University of Vermont
Whitman
Williams
^^These. Yes.
@doschicos Yep. Nail on the head. He does not ski, though, so a little worried about the winter months at some of these schools if lots of kids take off to the slopes. Thinking ideal location would be more Mid-Atlantic, but I hear terrific things about many of the schools on your list. My best guess is that Davidson or Wake might be perfect (for small and then mid-sized) but he’d have to get in! And, if we visit those, you know we are going to have to swing by Duke.
Any advice on whether to visit schools that seem the best fit first? Or save them for last? I’m thinking maybe visiting matches/safeties first. Finding some that he’s happy about…and then moving on to the reach category. Don’t want to fall in the trap of loving something early and then having a hard time considering other schools. I wish his reaches didn’t need the love but I’m afraid his list may end up with reaches that suggest interviews, etc.
Can you tell one of my kids is a skier? 
I think your strategy of focusing on matches/safeties first is a good one - and avoiding him pegging any school as a “dream school” if at all possible. But, really, it’s easiest to just visit schools in proximity to one another, which often means mixing up schools along the selectivity spectrum.
I’d heavily recommend Frank Bruni’s book, “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be.” Have your kids read it… it’s really compelling and shows that it’s the person, not the college, that determines the future.
@collegeisalright We’ve got the book and agree. Hence, my OP is asking how to get kids to consider schools they have not heard of. If the best match for him is a well-known school, though, that’s fine with us too. Of course, students are responsible for being their own advocate on a campus and doing what needs to be done. It’s not up to the school. Some kids, though, may do better with that on smaller campuses.
@homerdog A little closer to home, this might engender some enthusiasm for Lawrence, which is not too far away.
Focusing early and often on safeties and matches is a great idea. The reaches are easy to love (even if they may not actually be the best choice). Be sure he’s clear on the whole safety/match/reach strategy and also the incredible psychological advantages of getting in to at least one satisfactory school EA, something that is more likely to be possible with safeties (or what many prefer to call “likelies”), and then encourage him to find SEVERAL he likes so he has CHOICES when he gets to the end of senior year, and all the changes that entails. And then fill in the others on top of that. As for visiting, though, it’s primarily about convenience, variety and proximity, so there’s that too.
@mamaedefamilia Love the Lawrence video too! Thank you!
I think Fiske as well as Naviance show other schools that appealed to students who applied to College “X.” I used that feature a lot to follow a trail of similar/overlapping schools.
I also looked at colleges’ official peer groups. These are the colleges that they measure themselves against. Sometimes you find it by searching the college website. Sometimes you might need to google “College X peers” or something like that. Sometimes it is buried in a State of the College document or presentation. It’s primarily intended for internal use, but is often publically accessible.
@alooknac Thanks. Yes, finding out the colleges that THEY think are their peers is very interesting and helpful. My husband works with college and, for his business, he uses that data quite a bit. I’m thinking it might be a good way to know which schools to pit versus each other for merit aid…assuming the school gives merit and our son is offered some!
For our kid, the finances talk in spring of junior year helped him understand the options. As a sophomore, and even fall of junior year, he was still talking Dartmouth etc (schools which don’t give merit). Once we sat down and said – this is how much money we can afford, and if you aren’t prepared to go to our state U, then it needs to be a school where you will get at least $20k in merit – then he understood the parameters of his search, and re-focused. Until then, it was all about name-brand schools that got high fives in the high school hallways. As a college freshman, he is now thrilled that he has substantial merit award, no debt, and the opportunity for unpaid internships, study abroad etc. A lot of this process is waiting for the teenage brain to catch up to where you want it to be, in order to have the conversation you need to have.
Do not visit the poshest school first.
If you’re buying a house and look at a mansion first, everything afterwards will look like a shack.
An issue is that for your child Kenyon is a ‘less known’ school. So, really, you’re asking How can adults counteract peer pressure and random comments by ignorant peers?
Perhaps rankings can have a utility there - have him calculate a school’s top percentage (3,700 colleges in the US, college is ranked 74 on Forbes ’ list, that makes it top… %)
He’ll realize there are dozens of top schools he’s never heard of.
Have him look at lists such as ’ where PhD’s come from’or 'top colleges for PhD’s ’ - have him point out the colleges he doesn’t know and research them. Then do the same thing with the list of colleges Harvard Law admits come from.
Keep mom/dad options on the college list and take him to visit 
so that he doesn’t build them in his head as a proof of martyrdom.