<p>“Things he would do:
Fill out common application
Write a really good essay and edit it
Get recommendations”</p>
<p>Those are all important and essential things that my S would not due his senior year. However, after he missed the deadlines for the colleges that he said he was interested in, he did talk to his volunteer supervisor, who found the funding for a new Americorps position, and when that position was advertised, without any involvement from H and me, S submitted his application.</p>
<p>Interestingly, I had suggested much earlier that S consider doing a gap year with Americorps, but S said he preferred to go to college right after h.s., and I saw no evidence that S bothered to look at the info I passed on to him about Americorps. </p>
<p>During his gap year, he managed to fund and organize the following: submitting apps, test scores, getting recommendations, and managing to visit a college on his own to participate in a weekend for students invited to apply for a competitive scholarship.</p>
<p>All of this illustrates that often actions, not their words, are the best indication of whether a student is ready/interested in going to college or taking a productive gap year.</p>
<p>Interestingly to me who finds learning about colleges so interesting, I don’t think that S ever spent any time looking through college guides or web sites like this. Although he had visited more than 10 colleges of different types, he applied to only 2 colleges: a hometown public and the LAC college where he now goes – one that he learned about when we were at a conference near the college just before its application deadline, and he met an administrator there who invited S to visit the college. S visited the college, fell in love with it and then went out of his way to do what it took to get accepted and to get the funding to attend it.</p>