<p>cyclone, it’s really not as bad as you think. You are ahead of the curve.</p>
<p>If you have a Feb break, Junior year is an ideal time to look at a couple of nearby colleges - that’s when we determined that my younger son had to have a well defined campus and did not want a campus in the woods. For my older son the first visit confirmed that his first priority was the academics and he didn’t care about size or location. (Later he said no hot climates, and he clearly liked colleges with a techie vibe.)</p>
<p>I’d sign up for SAT in March, ACT in April and see how the scores play out for retaking one of them in June. May junior year is usually a good time to take SAT 2s. For most schools 2 is enough. My kids each applied to one that wanted three so they took three in one day. Most colleges don’t care what you take, but some engineering schools will have more specific requirements. If you can have all testing done by the end of junior year that’s ideal. That way you know what score and GPA you’ve got in the hand for picking out colleges.</p>
<p>Oh and make sure your child takes PSAT October of Junior year.</p>
<p>As for picking out colleges, I can’t emphasize enough that having a safety your child likes is critical. For many this can be State U., but if you’ve got a child with special interests you may be able to do better than this. For both my kids the state options for safeties were not nearly as good as either a small tech school for the older one, or a medium sized university with an excellent program in the planned major for the younger one. I think the best safety is the college you’ve already been accepted to by December - so look for colleges with early action programs, rolling admissions or some other early notification program that isn’t binding. Getting into one of these is great - and if they don’t get in, it may be a sign that the list needs rethinking.</p>
<p>Some parents got their kids to start applications before school started senior year. Neither of my kids did this, but they both did do the hard work by October when those Early Action applications were due.</p>
<p>Finally all that stuff about community service and extra-curricular activities. Don’t over-worry this. A few activities in depth is much better than being spread too thin. For both my kids the major service activity they had was some summer hours at the senior center. They each did activities there that corresponded to their interests. My older son helped out in their computer lab and did some other computer stuff for them. My younger son gave violin concerts and taught an origami class. Both my kids only had two or three extra curricular activities at school and both of them actually ended up writing their essays about outside school activities.</p>
<p>Too true that both rigor and grades count. When someone in the audience at our school’s college night asked whether it was better to get an A in the regular class or a B in the honors or AP class the Vassar admissions officer said “It’s better to get an A in the honors or AP class.” There were nods and chuckles from the other admissions officers present. That said, both my kids had a number of B’s or B+'s on their transcript. At least from our high school, that didn’t keep them from being accepted from some very highly rated schools.</p>