<p>To be looking at this site now actually puts you ahead of the curve. Most kids/families we know didn’t start really focusing on search until senior year – too late in many cases.
I just found this site just a couple of months ago and am very grateful. We were one of those families that other posters are warning you about. We didn’t run our EFC calculation, figure out what we could pay or how much we might need to borrow before our son started applying for colleges. By the time we did figure it out, our kid – a current senior – had fallen in love with some expensive LACs when we should have been focusing on state schools and their deadlines in order to get some out-of-state reciprocity money. Thanks to some suggestions here at seriously the very last minute until deadlines (and in some cases, after the deadlines), we are still hoping for the best come financial-decision time.
If I could turn back the clock, we would have done this totally differently – starting by looking at money and what loan debt we might be facing.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the advice - I am feeling better already. I keep telling dd not to get her heart set on this particular school, but she tells me it’s too late. LOL Her grades and scores will be good enough to be able to go to a state school for free, but she isn’t too interested in LSU…she’ll apply anyway for a backup.</p>
<p>I’m so glad I found these boards as I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting couple of years ahead of us.</p>
<p>Good advice on this post. Will just touch on things not covered.</p>
<p>My son is in block schedule school - sounds similar to your D. Make sure she doesn’t take any more standard college prep classes (only Honors or AP); make sure she takes the minimum electives. Her HS GC should be able to tell you the # of honors and AP classes the top students have taken in the past. For example, at my son’s school the max AP is 5 because of all the requirements and the block schedule.</p>
<p>Go the bookstore and skim some books on getting into the top colleges - pick a couple that you like.</p>
<p>Take 3 Subject Test - you need to have at least two with good scores (730+).</p>
<p>A few unique thoughts - instead of piling up on EC’s work on one unique interest. Two good books cover this - the first is about developing an Non Teenage Activity (NTA) - something other HS students don’t do - it usually includes interacting/workking with adults. The other is about developing something that is interesting (and will be to Admissions people) - the book is How to Be a High School Superstar - it focuses on “underscheduling” your student so they have free time to explore and find something that really interest them; then they focus on it and develop it; it is usually something outside of school. The book covers students that got into top schools be they were interesting even though they didn’t have the top grades or scores. Everyone else looks the same and that is boring to the Admission people reading Application after Application.</p>
<p>GL</p>
<p>*or maybe going to physician assistant school. *</p>
<p>That is a grad school program. Someone who wants to be a PA majors in what they want, but also takes some required science/math courses…similar to those who want to go to med school.</p>
<p>1) Figure out how much you can spend each year. Keep in mind that colleges believe that FAMILIES are the first source for funds for college.</p>
<p>2) Most colleges do not meet need and do NOT have much money to give away.</p>
<p>3) Often, aid is really just loans and work study.</p>
<p>4) Run some FA calculators…but keep in mind that these will only tell you the MINIMUM that you’ll have to pay…often you’ll have to pay MORE…sometimes a LOT more. Most people are SHOCKED to find out what their EFC’s are. So, get a rough idea NOW.</p>
<p>5) If your child has a non-custodial parent, then many of the best schools will require the income/assets info of that parent and any new spouse. If your child’s NCP (or spouse) will not cooperate with this (or may not cooperate in a future year), then it’s probably a good idea to avoid these schools.</p>
<p>6) If you have remarried, then your current spouse’s income/assets will also count.</p>
<p>7) If money is a concern, then make sure your child has applied to at least 2-3 financial safety schools. These are schools that you know that she’ll get accepted to and you know FOR SURE that the costs are covered by ASSURED grants, ASSURED merit scholarships, small loans, and family funds.</p>
<p>8) Your child can only borrow the following amounts
frosh 5500
soph 6500
jr 7500
sr 7500</p>
<p>If your child wants to borrow more than that (not a good idea), you will have to co-sign those loans. </p>
<p>8) Even students with the best stats get rejected from the best schools because those schools get more apps from TOP students then they can accept. So, be sure to apply to match schools and safety schools.</p>
<p>9) If your child balks at applying to financial safety schools, then insist on a few “parent picks”. Some parents insist that their child apply to 1 or 2 schools that the parent has picked. </p>
<p>10) Until your child has test scores, it’s really going to be hard to know what schools she should apply to. Many “A Students” end up with test scores that are not “top school quality”. </p>
<p>11) Big merit scholarships tend to be awarded to students whose stats (test scores/GPA) are in the top 5-10% of the school. Many schools do not award ANY merit scholarships (ivies don’t give any). Test scores are very important for determining merit scholarships at the schools that give them. There is a LARGE pool of students with high GPAs. There is a smaller group of kids with high test scores. There is an even smaller group of kids who have high test scores AND high GPAs…these are the kids who get the big merit (from the schools that give big merit.)</p>
<p>Her grades and scores will be good enough to be able to go to a state school for free</p>
<p>Do you mean “free tuition”? If so, then be aware that room, board, fees, and books can cost more than tuition at many state schools. So, if your D would only get “free tuition”, you’d still need to pay several thousand per year for those other costs.</p>
<p>I keep telling dd not to get her heart set on this particular school, but she tells me it’s too late.</p>
<p>Keep telling her. Many/most kids do not get accepted to dream schools. And, some find them to be unaffordable. Keep in mind that schools that are known for giving great aid get to decide how much YOU should spend…not you.</p>
<p>I will focus on your D’s interest in math. If she is quite strong in this area, that could be her ticket to a lot of good things. The fact of the matter is that the colleges are still looking (at ALL levels) for females who are good at mathematics.</p>
<p>Just one example. My husband is a math professor at USC. They have just two women on faculty in the math dept, despite their efforts to hire more. USC is very keen on hiring more women faculty in STEM. Even though the math dept did not find a woman who’s strong to fill a current position they are hiring for In a specific field of math), they did find another woman post doc from MIT. The administration is willing to let them overfill their positions if they can hire her. They are that interested in fulfilling that kind of diversity in their faculty.</p>
<p>If her passion is in math, there are ECs she can do to strengthen her hand. There are math competitions of all kinds, on line math classes she can take (or dual enrollment classes at local colleges) and she could be a math peer tutor at her school. My son did all three of these things, in addition to some other ECs (water polo/swim team.) Besides taking on line classes in linear algebra and multivariable calculus, he also had 9 AP classes. He’s currently a freshman in the honors Integrated Science Program at Northwestern. That program would love to have more female applicants.</p>
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<p>She needs to find schools she is interested in and would be excited to attend. </p>
<p>We made it very simple for our son when he thought he’d found his dream school; we weren’t paying for the dream school application or a visit to dream school until he had at least one match and one safety (including financial safety) that he was truly excited about. In the process, he dismantled his own idea of there only being one dream school and thank goodness for that because in spite of being highly competitive, the two most selective schools he applied to did not accept him (all the rest did, and believe me, it was wonderful to have real choices at that stage of the game.)</p>
<p>We do our kids no favors by letting them off the hook by applying to “dream school” and schools they think are just ok.</p>
<p>"or maybe going to physician assistant school. </p>
<p>That is a grad school program. Someone who wants to be a PA majors in what they want, but also takes some required science/math courses…similar to those who want to go to med school."</p>
<p>At the risk of running this thread off-track, quite a few kids in our HS class of 2011 are going into direct-admit 5 year PA programs.</p>
<p>My 2013 D is also interested in selective colleges. She plays 2 varsity sports, but will probably not be captain in either. She does not want to play in college. She will not have leadership in her other EC’s either, and has little time for service. She is doing what she likes, and I am not going to put any extra pressure on her to change or develop new EC’s for college applications. She puts enough pressure on herself. She knows the selective colleges are a long shot, so she will have a range of schools to apply to. (I may suggest she look at the Integrated Science Program at Northwestern, FindAPlace, except I don’t believe they give merit scholarships. Have to check that out.)</p>
<p>Cyclonehome, your daughter is only a sophomore, right? We didn’t start talking about college until Feb. of junior year, and that was just for a preliminary visit to one or two schools. I think you can relax, and maybe not even come on here much for another year.</p>
<p>We didn’t want to make high school all about getting into college. So many kids are stressed these days, and pile on activities and academics to “get in,” and some actually crash once there. I think it can be better not to talk a lot about schools, prematurely.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is a good idea for kids to keep track of what they do for admissions purposes. It just feels better for them to do things because they want to, not to get them on a resume, and keeping track just makes it unavoidable to have that resume-building attitude.</p>
<p>That said, when the time came, in late fall of senior year, they did have to make a list, for the applications, of course, from memory, and we parents nudged memories a bit when that time came. </p>
<p>Interesting comments from Onecot59. Read them again if you can. The idea of doing something with adults that high school students usually don’t do, and the other idea about underscheduling so that your kids can explore interests outside of school, both worked really well for our family in terms of ultimate admissions. In fact, we felt that going to a less then rigorous high school actually helped our kids, because they had so much free time to read what they want, volunteer, or do performing arts that they loved. And, hang out with friends too.</p>
<p>I’ve heard it said that the most important school on any student’s list is the safety (or safeties). The student should make that decision first, and should put serious time and effort into researching it. Once that is settled, several well-chosen matches. Only then should the student think about the “candy” of a reach. </p>
<p>Guide her toward creating a list that’s balanced, not top-heavy. If she ends up with a list of, say, eight schools, it should break down as 1-2 safeties, 3-5 matches, 1-2 reaches.</p>
<p>I would read The Gatekeepers to get a basic feel for how “holistic admissions” works. </p>
<p>From a financial aid perspective, if you plan to sell assets, don’t do it during the period of January 1 of junior year to December 31 of senior year. The income will distort your financial picture.</p>
<p>One thing many folks don’t seem to know (I didn’t) is that the PSAT in October of the Junior Year determines National Merit Scholarship status. Please don’t let your daughter think this is just some unimportant ‘practice test’. Doing well on it can mean extra money for college…and putting National Merit Finalist on your app is also a great thing!</p>
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<p>I missed this the first time around too. Both my kids only did a couple of after school activities and no sports so they had a lot of free time.</p>
<p>My older son used it to become a computer geek. He ended up doing some programming for a chemistry prof who lived in the neighborhood. They got talking at a party and the project the prof wanted done to analyze some data my son said would be easy, though none of the prof’s grad students had a clue how to go about it. He also had enough spare time to work for my brother’s company doing stuff that ended up looking very good on his resume.</p>
<p>My younger son, more of a slacker, got interested in origami. He started off making earrings for friends, but got good enough that they ended up getting sold through a local gallery as well. He also helped our neighborhood association president archive papers - this involved scanning and then indexing the papers. He learned a lot about the neighborhood and wrote a very nice essay about how he felt like a historian as he went through these first hand sources and experienced both their immediacy and what was missing.</p>
<p>I also agree that as a parent of a sophomore you can not think about colleges for another year.</p>
<p>But you can visit a college campus while on vacation or go to a college roadshow during the summer before junior year, just to give your high school student a vision of how cool college can be.</p>
<p>I am another parent who didn’t find CC until my oldest child’s senior year.</p>
<p>There is a lot of good advice posted on this thread. Expanding on what one poster said about keeping track of volunteer hours, I started a spreadsheet (it was a simple one) freshman year and listed everything my child was involved in : school activities, non- school activities, volunteer/service activities and academics. Listed amount of time, awards won etc. This will not only be useful with school applications, but also for scholarships. </p>
<p>I talked with a parent who I am friends with who has a child a year older. Her child and mine are very similar academically and had similar college aspirations. She was a great source of information.</p>