<p>OKMom, welcome to CC! The suggestions you have received are excellent, but I’d like to add some prep steps for you and your husband. Please go to this site, [FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>http://www.finaid.org/) , and read the articles and use the calculators (particularly the EFC calculators). One of the biggest shocks for parents and students every year on CC is when financial aid packages are received; there are always a few posts along the lines of “How can they possibly expect me to pay THAT much?!” or “My parents are now telling me I can’t go to XXX College because it costs too much.” I also suggest perusing CCs own Financial Aid forum as a way to learn the lingo and some of the ins-and-outs of financial aid.</p>
<p>I am not suggesting this to discourage you in any way but to prepare you for the reality of college financing and “affordability” as defined by FAFSA and/or Profile. (And if the acronyms I’ve used…intentionally…in this post are foreign to you, the site will help you to understand the terms.) I first ran an EFC calculator when my daughter was sophomore in high school, and it radically changed how and where I was saving money. </p>
<p>It did not change where my daughter applied to college, but it did change our conversation from “you can attend any college you get accepted to” to “you can attend any college you get accepted to, as long as their financial aid doesn’t gap us on our EFC too much.” Unlike you, we were not willing to take out parents’ loans, although my daughter does take out a small Stafford loan each year. We had a happy ending, in part because she and I were on the same page re: realistic financial expectations and understandings.</p>
<p>CC is a phenomenal resource for college searches, college prep, and financial aid; however, one semi-serious point of advice: don’t ever - ever - go to the “Parent Cafe/Election and Politics” forum. Life is too short.</p>
<p>Your High School’s Guidance Counselor should be told that you want the kids on the College Track for high school graduation. That means they should take:</p>
<p>4 years of English
4 years of Math (algebra, geometry, algebra 2, pre-calculus, calculus)
4 years of science (biology, chemistry, physics)
4 years of foreign language (same one all 4 years)
4 years of social studies (us history, european history, us government)</p>
<p>If the kids can handle it, you also want them to take Honors and Advanced Placement classes. Note: These should be real english, math, science, etc. classes. No “consumer math”, or “explore science” type classes.</p>
<p>Take the SAT II subject test in June of the year of taking the class (if they take biology in 9th grade, then take the SAT II test at the end of 9th grade). Even if your child plans on taking the 2nd year of a class, they can retake the SAT II then. With certain schools, you need at least 3 different SAT II scores. Get them when you can.</p>
<p>Junior year: SAT and/or ACT. Start taking them in January of Junior year. If they score well, you are done. If they need to retake, then you have time (remember June testing will be used for SAT II).</p>
<p>You and your High School kids should start going to college fairs to start getting an idea about different colleges. By the Junior Year, your child should go to as many as they can. Your child should also start making a short list - Reach, competitive, safety. Start visiting schools in your JUNIOR year (fall and spring). Summer is a bad time to visit (nothing going on). Use the fall of the Senior Year for visits if you need to decide between School A or School B.</p>
<p>Just to clarify Operadad’s list of requirements:</p>
<p>While it’s great to suggest that OKmom’s children should to aim for the highest level of rigor and achievement, they should not be daunted, either.
The four years of science need not cover all three sciences. For example, a student may take Honors Biology, followed by AP Biology ( two years) then Honors Chemistry followed by AP Chemistry (another two years); or take three Honors Sciences (Biology, chemistry, physics, and one AP); or even no AP (for example, taking marine biology for a fourth sciences class). Some schools offer a 9th grade Introduction to Science and Technology type of course which make it more difficult to get to AP classes (this was tried in our school and discarded for that reason).
As for Math, what sequence to take depends on the student’s math aptitude and the expectations of the colleges the student will be shooting for. Not every student in this country takes Calculus (S1 did not). Many students take Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus. Some take Honors Algebra II, Honors Geometry, Pre-Calculus, AP-Statistics. S1 took Discrete Math and ended up at a top LAC.
Operadad is spot on about when to take SAT and SAT-Subject Tests (also called SAT-II), arrange visits, and draw up lists.</p>