<p>^^ Yes and some kids view college acceptances as a competitive sporting event while other kids are quite content to apply to one or two and head off. The top kids can probably apply to their state flagship, be accepted and head off with nary another thought involved. With UofM as our flagship we have many top notch kids who do one app and done…even kids that have a viable shot at the brass ring schools. It’s a very personal process.</p>
<p>A&F - Abercrombie & Fitch!</p>
<p>[Comics</a> and cartoons | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle](<a href=“http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20100419&name=Zits]Comics”>http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20100419&name=Zits)</p>
<p>Ah, boys 
D’s best guy friend applied to one state school (not the flagship.) He’s perfectly happy; drove his dad crazy as the kid has ap’s and test scores out the wazoo. D’s guy friends at school didn’t ask for rec’s till November and were hitting submit buttons on apps at 11:59pm on the date due. </p>
<p>Luckily, our school tells the kids they want them coming back to school in August with a list of 5-8 schools that they plan on applying to. Puts the pressure coming from a non-parental source, KWIM? </p>
<p>I’ll agree with others that you should make him go look at another type of school than the one he’s already seen to give him some idea of differences. Rural, urban, research uni, LAC, small, large…they’re all abstract concepts until you see it. But give him some options & tell him he needs to pick one. See if you can add something of interest to him on the trip. And we did make our D apply to 1 school as a parents choice; fairly common.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Both of my boys were/are like that.</p>
<p>I picked several schools for them to visit (even an overnight for younger S) and they became more interested.</p>
<p>Older S is finishing his 4th year of a 5 year program at Stevens. He is having a blast. But truthfully <em>I</em> picked that school out for him to visit.</p>
<p>Younger S is a HS junior and you should have seen his eyes light up when he visited Olin and Cornell. But prior to the visits he was very grumpy about it.</p>
<p>Keep doing what you are doing and he will come through.</p>
<p>A&F - attitude and fun!</p>
<p>Yep. Chiming in to say that my son didn’t get involved until he decided all his friends were applying ED and he wanted to pick a college. Then panic set in.</p>
<p>Until then, he was pretty miserable at those info sessions. It bordered on embarrassing. I knew once he got into gear, his window of interest would be small, so I pre-selected the schools that I thought he’d like. I anticipated those deadlines and sent hints to particular teachers he might be asking to write a recommendation. I also made sure the GC was on the same page and she was much better about making him get into the program.</p>
<p>Looking back on that time, I felt so stressed out. I wanted those essays written and applications completed. And i couldn’t understand why he didn’t want the same. Sometimes his laid back attitude stressed me out the most. But it worked out. I think my sage advice is that at the end of this year, you want to be sure you still have a good relationship. That’s what matters most.</p>
<p>Letters of recommendation are one of those mystery items - I think though that they very likely made a difference for my younger son. He saw the one from his math teacher who talked about how while he didn’t always get the top grades in the class, he really understood the material rather than just knowing how to get the right answer. His history teacher had him provide: copy of a paper he’d written in class, AP grade, reminder of the grade he’d gotten in class and a short essay on what he thought he wanted to study in college and why and what he’d most enjoyed learning in history class. I suspect that armed with all that info he probably wrote really good recommendations! I don’t think my older son made nearly as good choices for who to write recommendations.</p>
<p>Yep. Parents want to control the process (me too!). We want to know how much it will cost and if we can negotiate that and if there are any deals we can get – but none of that is possible until we know where the kid will be attending. </p>
<p>Our own lives are on hold for much of the senior year. We don’t know if we are about to eat caviar or macaroni. We don’t know if we can afford to upgrade the high mileage car. We don’t know if we need to budget for air fare. </p>
<p>And, of course, the systems don’t make it easy. College officers will tell you that there is financial aid and scholarships, but you don’t know if this is YOUR kid until April senior year. </p>
<p>It is maddening – even before you add the teenager into the equation!</p>
<p>We did this at the beginning of junior year, but it could be done anytime.</p>
<p>I gave my kids a list of X number of schools that I thought could be relevant / interesting to them, and explained why. I bought the relevant guidebooks (Fiske, Princeton Review, etc.) and created a shelf in my home office for all that stuff, along with relevant standardized testing prep books. I created an accordion folder for each of them and gave them my thoughts as to what their “resume” could look like (a list of all activities I remember). We had a family discussion at which we went over all this.</p>
<p>Then - I shut my mouth. (Hard to do!!) They were to each “report back” to me by X date with a list of what colleges they wanted to see (they could, of course, pick other places other than what was on the list I provided - mine were just thought starters) and we’d go from there. That’s how we did our trip planning.</p>
<p>I felt at times I dragged them kicking and screaming, but now they’re interested and have real opinions / ideas. It’ll happen. Good luck!</p>
<p>It really does not have to start this early. </p>
<p>My son did not begin to narrow down his college list until the fall of his senior year – and had no interest in college visits until the spring. He felt he had enough information on paper about the schools – and that he would narrow things down in the end by visiting his top choice schools once he was admitted. He ended up making 3 visits, on his own. I do think that the quality of the “admitted student” visit was much higher, in the sense of the student being more mature and able to focus on what he wanted in college, as opposed to be rather cluelessly dragged around on campus tours, trailing along after his parents. </p>
<p>My daughter also refused college visits until her senior year… though she had a rather insane approach. She really did want to visit, but she wanted to visit while school was in session, so she refused all offers of summer college tours - and then in September and October made two separate trips on her own to visit east coast colleges. I didn’t really buy into that approach, but she was adamant and managed to talk her teachers into letting her have the time off – since she was only interested in urban campuses, or suburban colleges close to big cities – there wasn’t a transportation issue. She could travel on her own and use public transit, essentially couch surfing with family friends or with her own friends who were students at colleges near the ones she wanted. I think the visits were VERY important to her – she completely shifted her focus… but the point is, the timing wasn’t all that important. </p>
<p>Now here’s the rub: BOTH of my kids fell in love with schools they visited and were accepted, but where financial aid was totally inadequate. I think that without the visits, they might have been less prone to feel attached to those schools – so if financial aid is important to a family, it may be wise to hold back a little. Forget the idea of finding a “dream school” and instead focus on casting a wide net - and then visiting only the schools in the spring where attendance is a real possibility. </p>
<p>Another problem: my son did not do well in the school he chose – though probably not as a result of anything that would have shown up on a visit. So he quit school, worked awhile… and then transfered to the only school he could get into and afford with his weak transfer GPA. He did really well at the transfer school – but I remember asking him whether he had ever even visited the campus after he had decided to enroll and was packing the car to drive to the school. It turned out that he had – not as part of a college visit but in connection with some sort of work-related retreat – but the point is the last thing he or I were thinking about at that point was some sort of hunt for the perfect school. </p>
<p>I do think that for students who want to visit, it is a valuable experience - but in hindsight I think the information learned on visits is very superficial and tends to result in gut level responses rather than considered evaluation. The gut level responses may feel right – but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are the right decisions at the time. </p>
<p>Some of the best experiences my kids ever had were with signing up for programs where they had no opportunity to visit the facilities in advance and very limited information – such as with study abroad. </p>
<p>I went through my kid’s college app process without going nuts simply because I was always content with the idea of them attending the in-state public system – as long as they got their UC apps in on time, I really didn’t care what happened down the line.</p>
<p>As to LOR’s, they can be arranged in the fall of senior year – no particular need to line them up in advance. It’s not a good idea to wait until the very last minute – but certainly its fine to approach a teacher for the first time in September or early October.</p>
<p>When it comes to college process, there are things that can’t be done over (grades and tests), and there is deadline for many tasks. You can only keep your mouth shut and having no action for so long.</p>
<p>Your son already has the grades and great test scores, and that’s most of the battle. I would plan few college visits. Give him an option of picking the colleges he wants to visit, or he would be visiting schools you want him to see. Same when it comes time to apply to schools. He could pick the schools he wants to apply or he could apply to schools you have picked. Just make sure the list has both safeties and reaches. Come April, your son could decide if he wants to go to college, and which college he would like to attend. If he is still not interested in going to college, you have done your part as parents, and you’ll set some guidelines for the following year if he should decide not to attend a college.</p>
<p>All that being said, I would sit down with your son to discuss why he is not interested. He maybe scared, or he may not have a good understanding of what it takes to get into a college. My younger daughter swings from having great aspiration of getting into a top school to “I am failure, I’ll never get into any school.” As a girl, she is more vocal, and we try to reassure her when she is overwhelmed. Your son maybe keeping everything in.</p>
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<p>I agree. Waiting to take action til senior year seems like the purview of the kids who are just going to apply to local / state schools and go there, anyway. Not for kids who are casting their nets wider.</p>
<p>My son did not share a lot of his thoughts with us during the college application process. I agree with CountingDown, about the “ego component” of college apps. It’s hard for these successful kids to put themselves out there, risk failure, and then have to talk about it with others when asked.</p>
<p>We visited two schools in the Boston area when we were up there visiting family. My son first experienced our state flagship (Chapel Hill) through a summer soccer camp before his junior year. We went a day early and took the admission tour. In total he visited 6 schools, 3 local and 3 farther away. He just wasn’t interested in seeing any more. He ended up applying to two of our state schools early action and two schools we considered reach schools. Of the 4 schools he applied to he had only visited two of them. I think Chapel Hill was always his first choice, but he didn’t really tell us that until he was accepted. </p>
<p>“For my older son, all I had to do is offer to buy him a tee shirt from each visit and he was packed and ready to go!” - Kajon, that made me laugh. I’m going to try it with the next son.</p>
<p>Your son is not alone!</p>
<p>Teenagers are hands-on and “in-the-now”, and the only thing that is real to them is the world they are experiencing right now. For them, their high school world is going to go on forever. Experts on the adolescent brain say the development of the frontal lobe (which controls executive function and planning) is not complete until age 21. That puts a lot of teenage behavior in perspective!</p>
<p>How can you help? Don’t push him too much, because it will add further toxicity to the parent teen relationship (which is already strained from the normal push-pull of his budding autonomy). If he isn’t interested, wait and try again in a month.</p>
<p>Procrastination is also a way teenage boys deal with anxiety, and the big change of moving away to college does scare kids even if they won’t admit it.</p>
<p>Because teens are so experiential, going on a college visit ONCE IN A WHILE might get him excited because it will help him picture himself on a campus. But don’t try to cover too much. If he doesn’t want to sit through the info session and would rather just do the tour, just do that. Do only what he can handle. And don’t embarrass him!</p>
<p>His lack of interest does not have to hold you back from learning all you can about the college process. Pick up Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s College Solution or Sally Springer’s Admission Matters, to name a few good guidebooks. </p>
<p>In the fall, your son’s friends will be more engaged in the college process, and they will begin talking about it more. It will become more real to all of them. Your son will realize that he needs to start on those essays. Really!</p>
<p>Right now, if he is getting good grades and standardized test scores, that IS preparation to get into a good college. Remember, the most important credential for college is a student’s GPA. I’d rather see a strong GPA right now than a student all worked up about the college process.</p>
<p>Hope this is helpful!</p>
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<p>That has not been my experience at all. While it would be nice to start the process earlier, very few kids in my son’s class of 70 started any serious work on the college application process before fall of senior year. How do I know? I asked the GC and I polled at least two dozen of the parents in the class (small, close knit community - easy to do). In fact, I remember very clearly the first week of school at the senior/parent class college meeting, the GC saying that only a few of the kids in the class had done anything much in the way of getting letters of rec, filling out applications, essays, etc. They start working on their essays in senior English class in the fall. Through work I have quite a few acquaintances who kids are seniors in our public high schools this year and the same was true for their kids.</p>
<p>Many of the kids didn’t start touring colleges until summer and fall and an astonishing number applied to schools they had never visited. As expected, a large number are going to college in state (about 1/2 of the class). Those that are staying in state are evenly split between in-state public and in-state LACs. Of those that are going out of state, probably 15 are going to top 20 schools or the Ivies.</p>
<p>My point is that to wait until fall senior year is perfectly normal and isn’t limited to only those who have no interest in going anywhere other than the state university. And it certainly won’t limit the places your child can apply. It would be really, really nice if they all started the process at the beginning of their junior year but for most kids, that’s just too far into the future to grasp the significance of choosing a college. While there are a few that start the process early,the majority will go into the fall of senior year with little accomplished on the college application front and will still do fine.</p>
<p>I will add as a parent of one of those ‘procrastinators’ - it helped a little to know everyone else was pretty much in the same boat but it did still make for a stressful fall semester. I think nearly everyone feels a great deal of stress during that period. Try to relax this summer while you still can :)</p>
<p>Welcome to a club with lots of members. My kid picked up interest when it was too late. I pushed him through the app process purely because I wanted some college alternatives on his plate and not be in the position of choosing between having a couch potato the next year and throwing him out on the street. </p>
<p>As many have said, if he can keep up his grades,and if you can get him into a community SAT prep course, those a pretty big steps. Pick a few colleges that you think are good matches and have easy apps for him to complete. Nag him to get the common app and some quick apps, and essays done. IF he doesn’t get more interested, at least he has some college choices right there, and can take a gap year if necessary, or give a school a whirl.</p>
<p>Mom of two VERY different children here. D began the college search process sophomore year, and she asked for my assistance along the way. There was lots of discussion about the kind of school she wanted, what it would take to get in, how to make sure she was competitive, what we could afford, how she could maximize merit opportunities … many visits, much worry, difficult decisions, etc. S couldn’t see the point to going to college, even though he knew he would. Because it seemed pointless, he had no interest in even thinking about it. One day, he found the career that interested him … I talked him into applying for a summer program for that field, and he really enjoyed it; he could finally see the value of going to school. That was the summer before senior year. I tried to use that as a springboard for discussion for college choices. I did get some input from him about the type of program he wanted for this career path (it’s pharmacy, so there are several ways you can approach it). He wanted a 6-year program with as much “guarantee” for the professional phase as possible … so I investigated schools & showed him viable options. He picked a couple, finished his applications by Halloween, and that was that. Only two visits, no delving into the programs, no trying to find a “fit.” When it came time to decide where to go, the financial reality was that one school he had visited was by far the best option … plus a scholarship, honors program, great clinical rotations, etc. While he isn’t thrilled, he isn’t averse to the place, either. He had liked the other school he visited better, but “location” just wasn’t enough of a reason to justify the difference in cost! He finally seems to be warming up to the idea that he needs to get to know the school he will be attending a bit better. He did read the letter regarding June orientation day, and he asked me some questions at that time. Yeesh, what a difference between kids! :)</p>
<p>Your son sounds just like my cousin. He came over to my house one time, and I, being very interested in colleges and the admissions process, showed him books and stuff that I had. I showed him how to work the CollegeBoard college search and I gave him my Fiske Guide to Colleges book. Since both of those sources give you a cool, honest opinion of the schools, he actually used them, and since then he’s actually LOOKED at colleges and even made a list of reaches, targets, and safeties. That’s what worked for him.</p>
<p>I’m lost… what’s so all important about the college visit, anyway?</p>
<p>Yes – I understand why many kids might want to visit colleges before applying … but we’re talking in this thread about a kid who doesn’t want to visit. </p>
<p>So I imagine a scene of a morose kid being dragged around by his parents from one campus to the next, over summer months when school is not in session and the climate of each school is nothing like the climate during most of the school year, with the parents asking all the questions and trying to get the kid excited about something or other. The kid has no clue yet what he is looking for, so its not particularly likely that he will ask any probing questions that are going to elicit any different information than the could get by looking at web sites and reading all of the various college review books. </p>
<p>With my son I bought the Princeton Review Guide & the Yale Insiders Guide and left the books lying around the house in strategic positions. Somehow he eventually made his way to those books and their particular summary of college life. </p>
<p>I think there is a huge array of good information, including web sites such as College ******* – and of course this site – that allows a student to get a sense of a school without visiting. </p>
<p>So – assuming you have a kid who is not enthusiastic about visiting… what’s the point? It sounds to me like one of those things that parents do for themselves, pretending its for the kid – because the parents think it would be so much fun to look at all the colleges, or the parents are hoping to get their kid interested in a particular college that they like. I think it can backfire badly – because we’ve all heard the tale of the kid who balks and refuses to get out of the car because he’s having a snit fit and saw something or other he didn’t like coming in. And I honestly don’t think that anyone who decides to reject a college based on the appearance of the parking lot in front of the administration building has exactly made an informed choice.</p>
<p>Not only wasn’t my daughter not interested in college, she wasn’t even interested in high school. For many reason I was determined that she have a place to go upon graduation, even if she didn’t think she wanted to. I knew it would be a state school and fortunately we have a super simple online system of applying, basically just a fill in the blanks kind of thing. I got online and got her to input some information then check off which campus she was interested in, then I checked off a few more. Months later we paid a visit to the ones she was accepted to and by then all the seniors were in full “college fever” and she was finally coming around to the idea. My previously disinterested daughter just graduated from college on Friday and she is STILL thanking me for stepping in when it was the last thing on her mind. </p>
<p>You have to know your kids though, although my daughter acknowledges that she sometimes needs someone to tell her what to do other would find that too meddlesome.</p>