My HS junior D totally not motivated about college application - What should I do?

OP, have you had the money talk with her? Or at least, with yourself?

With your D’s stats, she might qualify for a lot of merit aid, but if you have a lot of family need, she may get even better need based aid at some of the elite schools.

Also, at this point in junior year, or probably shortly after spring break, a lot of high school kids are thinking about which teachers they may want rec letters from. In our HS, some of the teachers had a reputation of writing fantastic rec letters, but they limited themselves to only doing a certain number of them. This meant the motivated kids needed to ask her by late Junior year. Some teachers want students to give them an idea as to what they are looking for and when, and let them know by the end of the summer, so they have time to write meaningful letters before early admission process.

I agree that having a discussion with a teenager can be painful - even with a bright teenager. Is your D the type who will respond better by having strict deadlines? Tell her you need her prelim list by _______ so you can run the NPC’s.

Remind her that you are not trying to be a hard-ass about this, and of course that you are terribly proud of what she has done so far. Sometimes letting her know that this is hard for you because your baby is growing up, and because this is an important decision for her you want to help. But mostly, at this stage, you want some reassurances that she is taking this seriously. In order for you to motivate her, tell her if she doesn’t have a prelim list by _____ then you will plan on taking her to visit the closest college the following weekend. Unless she wants to put on her schedule some time with you to have a candid discussion - perhaps at an ice cream shop.

Parents and teens won’t always agree on everything - they never do. Perhaps just you letting her know that you will help as much or as little as she wants, but being clear that you expect some concrete action from her by a certain time, will be just the kick in the pants she may need.

Hugs to you, and congrats to your daughter.

My high-performing D showed no interest in the process until the very end of the summer before her senior year when she started researching schools, filling out the common app, and writing the first draft of her essay. Her actual apps were submitted the night before each was due, RD. It drove me absolutely crazy but this is pretty much how she does everything…last minute and it has worked for her. I decided if she couldn’t manage the process for getting into college, then she didn’t belong there and would have to take a gap year. She ended up with only 2 admits, but 1 was her top choice and it’s a CC Top LAC, somehow her method did work for her.

My son (also gifted I suppose) was like this at this point in junior year. In fact, when we did visit colleges during spring break, his much younger sister asked questions but he just read magazines and wagged his foot, showing no interest.

Fall of senior year, he acted like he was doing me a favor by accompanying me to a few more schools. Actually acted annoyed. So I told him that he absolutely did not have to go to college, and it was fine with me if he worked. I meant it and this was not a threat, it was sincere.

I said if he did want to go, he needed to figure out where and when and I would check my schedule and try to take him. Then I went out.

When I came back he had made a color-coded schedule of planned college visits!

I do think it is too early to worry, and certainly too early to think about a gap year. Things will probably turn around. But make it her own journey not only so she has autonomy but also responsibility.

ps I did let one of mine graduate early…a stint on a crab boat would most likely enhance admissions appreciably: schools love “outliers”…

@carbmom

Those are very impressive stats

My son is a HS senior, He don’t show any interest in choose a College, He start doing when we attended few College open house.
Not worries, but I suggest as parent, check few options and invite her to a tour.

My son was like this… in part because he didn’t know what was out there, and what he wanted. So we started out slow. We visited the state flagship universities, the state college campuses. When we visited friends/relatives out of state, we’d stop by interesting-sounding schools. Slowly, he started to get an idea what to look for. By senior year, when all his friends were talking college apps, he got a lot more interested/involved.

I vote for leaving the college discussions for now. This kid doesn’t want to talk about it…so don’t. Pick it up again when shenwants to talk.

When I told my kid in his freshman year that although he doesn’t have to go to college, if he chooses not to, he better work to earn his living and develop some skills to make a living, he became VERY interested in going to college.

@bopper, but if it’s #2, that she doesn’t care about going to college, what about that? Not to scare anyone but it has been my personal experience, both with my daughter and with my nephew, that if a student is not personally invested in the college search and admissions process, there can be bad consequences. In my daughter’s case, halfway through spring semester of junior year, she dropped out, never to return. My nephew couldn’t even finish one semester at the school he “chose,” came home, and then reapplied to a different school for the next year. If they are not personally invested, then the chances of it being a successful 4 years are decreased, IMHO. We operate as if there is a path we can’t deviate from, but if it’s the wrong path for the individual, eventually that will rear its ugly head.

@carbmom I think it’s ok, she’s not quite ready. Have you gone on any college tours yet? My D just started showing interest around spring break junior year - we went across the country to tour colleges and she got the bug to start researching on her own.

Visiting schools will help her start to form an opinion. Visit a couple nearby just for feel - for example, you can ‘weed out’ suburban versus city very quickly. You mentioned engineering… is this something she has stated she’s interested in or just something you always assumed?

Perhaps she is feeling a lot of pressure and doesn’t want to share that just yet. She’ll come around.

Take a look at this thread for some laughs:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/705291-stupidest-reason-child-wont-look-at-a-college-p1.html

@carbmom

When we first started discussing college with my daughter she had similar answers to what your daughter gave. She is the oldest child and did not have contacts with anyone in or about to go to college so that is exactly what I expected from her.

So we broke our approach into three phases:

Phase one (Fall and Winter of Junior Year): We took a few mini-vacations to different regions about 2-3 hours from home and made short informal visits to several schools in the same area over a few-day period. Our strategy was to do something fun and explore an area and to see different types of campuses(large, small, rural, urban, private, public, religious, non-religous, etc.) We put no effort into looking at the academic programs or to try to see if her stats would get her into any of these schools. We also did not give her any expectations that these were the schools we wanted her to consider. We always visited the book stores and encouraged her to buy a school-logo souvenier if she wanted one. My daughter like Starbucks so she was always exited when she saw a Starbucks on campus. You never know what might click until you start visiting.

Phase two (Spring and Summer of Junior Year): We brought her to college fairs and “practiced” visiting different tables and listened to what other students and parents were asking. We collected lots of brochures and freebies and took them home to digest later. We then went through some of these brochures and made some suggestions to our daughter. We also started to visit some of them by attending Open Houses or Info Sessions.

Phase three (Fall of Senior Year): By this time, most of the other student at high school were talking about colleges so it was more natural for my daughter to show more interest at this stage. She used the Common App and the same essay for multiple college applications so there was very little extra effort to apply to several schools.

We had a slightly earlier start than you but you still have plenty of time. Bigfuture.com is a very good website to use to tweak your preferences in academic and non-academic characteristics.

If she doesn’t want to go to college then I would steer her toward community college

OP here. Wow, looks like quite a lot of students were showing this “lack of interest” near the end of junior year. Alright, I shall stop pushing the topic and just take up the due diligence work myself. No chance she will develop a list herself so I’ll give give her a list of schools I think will fit her based on my research. We are going on college tours next month during spring break so we’ll see how she reacts to the schools I picked so far. She hasn’t shown any resistance to the idea of researching colleges, so maybe it’s just yet not a priority for her.

Anyway, no need at all for us to contemplate gap year, or private college counselor, or community college. Despite her lack of enthusiasm, this is a student who scored 36 in all four sections of ACT on her first sitting. I’m just worried that her disinterest will hurt her chance at the tippy top schools other kids with super high stats would be aiming at. Eventually she has to do the apps and write the essays. I can only help with (or really taking over) the initial legwork.

Well, I’m lowering my expectations for tomorrow’s college fair. Like an earlier parent mentioned, we’ll just go there to collect some brochures to study at home.

High school students often do not engage in discussion of specific colleges because they don’t know much about them. I would begin by trying to identify a list of preferences. These questions can be much easier to answer. I also want them to tell me “why” they are responding the way they are. I write it all down.

Example preference questions:

  1. A technical school that is engineering-focused or a University that offers a full range of majors?
  2. A highly challenging program with peers or a somewhat easier program where you may be a standout?
  3. A school that is more theoretical experience or a more hands-on, practical, experience?
  4. A school in a large city or a school in the country?
  5. A school where students are primarily focused on coursework or a school where students are also very engaged outside of class?
  6. A school where there are a lot more boys or a school with close to a 50/50 balance of boys and girls?
  7. A school with excellent placement for undergrads and may eventually go to grad school or a school where more students are preparing for grad school?
  8. Which engineering areas are you considering? computer science, mechanical eng., chemical eng, electrical eng., civil eng., environmental engineering, petroleum engineering, etc.
  9. How important is it that you be able to select a specific major initially? Some do not allow this.
  10. How important is it that you be able to change majors easily? This varies greatly by school.

With responses to questions like these you can begin to develop a list. With her high stats, I would begin by making a list of the US News top 100 schools in excel, and then begin to prioritize them based on her preferences. Of course, the first criteria has to be that you can eliminate all of the schools that do no offer engineering, such as the University of Chicago.

OP-- do not worry if your D does not get into the tippy top colleges. Or even applies to the ones you want her to. There are many students with her stats who will not get accepted to them (and those with lesser stats that will)- simply not enough room for all. There is life, and intellectual challenge et al outside of the vaunted elite schools. In fact, not all of them are best for all subjects. Nor are they a good fit for every top student.

It was good to hear other parents of top students also had frustrations. They end up with good lives regardless.

Another tale- you know how you get a 2400 on the SAT? You get told by parents to study for the SAT Math II, don’t (“we’re covering precalc in calc”) and then get told to retake it (math and MIT on radar). Delay and sign up (paying extra, of course) to retake the plain SAT since math one filled wherever- out of town, on a cold December morning. Parental input- as much as we could-credit card to use for sign up and a ride (no driver’s license yet, barely 16)- test paid for, why not. How smart are these kids??? Had a 35 on the ACT, don’t even remember good junior year SAT score. Son quit doing all of the work so lost his early HS 4.0. Boys…

I recommend trying an affordable? summer program.
Some are still accepting applications.
Last year my daughter did VSA at Vanderbilt and loved it-it is now a definite ED.
This summer she has applied to a Program at Ole Miss and Miami Ohio just for another experience of being on her own at a larger,out of state public school.
With your daughter’s stats, the Ole Miss program would be almost free!

She doesn’t have to aim for those schools. What state do you live in? She can get a perfectly good education at your state public flagship – and in many states those flagships are considered world class institutions.

Or she can pretty much write her own ticket if she aims for moderately selective private colleges that are willing to pay top dollar in merit aid for students with stats like hers.

Or she can wait until the pretty much the last minute and submit applications to elite colleges and you might be pleasantly surprised when she gets admitted.

I didn’t wheedle or cajole my kids. I told them it would be a sizable amount of my income and savings going to their college education, so participating actively in the process was a requirement for them. One enjoyed it more than the other, but both reviewed Fiske and helped settle on schools to visit, and actively participated in campus visits.

And as for not getting out of the car when we got there… well, I have a choice to not pay for testing, applications, tuition, etc, too. They knew better than to pull a spoiled brat trick like that. If we went to the effort to travel to a campus, they gave it a fair look.

Now – I did act as coordinator and organizer for them. But they appreciated it, too. My advice is to have a frank conversation about the fact that this impacts the family, and she has a role to play. Set out your expectations and follow up. But help where you can, too.

I’ll put in my plug now – if she likes STEM and an academic challenge, she should check out Harvey Mudd. My D2 is a senior there. A lot of students there know they have found their tribe when they visit. Maybe part of her lack of enthusiasm is that noplace has clicked yet.

I don’t see the point of nagging the kids. There’s always a default option: the public U. in one’s home state. That’s the only thing I did: insist that they apply to our in-state U. Both ended up headed off to private colleges… but they led the push toward private colleges. I actually would have been happier with the state U, both because of financial considerations and geographical proximity.

I did some basic things like purchasing a few college guides for my kids to thumb through – and I dutifully performed a variety of appropriate research tasks they assigned to me.

But I think the knowledge that Mom wasn’t going to look for colleges or set up college visits for them pretty much got the message across: if they didn’t take initiative on their own, then there would be no apps to private colleges, no apps to out-of-state publics.

I didn’t do any college visiting either. Son wasn’t particularly interested, so he visited only his top 2 choices in the spring of senior year. (He didn’t see much point in visiting colleges he hadn’t yet been admitted to).

Daughter arranged time off from her high school for 2 separate weeks her senior year so she could visit east coast colleges. She traveled on her own.I paid for one trip, not the other.

PM"ed you carbmom