Not sure how to go about a college search for son

At the moment your son’s information incomplete. He should definitely get the standardized test done ASAP. In the mean time you can begin narrowing down the types of schools your son might be interested in. Private vs. Public, urban/suburban/rural/college town etc. Is he interested in working in industry or graduate school?

Figure out what you are willing to contribute to his education. This can be from savings, regular earnings or money you are willing to borrow. That will give him some financial parameters. The balance of the cost will need to be covered by him through scholarships, financial aid, work, or federal loans he can get (limited to $5500 freshman year).

As you look at schools they will be put into categories of safeties (VERY important), matches and reaches. A safety will be a school that he will definitely get in to, is definitely affordable and he would be happy to attend. Matches are schools that he is well qualified for but admission is not guaranteed and you may or may not require scholarships to attend. You should be willing to walk away from a match that is not affordable. Reaches can be reaches either because they are extremely selective and nearly all the applicants will be academically qualified or they are at the lower quartile of students that are accepted. Once you begin to get ideas about some schools, present them here and people can give you their impressions as to which category the school might fall.

If all goes well he will have schools to choose from and hopefully more than one affordable option.

We are from TX and my son wanted to go OOS despite great programs in TX. Look at some of the OOS large universities. Mine got great merit brining the costs below instate tuition for every one he applied to. If your son does well on the SAT or ACT he should get good merit. Many of those colleges have great engineering programs. We have been hiring a lot from Iowa State, Auburn, Alabama, Mississippi State, Florida colleges, Purdue, and Ohio State recently. (I’m in engineering).

My son is pre-vet so just a tip for your younger child. Go the cheapest route you can undergrad where you can get good grades. Prestige of the school doesn’t matter. Go to a college with a vet school if possible. Look at the few colleges with early admission programs ( knocks a year off my son’s program and he has a place held for him in vet school if he keeps his grades up). It is EXPENSIVE no matter what. Get all the hours with animals he can. In junior or sr year shadow veterinarians. That will tell if he really wants to be a vet or not. VERY important. Hours with animals is a big thing.

@carachel2 - those are all excellent talking points and very realistic considerations…we were mainly concerned with launching the first kid but realizing that the second kid isn’t far behind!

He is looking toward working after graduation so a school that has good connections in the industry is important. He is open to private/public and is leaning toward a campus that’s defined but has access to the city. He will be taking the SAT in May, subject tests and the ACT in June.

I have an e-mail into the counselor to find out about the unweighted GPA and her recommendations.

You can calculate unweighted GPA yourself from the report cards and transcript.

Type EFC formula 2019 into your browser’s search bar, and you will get link to the PDF of this years FAFSA formula. Print that out and work your numbers on paper to see which factors affect your family’s FAFSA EFC. https://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/071017EFCFormulaGuide1819.pdf

From your estimate above of how much you think you can pay each year, my guess is that the only federal money your kid will qualify for are unsubsidized student loans.

@ucbalumnus - Busy week for the counselors as we just selected courses for next year. In the mean time, how do I calculate the unweighted GPA? I have all of the exact number grades that he received for each quartile, semester and final grade. Thank you!

For Unweighted GPA - Use Final Grades - A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1. Multiply Grade Value x number of credits or weight. Add. Divide by total number of credits or weight.

If you use a %age grade then the A cut off could be 90% or 93% (those are the most common).

How did he do on PSAT? If he did well that is an indication that he’ll do well on SAT. If not, he can prep. With good SAT/ACT scores and grade there are some schools that have automatic merit scholarships. University of Alabama, Oklahoma and Kentucky come to mind, but there are others. Then there are other schools that have competitive merit $.

Ask the counselor about access to Naviance. January of junior year is a typical time to start working with counselor on the college process.

A book about college admissions will present a comprehensive and structured approach to college admissions. The forum is great for answers to specific questions but it is going to be hit or miss as to whether topics that matter get covered; if you don’t know to ask about something then you’re at the mercy of luck whether someone else brings it up or not.

One book I recommend is “Admission Matters”; there are many other good ones out there.

@MA2012 - I don’t recall the exact score but somewhere in the mid to high 1300’s. For some reason, he didn’t see the value of that particular test and ended up not answering a bunch of questions. He’s preparing as much as he can now for the May test. Keeping my fingers crossed! Will also sit down and take a long hard look and figure out our EFC this weekend as it seems like that is how it all starts.

I figured out his unweighted GPA and it’s a 4.0. Perhaps it should be lower since some of the A’s are not high A’s.

Really appreciate everyone taking the time to post your helpful comments!!

If every grade on his record is an A, then unweighted GPA is 4.0.

@3bound getting the finances in order early is a big help. Merit money might be hard to pin down until he gets SAT score back, but it will give you a good starting point. Being open that finances are a factor in the process is helpful to your son too. You will see a lot of posts here in March/April saying kid got in - how do we pay for it? Which is really too bad for everyone.

Agree with #31 that you should know the price limit and tell him what it is before he starts making his application list.