I would get on the phone with her guidance counselor, explain her behavior and your concerns, and ask that person to meet with her, ask about her plans, and report back to you.
Even if she takes the gap year, it might be beneficial to get her to apply somewhere this year (state schools?) and defer enrollment. If teacher recommendations are required, it’s better to have them done while they still remember her. Unless it is a fairly small high school, she just isn’t going to be a priority next year when they are focused on a whole new class of students. If she changes her mind about the school during her gap year, she can always apply somewhere else, and her teachers will still have her LOR on their computers, etc.
Lots of interesting advice. OP’s posts have a lot of what parents want, and not too much of what child wants (although I get that child is apparently undecided about that)
For the sake of household sanity, I would say “next weekend, we are going to sit down and finish the application for This Safety School so you will have a college choice after graduation and I can feel better. You still aren’t obligated to go” Then I’d buy chips and soda, do the application with you in the house to answer questions, and SHUT UP already.
Millions of kids apply to one school with a sloppy essay. They go on to lead fine lives. Millions of kids obssess, apply 8 places, hire a consultant, and drop out their sophomore year. And THEY go on to lead fine lives. The first lesson of parenting adults (and new-growth adults) is that you can’t know every outcome of decisions you don’t get to make for them ---- but I guarantee that you will not like a bunch of the decisions. And that’s how it is. Always cop to what you are feeling and why, and then we have to shut up. (I myself am still mastering that last part)
Two scenarios: Typical kid and a kid with undiagnosed social anxiety or other issue
Typical kid
Remember when you bought your first house? What a process! You had to figure out what you wanted in a house…probably had to visit some to see what is a must have and what is a nice to have. You had to figure out how to finance it. REmember how daunting that is? Now imagine having to do that as a 17 year old. Even as an adult you had a real estate agent that would help…so help your child.
So I think the first thing to do is ask your child: Do you want to go to college next year?
If no, ask them what they would like to do.
IF yes, ask them if they would like you to help them.
First, figure out how much you can afford to pay per year.
Next ask them about what they imagine their ideal college is like…Is it cheering on a big football team? Having late night philosophical conversations? Doing research in a lab?
Then ask them what their fears are about college. Trying to keep up this level of ECs? Feeling like they are at the bottom of the class? Then tell them that they can start from ground zero at college and not do anything EC-wise ift they don’t want to…and that they don’t have to pick the most competitive schools.
Ask about how far away from home they want to be, what major they are thinking about if any, if rural/urban/suburban is appealing (or unappealing to them).
Then based on that info, using CC or College Board search, go see a couple of colleges at the end of the spectrum…your state U, and a smaller one.
Have them google and read “Hacking the College essay 2017” for very good ideas on writing a common app essay.
Kid with some issues
If you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, perhaps your child has a mental health issue that needs to be dealt with.
Social Anxiety and/or Depression come to mind. Look up the symptoms and see if being evaluated by a doctor seems like a good idea.
My DD has social anxiety and I (at her request), helped her through the college process. I took what she wanted in a college and found some. We visited. The best value was a good state college…she kept comparing everything to that…so I asked her if she would just like to apply ED (we could afford it). She did and she got in.
I know she would have a hard time making a decision if she got into a bunch so we just avoided that up front.
My D has anxiety and she has a hard time choosing cereal in the aisle at the grocery store. So it’s really hard for me to relate to her sometimes! I have to work hard not to get frustrated with her. I’ve learned to just let her talk things through without a lot of input from me.
I had this experience with my youngest and it was painful. All the kids I knew were busy and engaged in their college searches and mine seemed to be unclear about what she wanted and resistant to any attempts to get her to talk about it. As the process continued, she would say only that she was working on her essays. She managed to eke out applications to an EA school and the state schools. The other schools? Still working on the essays and no communication beyond that. November came and same. December came…no change. She was admitted to the early school and that was it. I urged her to put in applications to other schools so that she would have a choice in the spring but she simply would not. It worked out. She has loved her college years. She has no regrets at all.
My advice is similar to what I have read above but I want to emphasize it. Be there for her, make sure she knows you are a haven and support, but do not push her to provide information. Ask her to reach out when she wants your help. and assure her that you will not add pressure. There’s enough highly charged emotion around her and she knows what she needs to do. It’s really important not to be an additional source of stress even if she comes to you at the very last minute in tears and begging for help.
Believe me, I understand how hard that is. We had our worst Thanksgiving ever that year. I lost it completely and ended up sentencing the daughter to stay home and finish the essays she was “working on” ("just get them done I shouted/screamed.) I was beside myself that she wasn’t going to get her applications in on time. In retrospect, I realize that if she hadn’t gotten them in, that would have signaled a big old red flag and that she would have been telling us in a very obvious way that she was not ready to go away to college. There were options. She could have worked, traveled, volunteered. It could have been a life changing path that would have had equal or better value than the more traditional path she’s followed. That college application year is a difficult and stressful process for all but you, the parent, need not to get sucked into it. You are her rock.
My other piece of advice is to recognize the pattern and accept that you may run into it at various points along her path. It is really hard as a parent when you want to coach your child through what seems to be the right path but when your stubborn and independent child has ideas of her own and they both don’t line up with yours and also seem as if they are not in her best interest. LOL Mine is a senior in college and has a very good job offer for post-grad employment. Others in her position are interviewing elsewhere to make sure they explore all options. Mine is, in a move back to what we witnessed her senior year of high school, dragging her feet, and looking only at what we, the parents, regard as risky ventures. Any attempt to discuss this leads to her interpreting it as stress and judgment and shutting down. Ok, I’m a little bit wiser than I was back then.
Good luck to you and your daughter. It will all work out! I promise.
I’m not sure if this was made clear by previous posters. People are asking about NMF because that translates into big merit money – full tuition plus – for incoming freshmen at certain schools.
Application deadlines can come early (October & November) for some big scholarships. It’s important to watch those scholarship deadlines.
IF your student is NMF, and IF you need the big merit scholarships, and IF your student takes a gap year, it’s important to stay college-class free. The student will need to be a freshman, with no college classes (say, at community college).
The pressure cooker can turn up to “sky high” when parents get upset about the amount of money being spent versus the perception of the student’s interest and/or effort. If we (parents) pay for X school, you had better XYZ (love very minute of it, get great grades, nail down a great major that leads to a great career). Parent expectations --spoken or not–can overwhelm some kids & shut them down.
Even with a dedicated college counselor at her HS to help through most of the process, and even with a lot of her self-worth being wrapped up in doing well academically, our youngest got very anxious during the college search & application season.
Just sharing my own experience FWIW… My kid doesn’t have the uber high stats like OP situation, but has reasonably high scores, and has been similarly disengaged with the whole process. I was becoming frustrated and worried. Then, following some advice here on CC, I recently encouraged an application to a rolling admission school that has an honors college, just for practice. It was very easy for him to fill out on his own, no essay or LOR required. It was a WUE school with a low application fee, which kept it a low stakes exercise. Less than 24 hours later he was accepted.
I was surprised how happy it made him. It really seemed to do the trick for him because then he started reading about that school and it allowed him to start thinking about whether it would actually be a good fit, and why or why not, and what other schools might be a better fit. He now appears to be getting some momentum, though not with a process I would have preferred (spreadsheets, etc) and not with schools I was keen on. But I am so relieved he is on a path at all, and I am learning a lot about him through his choices.
We have had a somewhat similar situation. Generally, we see more action after our senior talks with the school counselor and friends than from anything I say.
However, there was that one Saturday afternoon when I made our senior sit down with me in the kitchen and hash through a long list of possible schools to get at least a few definites for the early round. We pulled up websites together and looked at maps. It took hours. Senior opened a Common App account in my presence. Still, the next five weeks will probably be very productive…for graying hair.
@daisychayn We were also surprised at how much of an impact the early acceptance to the rolling admission safety had on our daughter. Took a lot of the pressure off the long wait for the other schools to know she was in at an honors college with a full tuition scholarship. OP - This may be a great strategy for your child as those applications can be super easy to submit.
I have always told my children you have 3 choices once you graduate HS. Go to college. Go into the Armed Forces. Get started in a trade.(I respect the trades as much of my family and wife’s family came from trades) I will support them while doing that. Anything else they will have to support themselves out of my house. Sounds harsh, but you need a plan. A plan is not working as a cashier at Target while paying no rent or paying for food.
For a high stat kid, getting a first acceptance from an Honors College with merits should be a required first step. After that, let chips fall where they will because in the worst scenario, you are getting a very good college education for almost free.
