He will not be trying to get into any elite colleges. However due to the fact he could qualify for tuition exchange which can be very competitive, he has to stay on top of his game. He’s not dumb but he’s being freshman boy lazy and not putting in the best effort therefore not at a 4.0 plus (which I don’t ever expect though). My standards are a bit low (or more realistic to be honest.)
@2plustrio, yeah, TE can be hard to get. You might ought to keep an eye on places with guaranteed-by-stats merit aid too, then—you can find that at lots of excellent colleges (often as a way to entice OOS students to come to public universities especially in the South and Plains, though I expect it to start emerging in the Northeast as high school graduate levels there continue to crater).
D23 tells me she’s has no idea what college or type of college interests her. She been on the campuses of a few - we have a State College campus in our town that she’s grown up on and she’s been to camps and activities at a few others. We’ve only done one actual tour though - I had her do a tour at Washington Univ St Louis while we were in St Louis this summer (we live in the northeast).
There is a lot of emphasis at her high school (in life in general?) about picking a college based on what you want to DO. And at 15, she doesn’t know yet what she wants, so she feels stuck and unable to think about college.
She enjoys writing but is concerned that making a living as a writer is too tenuous. She also enjoys acting, but that seems even more difficult to make a living doing. She is very involved in dance right now but is certain thats not a future career option for her. She enjoys music and plays multiple instruments but doesn’t feel that she has the musical ability to pursue that. She enjoys history and classic literature (she’s currently doing a Shakespeare 2020 challenge right now, trying to read all of the Bard’s works this year. She’s currently reading Henry VI part 3). I could see her as a High School teacher or College Professor but she’s unsure about that.
I’m of the opinion that it’s OK if you go to college to become an educated citizen and that you’ll find your passion along the way, and I’m fine paying a reasonable amount for that. I didn’t even know my eventual career existed until I was already in college so I have no idea how I would have chosen a college based on that. But she is fixated on needing to find a school that focuses her towards a career. So, I plan to fit in as many college visits as we can to different types of schools to see what sparks her interest. We are fortunate to be withing 2-3 hours driving distance of several dozen schools
I suspect she’ll end up at a small Liberal Arts College but we’ll see.
Can I just mention that I hate this aspect of TE.
D23, in the past, has only really talked about going to NC State. Now this was when she was a hard core gymnast (she attended many gymnastics camps there) and she was going to be a Vet. NC State has college gymnastics and is one of the top Vet schools so she was going to be a college gymnast and a Vet. Now, she is no longer a gymnast and may or may not want to be a Vet. We have discussed Va Tech since it is in-state and has a very good Vet school. Though she may be backing away from being a Vet, but like many is not sure what she wants to do instead. She will have to make at least an initial direction decision by this time next year. She will be applying to our 11th and 12th grade regional STEM Governor’s School which requires you to choose a study track of engineering, bio/chem, or computational sciences.
On another note, she just finished the 1st semester last week and was very successful academically. Her school releases class rank for each class every semester and she was ranked 1/501. She was helped by all the (weighted) honors classes she brought in from middle school and the AP classes she is taking this semester. She has adjusted well coming from a small private middle school going to a large public HS. Our main concerns were more social and extra curricular since before this year she was pretty much all gymnastics all the time. She joined the all girls show choir, volunteered to be stage crew for the mixed traveling show choir, got a part in the spring drama musical, some SCA involvement, and outside of school is doing 3hrs a week of Aerial Silks. She did go to Homecoming and seems to be making friends. So, we are very happy for her.
The only schools our DS23 has seen are our Big State U., where his cousin went, Air Force Acad. to visit his sister and Boston College, where his brother went. He asked about Iowa, where his grandmother went. It’s early. We told him to focus on his schoolwork and having some fun with his friends in H.S. It’s hard to point to certain schools without a GPA and a standardized test score. Maybe I will show him some campuses after his sophomore year.
I would say D23 is very excited by the idea of college, largely because her big sister is having such a tremendous experience (D23 loves going up to visit D17 at school - even if it’s just to move in or out she’ll hitch along for the 7 hour ride!)
My girls are quite different in some ways though, and while Hamilton has been absolutely perfect for D17 who was an undecided major going into college and was only ever really interested in LACs, I have the strong suspicion that D23 is going to want either a more specifically focused tech school or a larger school with a major tech focus as she has been intensely interested in computers since she was in diapers. But she’s just halfway through her freshman year of HS, so I don’t at all discount the possibility that something else will emerge that changes her course. We shall see!
Yeah. I read what all these other kids have done and the grades they get and I know my son’s chance of TE is slim to none.
@Starski WashU is a wonderful school. My D16 is there now and completely fell in love with it when we visited during her spring break of junior year.
Fortunately, we live near one of the LACs that has a special 3+2 engineering program agreement with WashU. Having that nearby just gives one additional option for S23 in the event he wants to continue getting into the engineering field. If his big sister sticks around the STL area for medical school, then it would be nice for S23 to have her around (at least in the same town) for guidance.
@thermom That’s awesome your D23 likes to visit her older sister at school. Our S23 seems like he’s neutral. Yes, I’ll go if you make me, but it’s ok if I stay home too. We always take him when we visit D16 at WashU because it’s just a few hours drive. Our D19 is at West Point. We’ve visited her a couple times already including going to the Army-Navy game. We left him at home each time. Fortunately, my family lives relatively close so they come to our house and stay the weekend with S23. I don’t want to waste the airfare for him to NY when he’s not going to get as much out of visiting his sister. I keep teasing him about how West Point would be a nice place to go to school and he’s totally against it.
I’m always so amazed at the kids who already know what they want to do with their lives at 14/15. My S23 is apparently a huge slacker and cannot commit to anything we mention might be a good fit for him. He is clueless. Has visited a few colleges with his sister D18 and says he could just go there but hasn’t mentioned anything specifically for himself. Taking the ACT this Saturday so we’ll see where he needs to work on things. The adventure continues.
@ASKMother my S21 doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, either…he happily goes to the schools we think are fits for him (and we discuss these schools with him and why we think they are good fits, so it’s not as if we’re just dragging him, but we really drove his list since his main opinions were things like “no football, no fraternities.” We do have schools on the list with both football and fraternities since, through discussion, we figured out that he more meant he didn’t want a school with a particular atmosphere/culture…so there aren’t any schools with huge Greek dominance or D1 football). He loves seeing schools and so far likes everything we mention or take him to…it will be interesting to see once we finish the visits whether he knocks any off the list or loves some more than others (though much of the final decision will be 1-financial and 2-a place where we think that with his particular ADHD/executive function/processing speed challenges he’ll find a major/workload/policies that allow him to succeed). So for now it’s working well for him that he is undecided and reasonably happy with what all that he’s seen - that keeps things flexible/easier - I hope - to ultimately find something that works.
I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life at 14/15, and I was wrong. so I think I may be influencing my kids to keep their options open!
I changed my major just weeks before starting college so I wont judge my kid who isnt totally sure yet at 14. 
S23 is all over the place with interests. He was thinking engineering, business or law. But hes also quite musical (hes very good on the flute and enjoys playing guitar at home), hes in choir and does the musicals. Therefore he wants a college with good electives in music production or opportunities for performing. Oh, and he says he might want to play football in college too (D2 or D3) because he plays for one of the top teams in our state (varsity was nationally ranked this year) and he sees kids now getting offers to play.
Time will tell where his path truly leads.
@ASKMother, it all depends on the kid. My D17 knew for half of ever what she wanted to do, though she’s ended up specializing in it in an unanticipated direction. My D19 is laser-focused on the academic goal she’s had for years. My D25, frighteningly enough, has had a very solid idea of what she wants to do with her like since about 3rd grade (when she first ran into the concept of existentialism via a webcomic she still isn’t old enough for—very long, very weird story).
All this makes my D23 feel like a slacker for having no idea. It’s hard to reassure her that (a) that makes her more normal than her sisters, and (b) it means she probably gets to have a broader range of experiences. But there’s a pretty intense drive to get college-bound kids to go preprofessional earlier than ever, and it creates stress for the ones who don’t go along with it.?
My S23 seems pretty focused on CS/Game design and fortunately the University where my wife and I work has a good program for that. He seems content to go there so we’ll see if he changes his mind in the future.
Our S23 has had no interest in tagging along on S21’s college visits. She complained the entire time during the one place she had to go. All we know for sure is that she wants the opposite of what her sister wants (no surprise – they’re very different kids!), so I’m starting S23’s list with pretty much everywhere S21 doesn’t like!
@kbm770 I thought d = daughter and s= son, so wouldn’t it be D21 and D23? Or maybe I am totally missing it! Both of my sons had zero interest in going on my daughter’s college visits - S23 didn’t even go on his brother’s visit either. S23 really hasn’t discussed or thought about where he wants to go - at this point, it’s going to be all about where he stands academically at the end of his junior year. I have thrown out a few schools but I get the :neutral: face. 
@JaceyK You’re absolutely right! Apologies for the mistake. You’d think with 2 of them, I’d have it figured out. 
Our S23 only went on one tour with S20, University of Denver. He declared that it was cool and maybe he would like to go there. His older brother was very annoyed. S20 is headed to DU, maybe a couple of year apart will change how he feels about his little brother joining him.
I think not knowing what you want is, by far, the norm at 14-15 years old. But, in my family, my brother and sister both focused in on one thing very early (like elementary school) so I felt like the weird one not having a direction. We’re now age 48-52 and my brother and sister do in fact still work in the fields they fell in love with in elementary school – nursing and computer programming. I’m in a field I didn’t know existed until I got to college (marketing research).
D23 takes after my siblings. She has been in love with nature pretty much since she could speak. Always happiest exploring the woods, soaked up any information about bugs, reptiles, plants. Loves doing experiments. At one point she said she wanted to be a zoologist but as she’s grown her interest shifted from animals to ecology/environmental science and she wants to study that, get a PhD, do research and save the planet When talking about her college aspirations people keep telling me, “she’s only a freshman, she’ll change her mind.” I really don’t think she will. When she was in elementary school we toured the insect lab at a college near my parents’ home and there was a photo on the wall of the lab’s director when she was a child, holding a butterfly net. I’ve always remembered that and have a couple photos of my ecology-loving little girl to frame for her to put in her future lab when that day comes.
My S23 actually picked up the list of TE schools I had printed out last year and flipped through it a bit. We live in the Midwest and he says he would like to “try a different climate” weather wise. While I prefer he stay within an 8 hour driving distance, I think he will purposefully choose a school farther away.
Does anyone have an more recent info about College of Idaho? The PEAK program seems like it could be a good fit for my wide variety of interests kiddo.