Kids who are comfortable in high school, especially if they have grown into roles they have aspired to, may not be excited about the end of high school and may be unenthusiastic about the change college will bring. A high school principal told me that every year, they had at least one kid who managed to not complete their college apps for this reason.
Kids also get burned out, and parental nudging-- understandable - just makes them resist, actively or in your son’s case, passively.
Can you have the conversation with him about the realities of the situation in terms of timing and finances and get his input on what he is feeling about it and how he’d like to move forward? Ask him how he feels about you taking the lead. It may be relief.
Maybe you want to visit Pitt and PSU to compare big urban and big rural, then hit a LAC or two known for merit to see if a smaller school appeals more. You may want to emphasize that now is when you create options by applying-- he won’t have to make a decision until spring.
As you can see from all these replies, yours is not an uncommon problem. Our son was somewhat like yours, and in the end I think it is a good thing his high school life was not overly-focused on “getting into a good college.” As your son is a rising senior, you don’t have much time, but where we started was with a very simple set of questions, to try and drag out some personal preferences - small vs. large, urban vs. rural, how far from home, big-time sports, core curriculum or not, Greek life, etc. Then we visited some big schools, small schools, etc. Once we started visiting actual places, it became clear that our son did like some better than others. Against all my expectations, he ended up picking a Midwest LAC that offered him a very generous merit award, and he has been extremely happy there. We did insist that he apply to a couple of Early Action schools, and it was a great relief to have a couple of offers in hand by Thanksgiving. He ultimately selected one of his RD schools, but I recall he was very excited when his first EA offer rolled in with a nice merit scholarship attached - it was a big confidence builder.
It is an overwhelming process. Just dropped my D22 off at her college on Monday. All of junior year and into summer she was thinking about other colleges, but about 2 weeks after high school started back her senior year she said she was interested in a LAC about 3.5 hrs away from us and that’s where she ended up. My advice would be
Go on one or two college tours close to home. Take a friend. Make it fun. Have lunch, etc. If he doesn’t balk too much after the first one, do a second one that is big if the first was small or vice-versa.
Be patient. He will probably get a little more invested when his peers start talking about college at school and when the guidance counselor starts talking about it too.
You might consider doing a little research about what you can afford (that is not something he can make a decision about) and schools that seem to have programs he could potentially be interested in. Make a spread sheet in Google Drive and share it with him. Note any important deadlines and then tell him to investigate the schools online on his own (unless he wants you to watch the videos, etc, with him). Basically set him up with a list of schools to do a deeper dive on. If you narrow his choices down to 10 that is a lot less overwhelming than the 3000+ colleges and universities in the US.
My bet is he will become more invested in it when people at school are too. Having a list to start off with will be a help to him when he is ready to dive in.
Apply to Pitt early for merit. Temple would probably have the best offer but the campus and Philly isn’t for everyone.
WVU would probably be affordable. Some smaller schools like W&J, Allegheny or Juniata might give enough merit to make it comparable to Pitt or PSU. Maybe a smaller school with more attention would work better?
Sooner or later he has to step up. Maybe apathy is a sign he’s not ready?
I am sure it must make sense for residents, but for the rest of us Pennsylvania’s higher education system seems convoluted and expensive. No wonder your son is confused.
I basically set up two tours close to home and just told DS23 he was going on them even if they were schools he wasn’t interested in. One was a big school in the city and the other was a smaller school in a smaller city. I figured it would at least give him a starting point and we could have discussions about what he liked and didn’t like at each school. It didn’t exactly work out that way, but it was a good place to start. I think once he learned about what information he could get on a college tour he was more willing to schedule some visits on his own.
As he doesn’t seem invested in anything currently, I’d try to do some research and provide him a list of schools where he’d likely get a lot of merit as a starting point.
I think you hear a lot on CC from parents of students applying to schools with very low admission rates and thus there is a lot of angst about the time put into applications. Truthfully, once a student takes a bit of time to get started it’s not a process that’s going to take months. There are a few things he needs to take care of right away like letters of recommendation and checking with guidance on other deadlines. Have him do that and then back off. There’s been lots of kids that have very successfully sent in their applications at the last possible moment. It’s way more painful for us than it is for them.
My kids did most of their tours in fall of senior year, and submitted applications in late December! But they each only applied to 4 schools. Kids are applying to so many schools these days and end up with a burdensome number of essays. You can back off for months, honestly, if he only applies to a few schools! Maybe get one in-state application in, or one of his choice that you can afford.
Thank you, OP, for starting this thread, and thanks to everyone else who has chimed in with their experiences. I also have a senior son, with high gpa and test scores, who is showing no interest in the college application process at all. We have visited a couple of schools, which he described as “tedious,” so no inspiration gleaned there. He’s been back in school for several weeks already, and doesn’t seem to be feeling any college-related positive peer pressure either. He’s mentioned taking a gap year to work, but we would like him to apply this year and defer enrollment to do that, rather than wait another year to apply. The school has a college planning night in the next few weeks, so we’ve tabled discussion of the future until after that. I keep telling myself it will all work out, as it did for D21, but I never expected S23 to be so resistant to this process. It’s very helpful to hear others’ stories and suggestions!
I think he’s pretty scared about the future (though he will not acknowledge it). We are a very therapy-friendly family, I have suggested it many times to him. No dice! So stubborn. I finally got through to him last night a bit, about getting his ish together. He doesn’t like to ask for help – he is about 98% independent and self-governing when it comes to school and schoolwork, so I think this might be a tough adjustment for him. But we’ll get there.
Sort of. The net price calculator was news to me this week and so I did a bunch of research with that which was eye-opening. We’re definitely going to be on the hunt for merit aid.
Yes, we have several EA schools on our list, plus Pitt which is rolling. I can see how it would be encouraging AND a relief to get those early results.
I do need to line up a school tour nearby, even if it ends up not making our list. I hope that actually being on a campus and seeing the dorms and dining hall and stuff actually makes an impact.
Thanks for those suggestions – we already told him he has to apply to Pitt or Penn State simply for comparison, even if they aren’t first choices for him. UMass is on the list, as are UMd, Delaware, and maybe U of Alabama given their record for giving merit aid.
Our CC here is actually quite good (I go to the nursing school) and I really wouldn’t object if he wanted to take some core classes and then transfer - he is radically opposed, though he doesn’t quite know what he wants instead…we’ll figure it out!
Yes! Yesterday I discussed breaking the process down a bit with him. He had already worked on the Common App right at the beginning of the summer, but I suspect things are starting to feel real now (ie, scary).
I showed him some deadlines for EA schools and told him to simply follow up on his letters of rec today and that’s it. Baby steps.
My daughter, who told me in middle school that nothing was going to keep her from her going-away-to-college experience suddenly became paralyzed when the time arrived. I was really worried about her lack of interest.
I think part of it stemmed from possibly having undiagnosed ADHD - she could never get started on things that were uninteresting and tedious to her. I think she also was worried about what she thought WE wanted for her so just declined to offer any opinions of her own. She did willingly go to college visits, but would not study for standardized tests or research schools or majors, etc. ALL she told us was that she wanted a small school.
Things were getting down to the wire, when she received an email from a women’s college. She showed it to me and told me it look interesting. I had her fill out the recruiting form for her sport, and she heard back from the coach almost immediately. He told her she was his number 1 slot in admissions for her position. I asked her, does he know you’re 5’0”? Or that your travel team was very mediocre? Yep! The rest was history (after we also found out it would cost roughly the same as our state flagship). She ended up only playing her sport for two years due to an injury, but that ended up being a positive as she graduated with honors in her major. She recently asked one of her favorite professors to write a letter of recommendation for her and she sent it to me to read. I was almost in tears reading what this professional woman had to say about my daughter. She captured everything I knew about her but didn’t have the talent to express - after only teaching her for a couple of courses and acting as her thesis advisor. When CC folks tout the advantages of LACs, believe them.
There are some kids who can function anywhere and be happy. I was one of those people out of necessity. My daughter is not, and I’m so glad she finally found the place for her. I hope the OPs son takes some time to visit and research some schools to find a place where he can thrive also.