<p>What worked for us:
–visiting a lot of schools with each son, varying widely as to size/location/selectivity.</p>
<p>–we chose the schools to visit based on what they offered of interest to each son–what programs/majors/community/environment</p>
<p>–early in sophomore year we sat down with each boy to start planning testing, curriculum in the high school, etc. Especially important for high school athletes–so many competitions are on Saturday mornings, so test dates need to be planned for so as not to conflict with competition season.</p>
<p>–for athletes in team sports (school or club teams): talk to the coaches early–like sophomore year. They aren’t responsible for knowing the ins and outs of college applications, they are responsible for fielding teams. My son’s club soccer coach appreciated the heads up. He cooperated by calendaring test dates, and trying to choose appropriate out of town tournaments that did not conflict, and to schedule home league games for later in the afternoon instead of in the morning. He also disseminated all of this information to all team parents–very helpful to getting all families on the same page. However, he also expected cooperation back from the families–for example, he sent out a reminder 6 months in advance that students should not plan on a certain date for tests, because the team was going to be out of town at national championships.</p>
<p>–all 3 boys applied to some early, rolling admissions schools. In fact, all 3 applied to Indiana in August–and all 3 had a college acceptance, to the honors program, in September. It made the rest of application season so much easier–they each knew they were going to college, at a place they liked a lot even if not first choice, which offered anything they wanted.</p>
<p>–have students work on their RD applications as well as their ED/EA applications early in application season. Sometimes sending out applications to rolling or safety schools is good practice in honing the “voice” of the applications to the student’s dream schools. For this reason, I made both of my boys who chose to apply to an ED school send in three applications to other schools before or with their ED application. It also took some of the pressure off a situation that could have arisen if they did not get in to their first choice.</p>
<p>–like many here have advised, we had him choose an “adult” email address that he used for all college communications.</p>
<p>–we set up a file folder for each college, where we kept everything for that school. The folder went with us on each college trip. on the folder itself, we kept a list of what was due when, the date sent to the school, and the date acknowledged by the school.</p>
<p>–we kept a large calendar on which we kept all due dates–and reminder dates a week in advance! We crossed things off as they were sent in.</p>
<p>–we always talked positively about all schools on the list. We talked about what we liked about each college. We did not want our sons to feel that any school was the “last” choice because we did not know what the available choices were going to be. Our philosophy was that any school applied to was a good choice, or he would not have applied.</p>