<p>How do I help my S through the process of college selection? He has the credentials for an elite school but my concern is his personality.</p>
<p>Tell us more about your son. What grade is he in, and what has he said or demonstrated is his desire for his future? Does he have a strong passion to attend an elite school? Does he have any passion at all for his future past hs graduation? </p>
<p>The great news is that colleges want a well-rounded class, and they need all kinds of kids. </p>
<p>Is your concern about the PROCESS of applications/college visits/interviews? As in, will my kid be willing to OWN the process, or will he do nothing and wait for you to generate all the details?</p>
<p>Or are you concerned that, once he is in communication with the prospective colleges, his abilities and intelligence won’t shine through because of his personality?</p>
<p>What parts of his personality concern you? Many students have the credentials for elite schools, you have to keep in mind that all that buys you is a lottery ticket.</p>
<p>I would think the first thing is to have some low-stress talks with your son about what he’s interested in and where he sees himself going with it. Now is the time to start visiting campuses to see what sort of places he likes - big rowdy schools? small, out of the way LACs? etc. If he’s a low key sort, a highly competitive environment might not be for him, so it’s important to fit his personality as well as his academic abilities.</p>
<p>S is a junior. He talks about attending an elite school. He can’t stand HS. Does very well at HS. He has friends, though none are close. Has leadership roles, multi-sport varsity athlete. He is very involved. In my opinion he lacks the passion I’m afraid he will need at that level. Owning the process, that’s would be my concern.</p>
<p>@collegeshopping, we have continually made him aware of the crap shoot that is elite admissions. He has three safeties in mind, just waiting on spring break to visit the last two.
@sylvan, that is our next step and hopefully some visits will start to give him ownership.</p>
<p>Owning the process of admissions? If that is what you are referring to, then he will pave his path with his level of dedication. In that situation you have to be careful to let him steer the sled. You can push a little bit but he has to make the choices. Ask him open ended questions, such as “we need to tour this summer, are there a few you have in mind? Do you want to go one before the other, etc” Let him be the leader in the process. Have him find out what time the tours are, etc. It will show you where his mind is. Boys are different, because many just want the process to happen. You can be more firm about it if he drags his feet. Just say between June XX and June XX we are going on a road trip. Please give a list by tomorrow night of where you want to go. Give him a deadline you can live with and gently remind him but don’t nag him. Just be the tag on the back of the t-shirt, gently irritating but not an all out assault. Also make sure he loves a financial and academic safety. And I mean really love it.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the college research aspect, and my daughter had no interest in graduation retention rates, average ACT scores at a school, etc. So I took ownership with her permission to run the background process. </p>
<p>She had a geographic area she was wanting to stay within, and she wanted her science major, not too large of an LAC. Those were the parameters I used to research colleges that fit her need for lots of pretty, green spaces on a campus she could walk or bike around.</p>
<p>I made her communicate directly with the schools to register for campus visits, speak with the admissions reps at college fairs, and stay on top of admissions requirements to make sure recommendation letters and test scores had arrived, etc. And she took the lead in all face to face conversations when we visited a campus.</p>
<p>D is a shy person, and we had to write out potential questions to ask at college fair. I made her walk up by herself to initiate contact at each booth. I made her ask one or two specific questions at each booth. It was a growing experience for her, and helped pave the way for conversations and interviews at the schools.</p>
<p>We talked after each visit, me asking her pointed questions about what she liked/didn’t like. She made all decisions about whether or not to keep a college on her list. Merit aid was crucial for our family, so sometimes that knocked a school off our list.</p>
<p>We worked together on deadlines, oh so many deadlines. Do not have any advice for avoiding last minute deadlines, but sure wish I did. She even dropped some scholarship/honors program/colleges from her list when she got overwhelmed senior year. I had to let her own that, and it ended up turning out okay.</p>
<p>We did not consider any elite schools, so can’t give any advice specific to that level of intense competition. We looked to the slightly lower tier schools where D could be the big fish in their smaller pond.</p>
<p>Also, there are schools in-between “elite” and safeties. Has he explored what some would call “likely” schools? These would be fairly selective schools, but not the tippy-top, where he would have a good chance of admission. This might include good state universities (not necessarily flagship) and private colleges where students with high stats might expect to receive some financial incentive to attend. If your son hasn’t included a wide range of schools on his list, get him a copy of the Fiske guide or a similar book and have him add a few schools that he can get excited about that are more mid-range. I wouldn’t want my kid to only have the choice of “elite” or “safety.”</p>
<p>My high school junior daughter is not involved in her college selection. She loves high school and her friends and her life in general and isn’t ready to even think about moving on. She keeps telling her friends, “My mom’s going to pick my college.” The problem is that I don’t really care where she goes to college. I want us to be able to afford it (need lots of merit money) and I want her to be happy. Beyond that, I have preferences but I don’t have strong feelings. </p>
<p>I am trying to narrow things down for her. She has two possible majors that interest her. One pretty much every school has, but the other is more specialized and so I’m only focusing on schools that have programs in that area. And while that’s allowed me to narrow the focus, I could really use some more feedback. She could go to Alabama for free, but does she want to be so far away from home? She doesn’t know. I know that personally I’d rather have her closer so that’s where I’m keeping my focus unless and until she gets an opinion otherwise. We looked at nearby St. Joe’s and Drexel - she tells me she could go to either one of them “if she had to.” The only school we’ve toured that she really hasn’t liked at all was Scranton. Here’s what I’ve gleaned by little comments she’s made - she prefers a campus like St. Joe’s over the completely urban Drexel, but she loved Drexel’s co-op program. </p>
<p>Anyway, that’s given me some hints of how to proceed. My daughter is a naturally motivated kid. I’m just doing the initial leg work with the view that she’ll take over when she starts to care or when I finally hit on one that she truly likes. If your son is a varsity athlete with leadership positions so he doesn’t sound unmotivated. I’d bet the college selection process will kick in for him too.</p>
<p>@2015pop: You are fortunate that your son is engaged enough to make college visits – that wasn’t true of our son, who made no college visits prior to being admitted. (He had visited many colleges in connection with being a competitive debater in high school, but never visited one as part of his college search.) You may find, however, that you will continue to take the lead especially if your son is deeply involved in athletics and other activities. I would reinforce moonchild’s comment above – your son needs an array of colleges distributed along the “degree of difficulty” of admissions continuum. Also, the term “elite” is elastic: for your son does it include only large universities? Must those have athletic programs (is your son interested in competing in college)? Or does the term “elite” also include outstanding small liberal arts colleges (some of which have very competitive, perhaps D2 or D3 athletics).</p>
<p>How interested is he in playing sports in college? Are club sports a big draw? Does the weather matter?</p>
<p>You guys are great! Thanks for the input.
@halfemptypockets: we are in similar boat as far as needing financial aid. I hope he will take over when one school peaks his interest.
@mackinaw: he does have the match schools. It will just come down to merit/need based aid with those schools.
@mackinaw and Tempemom: he might be able to play one sport at a non D1 level. Not sure of his interest level.
I suppose his success,or lack there of, this year will decide most of that question
@TempeMom: he would most certainly be interested in club sports if varsity does pan out for whatever reason.</p>
<p>@2015pop - I did ALL the initial leg work for my son. As a junior, he was very overwhelmed with the entire process He also was interested very large geographic areas. I don’t think it is unusual for kids at this stage to not be fully engaged yet. My son had good credentials and very few schools were out of the running. DS also had multiple career paths that were very different that he was considering. </p>
<p>I spoon feed him the highly ranked LACs with a more collaborative vibe (Pomona/Claremonts; Haverford) as well as big state schools with honors colleges that had strong support network. </p>
<p>We also needed merit money, so he applied to a number of schools. Some of the smaller schools where he could earn high merit just did not have enough of a peer group. </p>
<p>Take an honest look at his work ethic, the amount of time he spends on ECs and the amount he NEEDS for ECs. My kid was better emotionally when he lived a more “well balanced” life. Even if he did not realize this, we did, and knew he needed to be some where with the time to do outside activities.</p>
<p>Like powercropper, I ran most of the background stuff – tracking deadlines, weeding out schools that did not give merit and our finances would not yield enough in grants, listing “unique” clubs/sports. This gave DS an Excel at a glance sheet of 40 or so schools. I broke out which were financial safeties; which were academic safeties. After that, he narrowed it down. Once narrowed, he could more easily see what “checks” a school needed to appeal to him and was then able to add a few of his own while weeding out many others on the list.</p>
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<p>Make sure that he knows the cost constraints so that he won’t be disappointed at getting a bunch of unaffordable acceptances. The safeties especially need to be certain for affordability as well as admissions.</p>
<p>If need-based financial aid is not sufficient (check net price calculators at college web sites), you and he may want to look at some merit scholarship lists:
<a href=“Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums; (automatic for stats, potential safeties)
<a href=“Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums; (competitive)
<a href=“NMF Scholarships: An Updated Compilation - #833 by BobWallace - National Merit Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>NMF Scholarships: An Updated Compilation - #833 by BobWallace - National Merit Scholarships - College Confidential Forums; (if National Merit)</p>
<p>ACT or SAT scores?</p>
<p>Perhaps a few college visits will excite him. My son is a junior as well and only became interested when we visited a college he really liked.</p>
<p>I too, have a daughter who does very well in school but is happy for me to do background research on colleges. Right now I am coming up with a list of potentials and we will visit them soon. She is already very interested in what I think her best match is. She just took the SATs so we will see what her scores are soon and confirm that she would be likely there.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus-we will start having him run the npc with us beside him. We have always pointed out and talked about budgets for college but I think having him get his hands in it as we’ll might help. Also, we’ve been looking at bob’s posts for a while now, what a wonderful resource.
@mnm111-he has the scores for any school he wants, as well as NMF. Admission to some of those schools though will be an entirely different obstacle. We have been upfront with him on that as well.
@bopper-good luck with the sat. It is a relief to get that out of the way.</p>