Tips for Parents of Juniors & Younger Students......(tips for students, too!)

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I thought that this would be a good time to start a thread where the veterans of the college app process could include tips for parents of junior & younger students. </p>

<p>The distressed posts are starting to appear again from parents and students who are just learning that their EFCs are unaffordable, or that their NCPs won't contribute or fill out paperwork required by some schools, or some other sad situation that might have been avoided with some foreknowledge. </p>

<p>I thought we could "cum" the list. So, copy paste the prior post's list and add your own. :)</p>

<p>If you want to expand upon an existing tip...insert your tip and number it with an alpha (see example after #2). If you're adding an acronym, just add it in the right place. :)</p>

<p>Junior Parents......Things to start doing or learning about NOW... :)</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Converse with your spouse and determine how much you can afford to contribute to your child's education. </p></li>
<li><p>If your child has a non-custodial parent (NCP), then find out how much he/she will contribute. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>a. Determine whether the NCP will be willing to fill out any requested NCP info (which may include the NCP's spouse's info.) </p>

<p>b. If the NCP refuses to contribute or will contribute far less than he can afford, then your child may need to avoid applying to schools that require NCP info.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Find out what your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) is. If that number is not affordable, then you need to develop a strategy with your child to get college costs covered. </p></li>
<li><p>If merit scholarships are desirable, start researching which schools offer them and what stats are required or likely required. Many schools don't give merit scholarships, and some publics don't give much to out-of-state schools.</p></li>
<li><p>If need-based Financial Aid (FA) is needed, then understand that most public schools do not meet need for out of state students. Most state schools cannot meet the need of their own resident students, therefore they can't meet need of the high costs for OOS students. Virginia and NC are exceptions. </p></li>
<li><p>Even if you think that your child won't need any financial aid, have your child apply to 2-3 financial safety schools that your child likes. Family financial situations can quickly change because of job loss, asset loss, or sudden divorce. </p></li>
<li><p>????</p></li>
</ol>

<hr>

<p>Some acronyms or "short-speak" to know....</p>

<p>COA - Cost of attendance (tuition, room, board, books, fees, travel, misc, personal expenses.)</p>

<p>CC - sometimes means College Confidential and sometimes means community college. It will be apparent within context.</p>

<p>EFC - Expected Family Contribution (the amount that FAFSA determines that your family should contribute that year for the student's education - whether it's affordable or not.) An EFC does not limit what you'll have to pay, since most colleges cannot meet need. Many colleges can only give small amounts of fed grants (which only go to low-income) and Stafford loans. </p>

<p>Need - Determined Need - Need isn't what a family says it needs; it's what FAFSA and/or CSS schools determine as your need. </p>

<p>FA - Financial Aid - Many think that FA is free money. It often is not free money. Low income students get small amounts in fed grants. Ivies and similar elites have huge endowments and meet 100% determined "need" with little or no loans. Some lesser private schools (which there aren't many) may give a decent grant (say $15k or so), but that might not cover all of determined need. Over 75% of FA packages contain student loans, so when a school says that they give FA to XX% of students, be aware that that aid may be mostly loans.</p>

<p>Merit money, Merit $, Merit Scholarships, or Academic Scholarships - some schools (not ivies) give scholarships based on test scores and GPAs. Some schools that give merit scholarships do not consider need, but some do (and will ask for a FAFSA).</p>

<p>Full-Freight - an expression that implies that you are paying for the full cost of attendance.</p>

<p>W/S or W-S - Work-Study - Some FA packages will include about $3k in Work-study. However, there's no guarantee that there will be a campus job to work the Work-study </p>

<p>Gap - Many FA packages contain gaps, since most schools can't meet need.</p>

<p>CSS - CSS PROFILE - this is what many private schools use (in addition to FAFSA) to determine what a family should contribute. It considers more sources of income such as NCPs).</p>

<p>NCP - Non Custodial Parent - FAFSA doesn't consider the income/assets of a NCP, but CSS does. CSS also looks at the income/assets of step-parents. CSS also considers assets that FAFSA doesn't.</p>

<p>OOS - Out of State - State publics charge OOS students a higher rate of tuition - sometimes called non-resident tuition or OOS tuition.</p>

<p>ED = early decision. Applicant gets application into the school by an early deadline and will hear result from the school by mid-December. Applicant agrees to matriculate at school if accepted (except for instances where the financial aid offered by the school isn't enough to make attendance possible). Decision to matriculate expected by the beginning of January.</p>

<p>RD = regular decision. Applicant meets a later deadline and will hear result in March/April. No need to make a decision until May 1.</p>

<p>By submitting RD applications, an applicant will have heard from all schools and have the different financial packages to compare one with another. Financial packages have been know to differ quite substantially in their loan vs. grant content and in the actual aid awarded--some parents have had $20K per year differences in packages.</p>

<p>MOST IMPORTANT regarding financial situations. Discuss WITH your kids any financial limitations there might be on their college choices.</p>

<p>Other things to do.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Start a word document when your kiddo is in ninth grade. Put all activities on it. Add to it each time something new comes up. Do freshman, soph, junior, senior years…that way, you’ll have the info when you need it.</p></li>
<li><p>Check your child’s transcript at the end of EACH school year to make sure it is correct.</p></li>
<li><p>Remember…YOUR CHILD is going to college, not you.</p></li>
<li><p>Craft a well thought out list of schools beginning with safety school(s) that are loved. Build from the safety UP.</p></li>
<li><p>DEADLINES…DO NOT MISS DEADLINES. Read each website carefully for THEIR deadlines. They vary wildly. DO NOT MISS DEADLINES…they are there for a reason (for admissions and financial aid purposes).</p></li>
<li><p>If your child is taking a course that has an SAT II…have them take the SAT II test as close to completion of the course as possible when the information is fresh.</p></li>
<li><p>Clarification on the above. Rolling admissions, early ACTION (EA) admissions AND Regular decision admissions have until the May 1 deadline for decisions. The only ones required to make a commitment prior to that time are Early DECISION admitted students.</p></li>
<li><p>Remember that the ACT and SAT are both accepted by most schools. Some students just do better with one over the other. If you’re not happy with your kid’s SAT score, have them take the ACT also.</p></li>
<li><p>If your child is a junior…have them request letters of reference BEFORE the end of the current school year. This gives the teachers ample time to complete them.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I’ll add to Thumper’s #1 - Keep track of the hours/week and weeks/year for those activities. Some schools will ask.</p>

<p>Extra-curricular Activity:
Streamline and do something unusual within the favorite EC. By sophomore or junior year, perhaps there are one or two EC’s that are passion areas in your child’s life. If so, find ways to deepen the commitment. Don’t just keep joining more clubs. If active in clubs, try to gain an office (e.g., treasurer or secretary) because the review of EC’s will consider “leadership” as well as “membership.” If the school doesn’t offer leadership opportunities, seek them outside of school. Take initiative; start a small community project outside of school. If shy in the school, try to position yourself as a mentee within a community activity that is delighted with the presence of a young person. </p>

<p>Do things because you genuinely love doing them, not to impress admission committees.</p>

<p>If you need to work a steady job, rather than join afterschool clubs, be proud and embrace it. Learn and observe what happens around you at the job. Keep a journal. You can write an essay about your work life that might trump all the afterschool clubs. Many have. </p>

<p>Traditional advice from GC’s is to keep work hours below 10 hrs/wk to avoid harming grades. If you need to work to help put gasoline in your parents’ car so they get to work, that’s one story. If you’re working l6 hours/week at a mall to afford designer shoes or ski weekends, quite another. Some employers have better attitudes toward student schedules than others; look for them. If they’ll let you call in a substitute during exam week (with ample notice), that’s indicative of a pro-student workplace.</p>

<p>If your child has his heart set on a “dream school,” find out now if that school is affordable and/or if your child has the stats for admittance. If not, gently let your child know and encourage him to visit other schools.</p>

<p>5. DEADLINES…DO NOT MISS DEADLINES. Read each website carefully for THEIR deadlines. They vary wildly. DO NOT MISS DEADLINES…they are there for a reason (for admissions and financial aid purposes).</p>

<p>adding… Also, some schools have scholarship application deadlines that are much earlier than school application deadlines. So, look into that! :)</p>

<p>8. Remember that the ACT and SAT are both accepted by most schools. Some students just do better with one over the other. If you’re not happy with your kid’s SAT score, have them take the ACT also.</p>

<p>adding…even if your child’s score is high enough for admittance, it may not be high enough for a merit scholarship. Therefore, it’s a good idea to take both the ACT and the SAT. Those extra points may pay off big! :)</p>

<p>Either you or your child should have a Word doc where you can just quickly add various awards, ECs, etc, as they occur. Then when it comes time to fill out apps, you won’t have to try to remember everything. </p>

<p>When it comes time to do applications, weed out insignificant things and “clean up” the info into a presentable fashion. At that point, often you can just “cut and paste” into applications.</p>

<p>

More often! Teachers can and do make mistakes in their grade books. Just today a semester A- magically turned into an A because D’s teacher missed recording something.</p>

<p>Parents might work towards these independence goalposts by junior year:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Student, not parent, is in charge of his own alarm clock and suffers his own consequences if late. </p></li>
<li><p>If prescribed regular medicine, student should self-administer by age l6. Use a day-of-the-week pillbox or other self-monitoring system (buy at pharmacy) that you can quietly check mid-day. Too many kids get messed up freshman year because of inexperience remembering their prescribed daily medicine. </p></li>
<li><p>For the life of me I can’t understand why any child older than 13 has someone else doing his/her laundry! YMMV, but it’s smarter to turn this chore over during h.s. than freshman orientation at college. ;)</p></li>
</ul>

<p>here are some threads:</p>

<p>**Words of Advice to parents of rising seniors **
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/383391-words-advice-parents-rising-seniors.html?highlight=advice+parents[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/383391-words-advice-parents-rising-seniors.html?highlight=advice+parents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>**101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before the College Search **</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/466871-101-things-i-wish-id-known-before-college-search.html?highlight=advice[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/466871-101-things-i-wish-id-known-before-college-search.html?highlight=advice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Begin discussing with your student the criteria that should guide the college selection:
size, location, availability of ECs, strength in the major, etc…</p>

<p>Schedule college visits during your student’s school vacation while the colleges are in session.</p>

<p>Check which SAT subject Tests are required by the colleges your student is interested in and have the student take the SAT Subject tests as close to the end of the relevant course(s) as possible. In many cases, it means, May or June of sophomore or junior year.
If your student is taking AP classes, have him or her also take the SAT Subject test in the same course; with a few exceptions (eg. AP-Physics vs. SAT Physics), the materials should be the same and therefore no additional prep should be needed.</p>

<p>adding to paying3tuitions post #8</p>

<p>If your child hasn’t been doing his own laundry, have him start now. He needs to learn to separate colors, how to deal with stains, how to avoid wrinkles, etc. </p>

<p>Have your child open up a checking/debit card acct. Get him used to writing checks, using a debit card, recording transactions, etc.</p>

<p>Identify passions and interests. Follow them.</p>

<p>I like (I believe it was Curmudgeon’s definition of EFC): Every f’ing cent.</p>

<p>February break and spring break junior year are a great time to do some low key college visiting. It’s a good time for your student to figure out whether they like large, small, urban, suburban, rural and it tends to get them charged up and realizing that finishing off the year with good grades is a good idea.</p>

<p>Think about applying to some schools that are EA or have rolling admissions. Having one school in your pocket early can take the edge off the waiting.</p>

<p>Begin college visits junior year at the latest. Try to visit when the campus is open. Students sleep late on weekends or go to part-time jobs, so even though it may be a residential campus, there may not be many students milling around campus on weekends.</p>

<p>If your child doesn’t seem interested, try this. Arrange a campus visit to a very nice school with nice facilities (academics aren’t as important for this situation). The school shouldn’t be too far away. </p>

<p>Find out where the off-campus hangouts are and the most attractive entrance to the campus. Take your child to the campus tour and be sure to visit some of the off-campus hangouts. For this exercise, meeting with admissions advisors and department reps are not necessary. For this exercise, your purpose is just to show your child that college life is much better than high school life. :)</p>

<p>*Think about applying to some schools that are EA or have rolling admissions. Having one school in your pocket early can take the edge off the waiting. *</p>

<p>adding to above… and, it’s also nice if that EA or rolling admissions acceptance comes with a nice merit award. That’s another nice thing to have in one’s pocket. :)</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This made me smile, because it happened by serendipity, and helped our second child when she was a mere h.s. rising sophomore. We stopped, as a family, at our alma mater for her big brother’s visit/interview when he was a rising junior. She tripped merrily across the campus green, soaking in the entire situation. She fell asleep at the group meeting (and we were sure to tell the Admissions officer that he, not she, was the candidate ;). She’s very deep and quiet. We knew she was having difficulty getting super-motivated at h.s. towards college. </p>

<p>On the drive home, she burbled along these lines: Wow, I’ve never seen an actual college before. You never told me how cool it is. I had no idea. I thought all the fuss was to go to another blah building, like high school only with older students. But a college has green spaces, and student cafes, a whole library building, concert halls. You can sit under a tree… </p>

<p>I never realized she’d never set foot on a campus before. Following that late-summer visit, she became extremely motivated to focus herself towards college. </p>

<p>Here’s another memory, with even younger children. When I taught Second Grade in a poor rural public school, where most students’ parents were h.s. dropouts, I arranged a field trip to the nearest Community College, just to inspire the kids, broaden their horizons. One in our class had a big sister who attended, who met guided us all around. Big Eyes, jaw-dropping among the little kids. Who knows what the future will bring? First seeing a college when there’s no pressure is ideal.</p>

<p>Other observations:</p>

<p>(1) As soon as you realize that your child has strong academic potential, start a 529 plan. You should definitely know by middle school, and sometimes as early as 1st grade, whether or not your child will thrive in strong academic colleges. If you delay till high school you’ll be limited in what you can save.
(2) Once you decide to open a 529 plan, contribute to the 529 plan as much as is realistically possible for your family – and then stretch a bit. Your goal is to save enough to at least cover the first year tuition and fees at a “reach” college for your child.
(3) Encourage your child in early high school, and possibly sooner, to observe what adults do for a living. Discuss with them what preparation is required for the professions that might interest them. Get them to think about how and where adults become prepared for their careers.</p>

<p>Go to with college fairs if they are available. Try to get the list of colleges attending and have your kid do a little research to find ones they would be interested in. Have them try to think of a question they would have about each college. The IMPORTANT PART: Often the representative is involved in the admission process, especially with LAC’s. Have the kid go “on their own” without the parents and ask a question. The rep’s are very good at talking with the students. Your kid will standout and in away become memorable to the rep. My wife and I sat along a wall next to the kids playing video games while their parent(s) walked around and picked up brochures. Follow up with visits to schools of interest and any and all opportunities to show that they are really interested in a particular school. Can’t hurt.</p>

<p>One of my son’s assignments (Geography class?) as a freshman in HS was to decide what he might want to be after college, what major he should have to do that job, and what schools offered that major. They got to divide the US into six zones - however they wanted, one of my son’s was “Frozen Tundra” for North and South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming - and then research one school in five of the six zones. It seemed like a silly assignment, but it allowed him as a freshman to start thinking about colleges and what to look for in a college.</p>

<p>OTOH, one of my son’s friends announced in Fifth Grade that he was going to go to Stanford. He’s a sophmore there now. Power of Positive Thinking - develop it when you’re young.</p>

<p>If a merit scholarship is desired, pay attention to your child’s GPA. I recently had a conversation with a parent who was upset because her child didn’t get a certain scholarship because his weighted GPA was 3.3, but his ACT was very high. The school has a 3.5 requirement, along with the score req’ts. </p>

<p>The unfortunate thing is that this student took some additional harder courses that weren’t necessary. He didn’t need to take a 4th year of a foreign language and a 5th year of science. If instead he had taken a couple of easy electives, his GPA would have likely bumped to the 3.5 GPA.</p>