Probably wants to stay out of schools or majors with heavy concentrations of pre-meds fighting for their GPAs. Or be able to put up with them if his interest really is in the biological sciences (but probably not if he is looking at physics for the time being).
Lots of smart students would mean going to either a very selective school (can be small or large), or a large school with a wide range of students that includes the top of the range (state flagships are commonly examples of the latter, although in California, UCs tend to have narrower ranges than flagships in schools like Arizona, Alabama, Hawaii, etc.).
@washugrad Your kid sounds a bit like mine. He wasn’t into big schools, or big sports/Greek scenes so we ended up focusing on small universities and liberal arts colleges across a wide range of selectivity. The specifics don’t really fit on this thread, but feel free to PM me.
D2 worked with a private college consultant. The schedule laid out by the counselor was 1) finish all tests by junior year, 2) ask teachers to write LOR by end of junior year, 3) have the application and first draft of major essays by end of summer, 4) finalize the college list early summer, 5) select ED/EA schools by end of summer, 6) have the application and essays for ED/EA schools by early Oct for final review by the private consultant’s committee. D2 worked on her RD essays from Oct to beginning of Dec. She had them ready to go just in case.
D2 couldn’t decide which LORs to submit. The private counselor advised D2 to haver her GC read them and decide which 2 to submit.
@washugrad Your kid is still young. But I’ll just put it out there that very smart kids and a collaborative and non-competitive atmosphere exists at the school one of my kids attended and loved: Brown University.
washugrad, your 8th grade son will change ALOT in the next couple of years. You can research all you want, but let him be a kid for a while and not really ask him about his wants etc. until at least the end of his sophomore year. You and he will have a clearer idea about his abilities, and what he might want. (I know my second son thought he wanted to stay instate at the end of his junior year to be close to home, but really grew in his senior year and chose, and loved, an oos university 12 hours away.) 
Different approaches work for different kids. There is no one right answer. My S did not follow any of the above mentioned timelines. He did discuss his SCEA choice with his academic advisor end of junior year. Aside from that, applications were changing (activities, honors and essays) right up to the deadline. He started his first essay in October and wrote new essays in December for most of his RD applications. Submitting by 3-4pm the day of the deadline was typical (even his SCEA). I read his applications and essays and gave him my thoughts, some of which he agreed with and used. Some essays I liked, some not so much. No private consultant. No specific timeline. No hooks. No athletics. Just him. The benefit? His voice, his opinions and what he valued came through on every application. He owned the whole process. The results? Accepted EA to an HYP and has received a few likely letters so far. Sitting on the sidelines was really hard for me, but I’m really glad I did it.
Wow, this is all very eye-opening. Our school doesn’t do college advising or hand-holding. They simply announce a deadline about a month before applications are due for the students to notify the GC where they need to send all the materials. It never would have occurred to me to start this process junior year.
I don’t know how a student could possibly complete applications before labor day. At the beginning of the school year, the GC’s are very busy dealing with scheduling and placement issues. I don’t think they would be willing to engage in a discussion of college applications during the first few weeks of school.
How do you write the essays over the summer, when the applications aren’t posted until August? I am sure neither of my kids would be willing to spend hours on an essay hoping that they don’t change the topic. My kid’s common app essay was about something she did at the end of her summer. It could not have been written earlier.
D’s looked at last years essays and then wrote some. Some they used for several applications, others only a few with minor changes. Under pressure it is hard to produce quality essays. The GC were not willing to write early. The teachers recommendations were sometimes hard to get on time no matter how much lead time. Narrow down the schools over the summer, start essays in the summer, if possible. It is very hard to focus on them once school starts.
Our kids also did an essay to the Common App prompts as a spring junior year English assignment. D2 ended up using hers with tweaks both for her Common App essay, and also for her senior speech (all seniors have to give a speech during senior year to their class). She was happy to have had inspiration and gotten a head start on it. The supplements were bad enough (U Chicago took her ages).
When my kids were applying the HS counselors were really backward. They held a meeting with parents of rising seniors. One thing that stands out from that meeting is the advice that our students should not be planning to send more than 2 or 3 applications out, because that would reduce the chances of other students gaining admission.
Huh? This is one of the best public high schools in the state. The counselors seemed to think that since the vast majority of graduates went on to college within the state, they should make it easy on themselves and the teachers who had to write letters, and just get their early rolling decision aps in – and be done with it.
But this is a university town, and a lot of kids had parents with advanced degrees, from all over the country! And that’s where the better students applied: yes to state flagship but also all over the country.
For rolling admission schools it is imperative to get applications in as soon as possible. But I recall non-rolling schools stating that it doesn’t matter if you submit in October or on Dec 31, the chances are the same. Most adcoms have been doing this for a while. Even if they read a particular app in October, they may think it sounds just like the 5,000 they read the year before. Penn state says it has modified rolling admissions, with a priority deadline of Nov 30, so not sure that the rep there speaks for most colleges. One of my kids applied to Penn State after the priority deadline and was wait listed (even though naviance showed he should have been easily admitted) and then he was admitted a couple of weeks later. He didn’t want to attend in any event, but we wanted him to apply in case that was his best option come April.
In our HS, most GCs want the parent and kid “brag sheets” and information filled out by the end of junior year so they can work on them in the summer if they want to. But the teachers often said wait until fall of senior year to ask. In our experience, the results (except for rolling admit schools) did not seem to be based on when the apps were submitted.