Be it the ability to afford college, campus life,scheduling (and forgoing sleep), classes. Basically anything that you feel will contribute to the next generation of college applicants/students 
EDIT: I accidentally wrote âwhichâ instead of âwishâ
Dâoh!
Hereâs what I learned:
- I was right to start thinking about having DS tour/review colleges in his Junior year.
- Tack the ACT/SAT the first chance you can so you have time to retake it if you needed to.
- Check the colleges youâre applying to because not all colleges/univ give AP credit for a â3â
- Make sure that your child has Safeties-both academically and financially
- Stay on top of the due dates. YOuâll have tonsâdate app due (some colleges also require you to apply to a college within the college), financial app due date, housing due date, $ to hold a space due date, etc.
- Be prepared for the $$$ to go out the door in the senior/Junior year-act/sat/ap scoresâŠIn the last 2 months I have paid $550 to my DSâs univ he will attend in the fall
- Be realisticâdonât expect you son/dtr to willingly fill out all the apps/scholarships etc. YOu will have to remind, remind, and remind again!!
Just a fewâŠ
<ol>
<li>Stats arenât nearly as important as people think. Of course, they get you considered at first. However, low stats wonât disqualify you automatically. I had a 3.2 UW GPA and top 30-40% class rank and I still got into college. Any of you kids out there worrying about whether a 3.8 GPA is too low â relax, youâre fine. </li>
<li>Donât pin all your hopes on one or a few schools, especially if they are very selective. Itâs not fun being rejected from a school youâve daydreamed about all of senior year. And who knows, you might end up going to and loving a completely different school in the end. </li>
<li>Stop giving a crap about âcollege rankings.â Seriously, some kids here make such a big deal out of USNews rankings. âI want to go to X school because it is 3 spots higher in the rankingsâŠâ âI want to get into a top-ranked schoolâŠâ It really doesnât matter⊠itâs just a magazine ranking colleges based on a bunch of arbitrary criteria. </li>
<li>Campus life/social atmosphere should be a big consideration when creating a college list. After all, how well you do in college is hugely dependent on the environment around you. People need to put less of an emphasis on prestige/ranking and look more into how well they fit in to certain colleges.</li>
<li>In terms of ECs, itâs a good idea to find a few that youâre really interested in and strive to be more involved in them. Thatâs far better than joining or signing up for a ton of activities and not having achieved anything that special in any of them.</li>
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^^ Preach.
Itâs not nearly as difficult to get into a solid college ( top 40 LAC) as all the rumors lead on to be! Colleges ( esp LAC) look at your transcript holistically and therefore being ranked in the top 35% ( without padding with overinflated weighted electives) is noted by the really good schools!
Also not all GPAâs are created equal even within the same school! My S had a 3.2 GPA and the schools he was admitted to ( no hooks, not a URM) touted avg GPAâs of 3.5-3.8! Even his weighted GPA was a 3.5 or 3.6 depending what you consider and 89.1 avg to be! Obviously there is more to the process than just grades and honestly none of his colleges stated that 3.2 was even at their 25%! Hence by definitions none of his applications were safeties or even matches but he got into virtually all of his schools!
Itâs not that he didnât want to apply to safeties but quite honestly he didnât care for any colleges that accepted.<br>
GPAs of 3.0!
Apply to several matches and safeties, so if you do not get accepted at your reaches, you still have a choice.
Colleges will want you if you show them they canât replace you. A 4.0 GPA can be replaced. YOUR personality and passion canât, so donât freak out over numbers and focus on you. Love what youâre doing and who you are, and colleges will follow.
And if they donât, theyâre missing out.
At the end of the day, a lot of it is really a crapshoot. I mean this in the most positive way possible!
I just finished a season of grad apps with 5 offers and 13 rejections. Some offers came from âeliteâ programs and some rejections came from programs technically less ranked. At the end of the day, the odds are so stacked against the likelihood of admission (granted it depends on the program, but it seems like most CC kids are applying to upper echelon programs) that you canât take rejection as a reflection of yourself, yourself as a past student, nor yourself as a future undergraduate or graduate.
And always always always include safeties [that you could see yourself attending and being happy with].
<ol>
<li>Pick a safety. No. Pomona is not a safety.</li>
<li>Do what YOU want to do. Donât take the SATs 5 times if you donât want to. Donât join a club if you donât want to. Do a sport you like. Donât like it? Quit and do something else. At the same time, if you find something you enjoy, stick with it.</li>
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That also goes for college choices. Donât pick a school because itâll make everyone else happy. Find schools you will love, and not for its name, but rather for its personality.
<ol>
<li>Essays are importantâthey reflect your personality. I donât think mine were stellar, but they reflected what I loved to do and who I was (they may have also hinted at medical issues). Work hard on them, but donât overdo it. My tip? Write, self-edit, self-edit, write, self-edit, self-edit, get a teacher to edit ONCE if you are really hurting for a second opinion, then self-edit and submit. This is YOUR writing, not anyone elseâs.</li>
<li>College admissions is a crapshoot sometimes. There are good days, and there are bad days. Donât blame yourself if you donât get into a college youâve been in love with for ten years. On the other hand, donât get egotistical just because you got into an Ivy. No one likes a sore loser or winner.</li>
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Overall, just be yourself. There are so many colleges out there and so many opportunities you are losing if you stay narrowminded. Expand your perspective and embrace differences, and youâll be much more successful than you could have ever imagined.
If you have a top choice and can afford it, apply ED. It will dramatically improve your chances.
I have to say, what I have taken away from the process is that itâs a crap shoot. My S is at a top boarding school with honor roll and solid test scores. Varsity athlete all 4 years for 2 sports, captain of team and involved with many activities. He got several wait lists and rejections from the schools he wanted and got acceptance letters to his safeties. There really didnât seem to be a rhyme or reason to any of it. Fellow class mates with lower credentials did get some ( a few) acceptances that S didnât , there was no rhyme or reason. Someone close to a small New England college told me the admissions office starts with the SAT sore they want and then just reach in like a bowl of gum balls and grabs the others⊠Hardly seems fair.
<ol>
<li>College rankings are relative numbers. If you are using them for their absolutesâcomparing a school ranked 12th to a school ranked 15thâyouâre using them for a purpose that was not their intended purpose. It depends on what ranking you are looking at, but usually a difference of +/- 15 or more is not significant, even at the top programs. Even more so as you move down the list.</li>
<li>Be organized. My parents made me use folders to keep track of everything with deadlines and dates on the front of each. Iâm glad they made me do this. When I was applying to grad school, I took this one step further. Each folder had itâs own sheet on the front with deadlines and such still, but i put all of them into a master excel spreadsheet and as I finished things, I would color the cell green (each row had a school name and each column had a task such as pay application fee, interview invite received, reply to interview invitation, scholarship application due, etc). I shared this sheet with my parents, girlfriend, good friends, and advisor so that in case I was about to miss something, a second pair of eyes could point it out to me! I know everyone here was curious as to where weâd all end up after college, so they had an incentive to check my âbig boardâ as we called it and people made up their own as well. I donât know that this would work in high school because I doubt I was responsible enough at that age but at least your parents will keep on top of things for you still!</li>
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Pick a safety that you are guaranteed acceptance to that youâll also be happy at. I donât know if all states have this, but most states have state schools where a certain SAT/GPA/ACT/Matriculation Exam Score will guarantee admissions to the school if not their honors program. If you find a school that this apply to you for and you really like it, then you can apply to it and itâs associated scholarships, and invest your time applying to other schools without spending time applying to 2 or 3 different safeties. I wasted a lot of time applying to a bunch of safeties when I could have concentrated on just one of them and spent my time elsewhere.
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You have to remember that on our end, we can be looking at 30k+ applicants for 1.5k or fewer spots. Yes, this does mean that we could probably fill our class with only students with above a 4.0 or only students that had a perfect score on some test. Obviously this is not what weâre going for, but there are an extremely high number of permutations that we could fill our class and have a class that we would be happy with. Unfortunately, this means that there is going to be some luck involved and you may have bad luck at a few schools. The take home message? Apply broadly, keep your chin up, and know that there is more than one school that is right for you.
Essays essays essays essays essays essays essays essays essays I cannot say this enough. I saw it ALL over these boards and I still didnât quite understand.
Every word you write needs to be right. Not just your common app essay, but every short answer on every supplement. I donât mean you need to spend extensive time polishing - that might even be detrimental - but you need to sound authentic. Once all the other pieces are in place (GPA, course load, test scores, recs), there is nothing else more important than your voice. Stats alone will get you in nowhere.
(Not ED) ~ apply early ~ apply liberally ~ donât fall in love
Donât decide that a particular school is your âtop choiceâ or âdream schoolâ and get hung up on that one. Only put schools that you like on your list, and take the time to find things that you love about each one. That way, youâll be excited about all your options, making the (inevitable) rejections from a few schools seem less significant because of the great ones you did get into.
Also, do what you want to do, but keep in mind that youâre also building a college profile. If âwhat you want to doâ involves sitting around watching television and procrastinating (donât lie, thatâs totally what you want to do. Thatâs actually what Iâm currently doing, so I should really take my own adviceâŠ), then youâre going to have a hard time. Find a balance between finding ECâs that you like and that can build a good application. Donât do something you dislike just because âit will look goodâ (and likewise donât miss out on something you do like because âit will look badââworst case scenario with this one you just donât list it, yet I hear people at my school doing it all the time). But do keep in mind that ECâs can be a deciding factor and is a huge way of advertising the kind of person you are and the kinds of things you will bring to a college campus.
Donât get overly attached to a school, and apply to a financial safety as well as a normal safety.
I fell in love with Penn State and luckily I was accepted and Iâll be able to go, but if I wasnât I would have been completely devastated and unhappy at the other 3 places (NC State, MS State, and UNC-Charlotte) Make sure ALL the places you apply youâd be more than happy to go to and be proud of.
Please stop saying crap-shoot, its disgusting.
I didnât do gazillion ECs. I only did what I enjoyed(one sport, one instrument, one club) and got into all my safeties with merit aid, all my lower matches with some merit aid, waitlisted at the tippy top reach and rejected from one tippy top Ivy. Overall, I my high school years were without a lot of unecessary stress.
After the entire admissions process, and now nearing the end of my freshman year, a few things are clear.
Make a plan, and follow through. This applies to all aspects in life.
Work Hard, and be thankful for the opportunities to do so
Attitude is everything
Freshman year will be the best year of your life (up to that point)