Given the known fact that every kid is wildly different from their siblings, what did you learn from the first that you did differently with the second? I’ll start. I somehow missed the memo with D1 (in spite of being on this site) that merit aid depends on both school policies and placement in stats. It is tough to find straight info on merit aide, but I discovered this invaluable tool. https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php When we began the process with D1, we told her how much we could afford, multiplied it by four years, and explained that any surplus or deficit would be hers. We also shared this article and kept it handy. She has rigorous classes, a talent, and a high GPA, so we explained that we would support her applying to any school that was a good fit for her personally, but she needed to carefully consider her cost. We used Tufts (no merit aide), Westmont (a small religious school in Santa Barbara that is quite popular in her youth group and offers outstanding merit aide), and Santa Clara (mid-range merit for her stats) as examples of how she could balance out her choices.
The biggest difference is for D’19 we are looking more far and wide. D’17 toured 4 schools within 2 hours of home. Two private, one small public, and a community college. She chose the community college that is one hour away for several reasons, and one is that her program can be completed in 5 semesters and ready to enter the workforce. She likes being able to come home any time she wants.
D’19 has better stats and is more interested in the “full college experience” (though D’17 would argue that living on campus at her cc is still the college experience) and spreading her wings elsewhere. Since we are looking at 4 years of substantially higher college expense for her we began hunting merit, even at schools that are not so close to home. Next month we are flying to a visit. Still nervous about having her several hours away.
It never occurred to me to look further away for D’17. But it’s fine, she is very happy with her choice, and her ACT wouldn’t have gotten her anything worth the travel. This week I was telling her about a client who set up an education fund for his great-granddaughter with over $300,000 in it. The great-granddaughter started community college this year. I asked D if money were no object, what would she have chosen and she said she would not have chosen any differently.
Well…our two kids had very different college searches. Number one was a music major, and number 2 was not.
What did we do differently? Really nothing…other than the search for colleges.
Merit aid is the biggest difference between S17 and S18. When starting the search for S17 3 years ago, I thought that pretty much all schools offered similar packages and could not have been more wrong. S17 applied to 11 schools, only 5 or 6 would have given him merit aid that made it even possible. His favorite school gave him nothing and the cost would have been $54k per year. He chose Minnesota and with a 4 year merit scholarship was able to attend.
For S18, we focused on good schools that offered merit aid. He applied to 15 and was given financial packages at all 15 of them. Of the 15, 4 are in state and 10 are under $30k per year.
Other than that, we wanted to find possibilities that met the extremely different desires of each kid.
I am glad that I am done after S18!
Sprang for private HS for second after realizing how big a deal peer relationships can be.
College-wise it was total apples and oranges for what they wanted to pursue so it was like starting over again.
Took the family spring break trip junior year for the first, so that the second could take a peek despite only being a freshman. The third was only 10 - so I guess you could say we started him young :). We visited about 8 schools in VA, NC and SC. My oldest decided he needed something smaller so he stayed close to home in a smaller school. My second was far more adventurous and I took her on her own junior spring tour while my husband took the youngest to Florida. She decided on an private OOS (750 miles from home) with a very generous merit package. The 3rd prefers a big school and has to choose between 1 in state public or 2 OOS flagships. We always try to keep costs within $5-$10K of an in state public if possible.
We included our younger daughter (soph in H.S.) in her older brother’s (frosh in college) college search when she was just out of 7th grade. Mostly this was done out of convenience or because college visits were part of a family trip
Her experiences have made me wish that I had started my son’s search, even just informally, much sooner. When we were visiting during his junior and senior years, he was hesitant to engage or commit, and seemed slightly stressed by the pressure of eventually having to choose. My daughter was far more carefree, inquisitive, and even opinionated than her older sibling.
I chalked it up to differences in temperament until we started formal tours. I often saw the same pattern in other families. The parents were practical and engaged. The potential college student was apprehensive and wary, while the younger sibling was the most enthused about the whole experience. Not always, but often enough.
As my daughter approaches the age her brother was when we started searching, she has remained more confident and engaged in the process of visits. She has often led the way in incorporating her friends into side trips to visit colleges when they are near a travel destination. On a road trip to visit her brother in San Luis Obispo, she talked me into taking a slight detour so that she and her friend could visit Cal State Monterey Bay. At Cal Poly, she was fearless in exploring, evaluating, and comparing the campus.
We have also been able to have many more real-world financial discussions with our younger daughter. She is around our discussions more because the actual bills are coming in now. She is well aware of the expenses and our budget for education and is considering schools with a level of practicality and detail we could not provide for our son. We simply didn’t have as many facts back then as we do now.
This time around I learned how to find the test optional schools and the ones with high acceptance rates.
First time around, I didn’t know much so I let my D1 apply to NYU (gasp!!) and other probably unaffordable schools. All I knew was to apply some reaches, matches and safeties. Luckily, she was accepted to 100% need-met school so everything was OK, but I shudder to think what would have happened if she was not accepted into few 100% need-met schools she applied to!
Second time around, I was wiser about the finance. I used Net Price Calculator and let D2 apply only to the schools we were able to pay.
Nagged the second kid more. The first one didn’t need it.
Surprisingly, nothing different for child #2. Now child #3 who is in the chute now, nagging and looking at a totally different set of schools than his more academic siblings. I’ll be perusing the 3.0-3.3 GPA thread that should be coming soon.
Second daughter applied to a LOT fewer schools than did the first.
Mine are 8 school years apart. The younger one, in eight grade, knows already a lot more about the process than our oldest (and us) did at that point. Her academic interests seem to be going in two different directions from her older sister’s. Selectivity level (and tuition) has gone up in our in state options for sure. In other words, the playing field is different, the child is different, but we are wiser, too early to tell what things will look like in four year’s time, but hopefully all will be fine in the end!
This time around, I repeat again and again “there is no such thing as a Dream School.”
All 3 are in private school, small classical k-12. S 1 and S 2 are completely different, 1st was content as a B-C student, we knew he was going where he was accepted, and it was reasonable cost, so lots of 1-2 hour away satellite campuses, or small privates that offered substantial money to bring the total cost under $20k a year. We were content that he got a good deal.
S 2 is 32ACT, 4.0/4.0 school doesn’t weight GPA, 20 hours college credit from a 4 year college, school won’t rank, won’t give %. We were expecting something for scholarships, but so far is 0 for everything.
So, we are now wondering what the school is sending as a profile with the transcripts. School doesn’t rank, doesn’t label any class AP, advanced, or honors, looking at S2 transcript, it lists Calculus, not Calculus AP, just Calculus. Same for all the other classes that students take AP tests at the end of, English, History, Physics, Latin, Chemistry. We are thinking this isn’t helping, and wonder how much this is really hurting. Wondering what others in a similar won’t rank, won’t label AP classes as such are seeing. Changing schools isn’t an option, they are in the only one within an hour of the house that has reasonable results. Consistently hear from other grads, college is easy, so they are well prepared, they just have so few grads their name isn’t all over the place with admissions and scholarship awarding folks, so seeing a transcript with 0 AP, advanced and honors may get them dropped from consideration automatically.
D is next in line, but have 5 years to go with her before this becomes an issue, but overcoming a school that is not helping the kids with things like named classes means we need to think about how to work for D to get a better deal.
Didn’t hurt our D1’s choices but her experience woke us hope to how tip top your stats have to be to make a difference in merit aid at some schools. We realized that there were many, many top students with top stats. Didn’t really change what D2 did, except we knew to warn her that merit at places like Duke was unlikely - so she knew going in not to fixate on one school. D1 did to some extenet, but it wasn’t big drama because she did get in her first choice and get merit.
I think I was too optimistic and trusted D1’s GC too much, even though she was at a private school and the GC only had 30 students. D1’s college application process was a horrible experience. Everything she did from DIY (her essays and application). Second time around with D2, I hired a private consultant who worked with her from Sophomore to Senior year. Both D1 and D2 ended up at the same college, but D2’s journey was just a lot less painful.
With the first DD, I said “make a list of colleges that we can go visit” and she did. She picked a geographical distance from our house and researched schools within that. We visited most of those over Spring break junior year. I included a parent pick. I encouraged her to start her application over the summer, but she waited until fall of Senior year while doing IB diploma with Math HL, Chem HL, and Physics HL. We never knew what her 4.0 GPA was…My daughter moved schools after her sophomore year. The first school was the US News #1 STEM public magnet school with a 0-100 grading system. We moved internationally for work, so the second was a German International School with an IB program that has a 0-7 grading system. Colleges admitted her anyway and gave her merit scholarships. The only glitch we had was our State Public U that had an automated system for scholarships based on self-reported data. An email to admissions cleared that up and she was also awarded merit.
When she got the results back, there was a bimodal distribution of net costs…public State Us that were under 30K and a couple of privates over 40K. We didn’t discuss budgets per se, but at that point as she was interested in the Public Us I told her to pick whatever one she wanted in the under 30K batch as I didn’t think the others were worth it for her major, Math. We didn’t get to go to admitted students day as we were living in Germany at the time. She ended up picking my parent pick college, which was the most expensive of the publics. She did great. She is a very independent person who likes to do online research.
So for the second one, I started a little earlier. Fall break of Junior year I took her to our Big State U and an excellent State College that I thought would fit what she wanted and be affordable. She hated the big State U (you have to take busses to get around the campuses) but like State College. I wanted her to get a feel for the type of college she might want to investigate more. Then I did the same thing. Go make your list. … in the winter of Junior year I dragged her to the library, put a Fiske guide in front of her and say look at this…At some point she said “You like to look stuff up on the internet…can you come up with a list for me.” So I used the various college search tools on naviance and here on CC and got some ideas for her…LACs and CTCL type schools. We visited them over Junior Fall break (including the State College again for reference). For her I know she wanted to be 1-2 hours away. Summer of junior year I insisted that she came up with a draft of her Common App essay and she did. So come fall, I asked her if she wanted to think about applying ED to State College…she kept comparing everything to it and it was affordable for us full pay…and she has a terrible time making decisions and I thought this would save her from having to choose in the spring. She did apply ED, got in, and is currently a Junior!
So both of my kids ended up at an affordable parent pick that met their needs.
So the oldest ended up at a Big OOS Univ where she would not stick out and was 4 hours away, and the youngest was at a smaller college with more support that was 1 hour away. She need support from time to time (Anxiety and some health issues) so it was good for her to be close.
I’m on number 3 (sophomore) and have figured which classes are best DE and which are better AP in our high school. Also have limited outside scholarships to those that are “realistic” and don’t required too much extra work. My third is also much better at documenting volunteer hours.
I’ve backed off on 2nd child. I’ve let him steer the ship more. it has meant some missed opportunities and biting my tongue but he has some great and affordable options that he’s excited about and hopefully more in a week or two. It’s been a very calm and relatively stress free application season.
While my eldest has thrived and about to graduate in May, there were mistakes made. She applied to too many schools. When I saw her list was too reach heavy, I compensated with ADDING too many safeties and matches instead of encouraging her to pair down. It was an overwhelming amount of work for her. I should have found someone else to work with her on essays besides her teacher, who thought everything she did was genious, and myself who couldn’t make the slightest suggestion without her bracing for battle. My son had her to help him and I only read them after they both felt comfortable with what was written. Much better for all parties involved.
I should have forced hubby into the process more. He and DD are very close and he’s really good at handling her anxiety. Him keeping his distance meant that I had no ally. Instead, he was the angel who wasn’t constantly pushing her out of her comfort zone. This time, I have made sure hubby was better versed and while my son hasn’t needed any pushes to get past fear of failure, it has made things better family wise.