Best advice…
Remember…your kiddo is going to college…not you (the parent).
It really is about the right fit, my D was dead certain that she liked/disliked certain schools before she ever set foot on the campus. Most thoughts completely changed afterwards and she is attending the one school she never pictured herself at in the past. Sometimes the right vibe is all it takes.
Make sure your child would be happy attending every school he applies to. With that attitude, even if you apply to ten, it only takes one acceptance to be happy.
If you are looking for merit money, you should apply to colleges outside the very top 20 or whatever. You want to be better than most applicants, ot just at or above the freshman profile, for example.
Pay attention to GPA requirements for scholarships. My stellar HS and freshman college student had a major blip in his 2nd year. His scholarship does not have a GPA requirement, so he didn’t lose the money. I have heard several stories of students losing scholarships.
Best advice about essay writing, from a professional admissions counselor: if you’re stumped on a topic for an essay, try this brainstorming exercise: write down five things you have strong opinions about, five things most people don’t know about you, and five things you’d like to learn how to do or learn more about some day. One of those fifteen things is probably going to make a great essay topic, and even better, it will be an essay that will be uniquely about YOU – not just another tired essay about how losing the big game taught you about the importance of teamwork and helped you grow as a person.
Fame does not equal quality.
This isn’t advice I received, but knowledge learned after three cycles of college applications of my own kids (and the “Watch What Happens Next” observing them and their friends progressing through college).
Don’t be so focussed on the college application process that you ignore the here and now of your child.
Take care of seemingly minor issues now. Don’t assume that it (whatever “it” is) will magically go away, heal, or that he’ll grow out of it once he gets to college.
“It” could be as minor a thing as getting the wisdom teeth out before college, before they cause problems in the middle of a semester a thousand miles away from home.
“It” could be acknowledging that your child’s uneven grades that don’t match his stellar test scores are most probably NOT because he is brilliant, but bored snd not adequately challenged, but more likely due to other issues. Maybe he is brilliant, but has undiagnosed lerning issues that he has been able to compensate for until now, or maybe he has never learned to study or has never learned the importance of doing the daily slog of homework. Maybe he is struggling with things that are not academic but affect his academics. Maybe he isn’t as brilliant as you think he is, and is working as hard as he can.
“It” could be learning to see your child for who he really is, and not who you want him to be.
"ALWAYS be polite. ALWAYS be truthful. Admissions officers are usually underpaid and overworked. They spend months getting yelled at by morally outraged parents. Don’t add to their difficulty, try to be reasonable. Be a team. "
I disagree that parents should “be a team” to admissions officers. We should be invisible to them. Frankly I think you should visit if feasible, submit your app, and be a low-maintenance applicant. Don’t bother the adcoms with questions that are made-up excuses to stay in contact. They can see right through that and they don’t need 1000 emails from students/parents clogging up their in-boxes.
Best advice we received, and followed:
Refuse to tell anyone what your “first choice” is. Even within the family, do not talk about favorites, best school, and try to avoid the word “safety” if it sounds like a dirty word. So when you get accepted to 8 out of 10 (which should be cause for celebration!) you don’t have ANYONE thinking “too bad you didn’t get into that first choice”.
Thank you everyone!!! There is some great stuff here. I really appreciate you all passing on these insights and advice.
And if any others in my boat are reading these, one thing I was surprised to find out in my research so far is how much “demonstrated interest” can mean to some schools. Now that I understand the admissions process better it makes perfect sense, but coming into this I had no idea that could be an important variable for admissions consideration.
In my daughter’s case, demonstrating interest just wasn’t that big an issue because she was truly interested in each and every school on her list. On a superficial level, I did take her to college fairs and meet-and-greets so she could sign in and she requested material via the website. If D couldn’t think of any questions after viewing a school’s website or talking to a college rep at a fair, that was a sign that she wasn’t all that into the school. Inevitably, she dropped that particular school from her list.
If nothing else, questions arose almost immediately when she looked at the CA. She would email questions about their questions If she couldn’t find an answer on their website. In one case, the admissions person called back. That took her by surprise - she wasn’t expecting a phone call, didn’t know the area code so she didn’t pick up. Hearing the message, she called back, apologized and then the two chatted a bit about the school. It may have helped that she only applied to small LACs that were very responsive and personable. She didn’t visit every single school before applying but she talked to every single school before or during the application process.
I have no idea how she would have dealt with large research universities - then again, I think that’s exactly why she didn’t apply to large research universities.
Why is “safety” seemingly a dirty word on these forums? Is it because so many students have a notion of desirability that includes only reach schools or expensive schools?
Just a word of warning about “demonstrated interest.” We may have been an “outlier” family because of our “doughnut hole” status, but we did not see any correlation between how much interest the kid demonstrated in many selective liberal arts colleges (SLACs) and outcomes, unless being wait-listed counts as a good outcome! I suspect that a lot of the SLACs that factor “demonstrated interest” into admissions decisions have begun to up the “proof” required by favoring ED applicants or those RD applicants they persuade to switch to ED2. (Now THAT’s “demonstrated interest”!) My son was wait-listed at schools he demonstrated boatloads of interest in while being admitted to other, peer institutions, that he didn’t (for a variety of reasons) show as much love to.
I want to add that the best advice I learned here on CC was that a lot of students (especially boys) change tremendously their senior year of high school. I had a kid dead-set on attending a SLAC, who very late in the process discovered that was not the experience he wanted at all. Strong liberal arts community? Yes, but not at a place with <5,000 students. He is someone who very possibly could have ended up at a bad fit for him if he’d been accepted at his ED school, never mind the out-of-pocket costs! (The pressure to apply ED can be enormous when you have an unhooked student grasping for any “tip” he can come up with. Please tread VERY CAREFULLY with ED applications.)
I also want to reiterate what others have said about running the NPCs BEFORE your students starts submitting applications. While the better privates no doubt offer the best FA, they won’t necessarily be more affordable for YOUR family if you fall into the doughnut hole as well. So get the applications done for your state flagship (if it’s affordable) and some other automatic merit schools if it looks like the EFCs at your child’s favorite schools are keeping you up at night. However, IF you know you can afford the better schools, be prepared that your kid may have no interest in free tuition or free rides. Don’t change the terms on the kid at the last minute unless something drastic happens at the 11th hour (like a job loss or a serious health crisis). It’s just not fair to the kid.
Be open and honest with your student about what you can afford; I do not recommend applying to schools just to see if the student can “get in” if you KNOW you can’t afford it. Why waste everybody’s time? Knowing that you need a merit award to make it affordable is different, but make it clear to you kid that schools like that are long-shots at best.
Do NOT let your kid take the PSAT or SAT or ACT cold (with no review) just to see how he does.
Take a timed practice test and look at that score instead. Study and review before taking the actual tests.
Your EFC is not a number that you can expect to pay! Schools will use that to put together an aid package, but that may include a lot of money in loans.
Run the NPC!
Not a single answer on CC will apply to your situation…so trust your instincts. When in doubt, you shouldn’t be afraid to share your impressions with your child.
I’m the kid, but the best advice my mom gave me prior to the college application process was “Study for the PSAT!”
Do as many college visits as you can! We even did college visits instead of vacation for spring break of junior year, and over several long weekends. Son kept saying he could see himself being happy at every school we visited, which was a good thing. But it wasn’t until we visited the last school over Labor Day weekend of senior year that he found a clear #1, applied ED, had a very early admission decision, and he was done.
Let your child set their own criteria for choosing a school. Parents can add a few also. Then, use rankings as a starting point only. There are LOTS of good schools out there. Different rankings use different criteria and that may truly be their value. Look beneath the rank of a school to see WHY it earned that spot then see if those criteria are the same as the ones important in your child’s search.
At schools that care, demonstrated interest is used more often as a negative than a positive. That is, if you have not demonstrated interest in the school, you will not be admitted.