What to know for a college student who will not yet be 18....

DD will be a few weeks shy of 18 when she starts school in the fall.
Are there any special considerations?
Will this affect housing, etc?
When I look at the todo list for incoming freshman, there are some that just don’t apply. For instance, she can not yet go to a doctor appt without a parent.

There are some forms you have to sign, including medical forms. They can go to the school medical clinic on their own. For my daughter, I did have to sign NCAA drug testing forms.

You may have to sign banking forms. I don’t know because my daughter just used the account she’d had since she was 2.

I have the same thing. My D won’t be 18 until 2+months into her freshman year. Not any big deal though, it happens every year at every college in the country.

DS was 17 for months after he started college. It’s not unusual to have 17 year olds and there are no issues from housing/university side.

The only issue we had was when he went to get a flu shot, he needed parental signature.

@carpoolingma My D14 started college a few weeks shy of 18 as well. We never had issues with doctor visits. Beginning in HS, she would make the appointment, fill out the paperwork, check in, provide her insurance info, be seen and pay all on her own while I was at work. I think the dentist called to get my permission for an x-ray. You may want to check the student health center and local doctor policies at the college to be sure.

The only big issue we ran into was that she couldn’t get a hotel room in her name for orientation, so I just went with her for that. If that hadn’t worked out, she could have stayed on campus on her own. And I know some other parents on this forum send younger students on college visits on their own, so there are other ways around hotel policies.

Our state also required driver license renewal at 18, so she had to arrange a visit home (any renewal station in the state would have worked, but she just came home) within the allotted time frame so she wasn’t driving illegally.

That’s all that came up for us.

My youngest will be 17 for most of his freshman year. The only thing I’ve encountered so far that I made a note of was that you can’t get the behind-the-pharmacy-counter cold meds until you’re 18. I’ll make sure he has the “good” Sudafed in his first aid kit when he goes in August!