<p>I'm a college student and after dealing with the difficult process last year, I now write a column in a parenting magazine about applying to college.</p>
<p>I thought this would be a great place to turn for ideas for future articles. What questions or concerns do you have? What do you wish you knew before starting off with this process?</p>
<p>This could really help other parents who are going through similar issues, or will be.</p>
<p>The one thing that I have been trying to stress to my parent friends whose children are juniors is that NOW is the time to do first time college visits. Now is when colleges are in session and there's no comparison between a hopping campus versus an empty campus in the summer to get a good idea of each college. </p>
<p>Another thing is that many kids need a jump start with the college process. If I had waited until my kids were totally into the college search it would have been December of their senior year that we would have been visiting our first colleges. Get started in junior year with visits to random nearby colleges, talk about what they liked and didn't like after each visit.</p>
<p>What do I wish I knew before we started? Wow, I started this stuff 4 years ago with my first child and then jumped in to help #2 right afterwards. I didn't know anything .....about weighted grades and how colleges re-weigh them and how high schools all over the country weight grades differently and so do individual colleges. I never heard of a "hook" or knew that my kids volunteering counted as one. I didn't know anything about liberal arts colleges or how important merit aid or endowments are. I didn't know what a fafsa or profile report was... gosh, I didn't know anything!</p>
<p>Thanks, that's stuff I've thoughout about that I think is pretty important (personally, I didn't visit until late in the game, after getting accepted places).</p>
<p>More specifically, what do you think parents with high school seniors should know next month? And into the summer? I have some ideas but I'm sure parents here know a lot and could think of something I haven't.</p>
<p>Next month is April, so advice on how to make the decision of which college to attend would be useful. Things like comparing financial aid offers, perhaps. Or how to know if a college is a "good fit." After that, perhaps info on choosing a dorm, what to take to college, how to support your student emotionally as he/she is going through all these changes. How to let the student take charge and make decisions and prepare, learning to let go. Just a few things off the top of my head...</p>
<p>And beginning in the summer, you may want to focus on the upcoming seniors, beginning the application process, cutting down the "possibles" list to a reasonable size, how many schools to apply to, how early to get things in, scholarship applications, etc.</p>
<p>Google "The Late Decision Program" to get an article by V.V. Ganeshananthan which originally appeared in the Atlantic in 2001. This talks about the "space-availability survey" that the NACAC posts on its website in May of colleges that still have spaces available for the fall. (According to the article, in 2001 those schools included Cal Lutheran, UMass, U Michigan, and Randolph-Macon, along with many others.) It would be helpful for those kids like Andison who got thin envelopes from all of the colleges to which they applied. (I believe that Carolyn also talks about this on her website.)</p>
<p>Xiggi's fav, Jay Mathews, also has articles in the Washington Post archive regarding the late decision program. WWW.NACACNET.ORG was also a valuable resource for the Hurricane Katrina contingencies. BTW their website address has recently changed to the one just posted.</p>