<p>I "casually" left a college big book lying around for daughter after her freshman year. During the summer, she actually started looking at it and marking colleges that interested her. Sophomore year we started attending various college fairs. I found CC after D took PSAT as a soph. Summer between soph and jr years was our 3-week college road trip. Looked at a few more colleges junior year. Thank heaven we did all this before senior year, because her senior year was extremely busy. Now my son is a HS soph, and we've got our eye on some likely colleges.</p>
<p>I joined CC the spring of S's sophomore year in HS. We have been thinking about college longer, mainly because, like Thumper's son, he is interested in only music school, which typically requires a bit more pre-planning (i.e. summer study, etc).</p>
<p>We visited three colleges on two different family vacations during Sophomore year...at both, S met people, had practice lessons, but they were relatively "short" visits (couple hours at most). We have a longer visit, to two schools, set up for April, with 24-30 hours at each school, but these are high contenders, so require more intensive examination.</p>
<p>Son himself has done very little research on his own. He has friends at all of these schools, and he just talks to them on IM about his questions.</p>
<p>I looked into colleges the winter of Junior year. Honestly at the time I really wasn't much into it and my parents had sent three other kids into college so they knew the process front and back so they didn't worry about it until we had to visit colleges. So I got an initial list together spring of junior year, visited those college, and then turned in all of my applications a day before they were due. Literally the minimal amount of work possible (I didn't even know you could add things to your application until I joined CC which was after I was already in college).</p>
<p>That's how I started. It never seemed very stressful to me, which I guess is the opposite of everyone else's experiences. Everything worked out though which was awesome.</p>
<p>In my experience, few kids are ready to think seriously about colleges at the beginning of high school.</p>
<p>Yet they may make decisions at that time that will affect the range of college choices available to them later. For example, some kids will want to drop their foreign language after level 2 or level 3, but there are a few colleges that want to see four years of language study. Some kids will not participate in extracurricular activities, not realizing that they are important for admission to the more selective colleges. I think parents need to be knowledgeable enough about the process to help their kids avoid these traps.</p>
<p>I discovered this site on the day all the college notifications were due at the house. So CC didn't really help the app process for my oldest but I am sticking around for the 7th-grader.</p>
<p>My D saw a lot of our state schools as a cross-country runner. Many big meets are held at college campuses. We started the formal visits in fall of jr. yr. Not much other than the North Carolina circuit was done during spring break of that year. She literally worked a full-time job when school let out for the summer, so we visited a nearby school on the Friday before Labor Day.</p>
<p>One school to which she wanted to apply, we insisted she visit ahead of the application since it was a much different school than her other choices. It was a tiny LAC located in the middle of nowhere instead of a larger university in suburbia or in a city. The common denonominator was the strength of her intended major.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned that BIG college book that was left around LOL - when my son was checking out schools - that thing sat on my coffee table for a year - and by the end of that year it was really well worn - scribbled on - all over the margins - from each school that was visited informally - in the end tho it came down to a handful of schools - and 1 in particular - after the flip-flop of #1 choices. </p>
<p>We passed that book on - well used and well loved LOL. We didn't have the benefit of the web at the time - so the research was a bit more difficult I think at that time. For our gal - again a new book sat on the coffee table for a year - again well loved/well warn - and handy. Was worth the sight of it LOL. Her college search brought on completely different challanges than for my son - but again I had not discovered this site at that time - tho since then it has been a wealth of information :)</p>
<p>i'm not parent like the people above, but i found about CC when i was looking for SAT help during my junior year. "xiggi" i think was the name, and thats how i ended up here.</p>
<p>as i read the post regularly, i am shocked at how many parents actually know about college. I always thought that "traditional" view of college is that you-are-on-your-own idea but guess not!</p>
<p>For me it was the middle of S's junior year, when I did a google search on "best classics department" and I ended up at an archived discussion here. I've been very lucky to get good advice and good suggestions (Ask the Deans was helpful too) and a good result. Since my daughter is a freshman in high school, I probably will continue for the next three years.</p>
<p>DS1 attends a school which sends a lot of kids to top-notch places (it's pretty meritocratic), so college has never been too far out of his thinking. A friend asked me soph year if we'd looked at XX for DS1, thinking it would be a good fit. It was a fabulous fit and has been at the top of his list ever since. We visited when the school's consortium came to town, and went out to see the school (and added a couple others) while were were on vacation the summer after soph year. I was looking for info on the schools last August when I found links to CC discussions, and have been here since.</p>
<p>DS1 and his dad just did a week-long junior Spring Break tour, but we never considered bringing along DS2 (a freshman). DS2 needed his spring break, and the two kids are interested in completely different schools. He did see the ones we visited last summer, and he is involved in a couple ECs that get him to college campuses.</p>
<p>We do have one big book on colleges, but it hasn't gotten much use.</p>