I am moving on to my second college bound child and want to avoid some of the mistakes I made with the first one!
Going through the process and seeing what other parents go through has taught me there I have a lot to learn
Where is a good place to start to locate colleges that are a good fit for her academically and financially?
Are there any really good calculators or data bases online where I can perform a search? I know about Naviance but would like to know what other good resources are out there (besides for CC of course!)
I would start a college search off by taking the following steps:
–Maybe ask your college bound son if he would do anything differently if he could go through the process again. It could provide an interesting perspective.
–Be upfront and honest with your child about any limitations on your college search (ex. financial, geographic, anything else). If there are any financial restrictions keep that in mind from the start. Run net price calculators found on college websites.
–Get your hands on some good college guide books (ex. Fiske, Princeton Review) which can often be found in the guidance dept. or a library and start reading about schools in his/her academic range.
–Talk to your guidance counselor to develop a list. If your HS has Naviance that is a valuable tool.
–Has your child taken standardized tests yet? If not, encourage him/her to study for the exam. There are some excellent free resources (ex. Khan Academy), study books, classes etc.
–Try to visit a some different types of schools.
–Consider what your child wants in a college. Anything he/she cares about is fair game. A few ideas of questions to ask him/her are: What size school do you like? Do you want Greek Life? Do you care about big time sports? What type of location (not just geographic, but also rural/urban/suburban) do you prefer? What do you want to study?
BTW it sounds like you did a fine job with your older child as he has really nice options.
@happy1 thank you for your feedback. I never considered asking the first kid what he thought of it all and what he found good and bad about our decisions. Finances are definitely a factor as is usually the case. So I am looking to do a better job of running the NPC’s at some possible schools. I thought my first son would be a shoe in for a few schools which he was not! Going through that and spending time on this board has rewired my thought process in that regard so I really want to focus on target schools for my daughter, what they are, I am not sure how to gauge. She is much stronger academically and EC wise and I dont want to over or under reach. Naviance is a neat tool we need to play with waaaay more!