<p>There are some really good ideas in this thread, but I'd like to take the discussion in a slightly different direction for a moment and talk about practicalities.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You and your child need to know your high school's deadlines for completing college application paperwork as well as the colleges' deadlines. Often, the high school deadline is four to six weeks earlier than the college deadline. Your child may think that he or she has until the end of Christmas vacation to decide which colleges to apply to, but in fact, he may need to make the commitments before Thanksgiving to meet his high school's requirements. </p></li>
<li><p>As soon as your child has even a tentative idea of where he or she is applying -- even if the list will be shortened later -- either you or your child needs to get on each college's Web site and find out exactly what the college's standardized testing requirements are. Sometimes, people find out too late that a particular college requires SAT Subject Tests in addition to the ACT, for example, or that a specific program within the college requires an SAT Subject Test in a particular field (such as math or science), which the student did not take. There is still time to take an additional standardized test or two, but the student would need to sign up for it quite soon.</p></li>
<li><p>If your child has not already lined up his or her teacher recommendations, he or she should talk to the teachers as soon as possible after school starts (not the first two or three days of school, when everyone is going nuts about schedule problems, but as soon as possible after that). Check the requirements of the colleges that your child plans to apply to, but in general, two teacher recommenders from different academic subject areas will be enough. (A few schools, such as the University of Chicago, are more specific, though, about what teachers they want.) Some teachers set quotas on how many recommendations they will write each year (one of my daughter's teachers had a limit of 10 per year because she had limited free time!). Your child doesn't want to miss the opportunity of getting a recommendation from a favorite teacher because the teacher had already fulfilled his or her quota.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And to get back to the general thrust of this thread:</p>
<p>Remind your child NEVER to say bad things about the flagship state university in front of his classmates. Many of them will end up there -- possibly including some of the smartest people in the class, who will likely receive large merit scholarships. Remind your child that some people need big scholarships either because 1) their families have little money, or 2) they don't want to go into debt at all as undergraduates because they anticipate having to borrow money for medical or law school later. (Counting Down, you will be amazed at the credentials of some of the kids who will end up at UMCP. Those Banneker-Key full-ride scholarships are hard to turn down.)</p>
<p>My advice would be to not project ahead of the game. It may seem good to wish yourself to the point of an already-made decision, but that means you aren't enjoying and engaged in this time with your student. Spend every minute with them that they will bestow upon you, and enjoy them!</p>
<p>Here's another vote for having an EA strategy. A student should apply to 2-3 early action or rolling schools; safety schools are fine. This will pace the flow of applications by getting a few out of the way, and will give him or her some early practice for the regular admissions round. Furthermore, it relieves the stress of "not knowing," which can ruin Christmas vacation for everyone in the house. Finally, it will cut down on the total number of applications and fees - there won't be any applications written in desperation on December 31st.</p>
<p>My second tip is to have your student use the much-improved organizer on collegeboard.com Colleges are selected for "the list," and the site posts their deadline information and more to the students account. Very neat! A printed version of this would be helpful to both students and parents - for parents, it's good to know when an application frenzy is about to descend.</p>
<p>Get organized about SAT/SAT II/ACT testing ASAP. Don't leave anything but retakes to the late months. Getting tests out the way is another great stress reliever.</p>
<p>Keep a journal of ideas and rough drafts for essays. </p>
<p>My oldest son's friends agreed to not discuss college plans when they were together as a group. It gave them all a refuge from the pressure.</p>
<p>It is stressed over and over on this site to be sure that you have viable safety schools that you are willing to attend. I absolutely agree, and I concur with the plan of applying to rolling admissions/ EA schools if at all possible. An early acceptance does lessen the stress.</p>
<p>I will also add that you should NOT let someone talk you out of trying for your dream. ("What? No one gets into Princeton...") It is important to temper your reach school(s) with reality, but people do get in. Apply to your dream school (if it's financially feasible) and then forget about it and move on to your other schools. This worked for both my daughter and her best friend. They never expected to be where they ended up (at different schools.)</p>
<p>Understand also, that students that do not get into their ED schools also wind up happy where they are. For most kids once they are on campus they don't remember if it was their first, second, third choice, etc.</p>
<p>Apply to matches (EA and rolling). Apply to safeties. Apply to reaches.</p>
<p>Know that you can bloom in any of the above.</p>
<p>And: make sure you apply to your dream school, regardless of into which category it falls! </p>
<p>S did (though no one at his HS had even applied within anyone's memory) and was surprised and thrilled that, not only was he accepted, the aid package he received made it accessible.</p>
<p>Marian --
Oh, we know all about the lure of B/K! DS has a couple of friends attending on B/Ks and they are absolutely amazing guys. Turned down a list of uber-elites that would make your head spin. Most of his close friends who graduated this spring are going to UMD, many with $$$. UMD knows how to court these kids and it pays off handsomely for all.</p>
<p>Just thought of another bit of advice: try really hard not to let every conversation you have with your child in the fall of his or her senior year be about college. One of my daughter's young friends told me that his parents were allowed to ask him 3 college related questions per day. Someone else suggested half an hour of college talk per day (seems like a lot to me) and then the subject must change. Personally, I found that a mild addiction to CC enabled me to obsess without pestering my daughter. I like to think that I did much of the worrying for her.</p>
<p>Things I learned from our college application process last year: 1.) Ask your child with what level of confidentiality they want YOU to treat their applications. If they don't want the world to know where they're applying, and they don't want you to tell, you need to respect that. It is PERFECTLY for you to say, at a cocktail party or coffee that "Jr. is aplying to a number of liberal arts schools" or "S/he seems to really like Western schools" or "S/he asked me to keep it confidential" or whatever. A (more) PUBLIC (than necessary) acceptance is great. but a (more) public acceptance/rejection (than necessary) blows. 2.) Don't ask your kids' friends who are seniors where specifically they are applying. You can wish them luck, sympathize with the workload, offer cookies/support/whatever, but when an adult asks a kid who would really rather not say where they've fallen head-over-heels with, because they're stressed about it, often the kid thinks he has to tell the adult. S/he doesn't. They're being asked right and left, and it just raises the stress level. The same goes for parents of seniors--if you're a good friend, you might tell them you know its a stressful time for them, and are happy to be a sounding board, or give them your experience, without imposing on them/their child. I'm sure there are more, but these are the first two.</p>
<p>The opening post gave me a giggle. College apps were NOT the foremost thing on my son's mind when he was with friends -- far from it! I'm grateful that he took his applications seriously and he's off to a good fit this fall. </p>
<p>I think one of the things that does make the senior year so hard is that there are so many things to think about that are more immediate than what happens a year later. There's tests, parties, sports, projects, homecoming, tournaments, sweethearts, breakups, video games, movies, plays, and the lawn that still needs mowing. Oh, and sleep. It's kinda amazing that they get applications done at all . . .</p>
<p>have them start the application process as soon as possible. they'll be suprised at how much work and time is involved in applying to colleges. also do not limit their choices based on financial considerations. you might be suprised at how generous some colleges are.</p>