Thank you Dave_Berry and soozievt! I was so excited when I found out, because no one from my family had ever gone to college and no one from my high school and ever been accepted to an Ivy League before, so everyone I knew was pretty much thrilled.
However, it's tougher when no one has much advice for you. Books can help a lot, because even if your parents
did go to college, the college admissions process is always changing and always becoming more competitive so it's different for each generation of applicants.
And whoever said these books are "cheap(ish)" isn't really thinking about the big picture. Sure, they may cost $20-30 each (which isn't cheap to me), but think of how we might need! At lease one for the ACT or SAT I, one for each SAT II subject test they're taking (competitive colleges can require three), one for the whole application process, and maybe a Princeton review on the nation's best colleges if your child is undecided, or even one for tips on writing college essays. I mean, the books can rack up a lot of cash!
The best thing to do is throw some of these books in amidst the normal, fun presents. Unless you have a really bratty kid, most of us won't mind and will even be thankful. Because no matter how stressful the college process is, it still reminds us that we're taking the next exciting step in our lives! We don't completely hate it... we might even like it a little.
P.S. Dave_Berry, I've convinced my mom to spring for a Sony Vaio laptop in Cosmopolitan Pink. I know it's expensive, but everybody needs one when they go off to college (and pink's my favorite color!), and since my mom's all excited that I got accepted into Yale she's temporarily delusional and told me that I could get whichever laptop I wanted.
