<p>Do you families of 11th graders have a preliminary list that you’re working off of to see where to go and end up with a final list? </p>
<p>Daughter has a list of about 13 schools to explore and her plan is to work her way through as much of it as she can. </p>
<p>What other plans do other families have?</p>
<p>S has a list right now of two reaches, two safeties and three matches to which he’ll probably apply. I know in the next year he’ll be looking at more places.</p>
<p>We have a list - but in part it is designed to help her find out what she really wants. For example - school size - until you have been to a few it is tough for a suburban student to know which she prefers. So in building the list, one of the things we are doing is trying to make sure we visit a range of schools to help narrow down the criteria. As an example, we will be going up to Seattle and will visit both UW and Seattle Pacific.</p>
<p>We have no list of any sort. Until my kid has at least retaken the PSAT I don’t even know what we can look at. He claims that he learned a lot of PSAT right after the test last year. His sophomore year PSAT scores were V-70, M-56, W-55. His grades last year varied from 100 (Orchestra), to a 88 in AP Global (but he got a 5 on the exam), an 83 in Honors English and an 84 in Latin. His weighted GPA so far is 92.3. His only real EC is Science Olympiad - he’s never won a medal in any event. He does play the violin and has private lessons, but he’s no virtuoso. He’s very smart, but has trouble memorizing material. He hasn’t got a clue what he wants to do when he grows up. History is usually his best course. I’m think perhaps Vassar or a place like it will be at the top end of his list and the CTCL’s places will be scrutinized as well.</p>
<p>Nope, nothing yet, just very general terms (‘northeast’ ‘far from home’)</p>
<p>we are going to college fairs/visits when we are able to and hope that hearing about a lot of schools will give her an idea of what she wants. At this point, without standardized test scores, we don’t feel we can really put schools on The List yet.</p>
<p>Just a verbal list right now. Not rushing it, since much will evolve based on stats and scores this year. S2 will be visiting ND for a football game in Nov. with H & FIL, which might generate some excitement; we’ll plan serious visits for the spring and next summer. And he’s already seen local CT and Boston area schools anyways in our travels.</p>
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<p>Exactly. S knows he wants a mid- to large-size school with rah-rah sports. So there are some state U’s he definitely wants to look at, but until we have some scores he can’t really do reach/match/safety.</p>
<p>I’ve given Son a starter list of 36 schools. The list came from a bunch of criteria he’s mentioned off-handedly in recent months. </p>
<p>Son’s mission is to take that starter list and change it into something he likes by Valentine’s Day. He is expected to add several more schools and rule-out lots. By the deadline, we hope to have a good list of 12 - 15 schools to visit. </p>
<p>Last night he registered for the December SAT II. When the reg asked where he wanted to send scores, I was pleasantly surprised that he was able to pull some names off the top of his head: Lafayette, Cornell, Elon, and St. Mary’s. Those are probably 2 reaches and 2 matches, but, what the hey. At least he had names.</p>
<p>Do y’all expect that your kids’ PSAT scores will change that much? My son’s done a couple of SAT practice tests and that, combined with last year’s PSAT, I feel like he has a pretty good handle on where he stands in that regard.</p>
<p>fall of junior year and already making lists? Waaaaay too early. </p>
<p>You (should be your kid!) in most cases will not know enough yet to make a list of any meaning. And I am not just thinking about academic issues like HS GPA/rank and SAT scores. What about LAC versus university? City/suburban/rural? Large/small? </p>
<p>If I were you, I would spend more time thinking about fit at this point, and trying to get to know a range of colleges. This implies visits if time and money allow, lots of reading otherwise. </p>
<p>FWIW, my D’s list did not come together until early fall of her senior year. We were visiting colleges up until the end of the summer, and it had a huge impact regarding where she applied. Things she thought she’d love spring of her junior year (the first time she even thought a bit about a list) she did not love later. </p>
<p>Juniors have so much to worry about, especially because junior year grades are so critical and testing comes up in the spring (not to mention AP exams for some…) that I think too much pressure on a list can backfire.</p>
<p>JMHO.</p>
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<p>You lost me. How could you start visits before you had any lists?</p>
<p>The list my son is working on will lead to our plan/schedule of visits.</p>
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Well, yeah, because in our school it is a rare sophomore who takes the PSAT. And I agree with newmassdad…we really want our son to enjoy HS and not just see it as a stepping tone to college. I think there’s plenty of time to generate lists and plan those visits for late spring or summer of 2009. With S1, we were visiting colleges well into senior year.</p>
<p>My daughter’s list is about making visits, too. Hubby works most weekends, so scheduling has to be done carefully and pretty far in advance. We’re now up to seeing if we can work out anything for late January/early February. She’s seen only a couple so far. I don’t really anticipate visiting many/any schools in fall of senior year, and hubby’s work schedule makes the summer a complete no-go.</p>
<p>Her school requires the PSAT as a freshman and a sophomore, so there wasn’t any choice!</p>
<p>DB, </p>
<p>We did visits to sample places, without thinking about them being on the final list. As a matter of fact, some places we visited I knew there was little chance D would ever like, but it provided reference points for her. </p>
<p>You might want to go back and read the original post, which talked about a preliminary list leading to a final list.</p>
<p>OK, newmassdad, I understand a little better now. And, it looks like your idea of a “prelim list” in the spring of junior year is roughly equivalent to the “valentines list” we’ll be working from.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, like zoosermom, work schedules and other commitments will greatly impair our ability to make visits during the fall of 12th grade. August 14 is pretty much the end of exploration for him. After that the focus turns to apps. </p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>newmassdad, it’s precisely because we don’t want college talk to dominate his junior year that we decided to get a jump on visits this past summer. Our thinking was we’d visit places while we were out of town. This would inform the kinds of things he needed to do to get into the kinds of places he wants to get into. I think it’s less stressful for him cuz he already has a good idea of where he is reasonably assured he can get in, and he likes those places. And it crossed some possibilities off the list, so no more thinking goes into those places.</p>
<p>Also, there will be almost no visits during the school year – maybe spring break – and who knows what will happen next summer? We jumped while the getting was good. But to each his own!</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay makes a great point. For my particular daughter, she needs to have a plan and be working toward it. That’s just the way she is. Her psyche requires her to have a pretty good idea of what tests she’ll need to take and when; she also needs to have a target GPA. It just makes her feel in control. She’s having a great junior year so far and I hope that she’ll do what her sister did, which was to have her apps done by the first day of senior year so she can enjoy every minute of that.</p>
<p>I left out the word Math in my post up there. I think his math PSAT score is likely to improve by a lot. Perhaps as much as 100 points, but I could be completely off base - he did some practice SAT this summer and was doing pretty well, but never told me how his raw scores might translate. He may also be a kid who is better off taking the ACT and we’ll look into that. He’s very good at multiple choice not so good at the fill-in math. He’s good at math, but slow because he can’t remember formulas and frequently has to rederive things.</p>
<p>In our case, the “list” is more of a “trying to figure out what she likes” than a let’s pick this school over that school. We are going to visit a handful of schools - big, small, urban, rural, LAC, non-LAC, catholic, non-religous, public, private just so that when she starts to make a real list she has something to go by. Otherwise, she has been to so few colleges that she would have no basis for making a list - and all of them look good on the websites and in their printed materials…</p>