<p>Check out St Joe’s in Philly as a lot of kids like it. We’ll be looking at it for S4.</p>
<p>fall of junior year my kid did not have a list … through the year she developed an idea of fit (city/suburban/college town … big/small … etc) and took enough tests that her academic fit became more clear. Then in the spring she had an initial list and we visited a bunch of the schools while making sure there was mix along a lot of the fit dimensions … and after the trip solidified a lot of her prefrences she got serious about a preliminary list.</p>
<p>D, a hs junior, has not yet fully engaged the search process. After struggling for two years at a large, chaotic, uber-compet magnet-type school, she has found a soft-landing at a small, nurturing, alternative, hippie-ish school filled w/ kindred spirits (D has swatches of pink hair and a nose-ring - - and always lobbying for more piercings). </p>
<p>Happily, as part of the college search process, D will take 3-4 multi-college visit with her advisory group. I’m certain D will enjoy these more than the 2 schools (UVM - - mini-vacay; Bennington - - b/c it was there) she visited with me this summer.</p>
<p>We’ll be taking at least a couple of mini-vacations to visit southern schools (Guilford, Elon, High Point, UNC-Asheville, Hendrix, Hampton, Howard, Agnes Scott, Spellman, Ogelthorpe) We’ll also be checking out MA (Hampshire, Clark), and if D will consider the mid-West: Earlham and Wooster.</p>
<p>Zoozer and cpt: I thought Manhattanville looked very interesting, but I was worried that, with its proximity to NYC, the campus will empty out on weekends. What’s your take on this?</p>
<p>foolishpleasure, since you looking in NC, you might also consider looking at Queens University of Charlotte. I have heard some nice things about this school.</p>
<p>Foolish, it does empty more than I like. That is an issue with many NYC area schools. It is impossible to compete with Manhattan.</p>
<p>I thought D took the PSAT last year as a sophomore. Am I confused? Do many juniors take the PSAT? I just registered her for her first SAT. PSAT was pretty dismal so we’re really scaling down the level of colleges we visit, something I didn’t do with my oldest. His SAT/ACTs eventually increased, but not by the leaps and bounds we were hoping. Many of the schools he visited ended up being huge reaches. With D, I like the idea of giving her a goal this year. She will have a pretty good idea of the GPA and test score she needs to get in at these schools.</p>
<p>the only PSAT score that counts is from the junior year. Students learn so much in a year, they could totally improve by a lot. </p>
<p>As such, we don’t have a full list yet other than PHYS + state U.</p>
<p>Thanks NEmom and cpt.</p>
<p>(NEmom, I think we’ve discussed Queens Univ., which I believe is about 80% female. It did look like a good school, but I think D would prefer either a more balanced co-ed school or women’s college.)</p>
<p>The list here is still being refined a little bit. All the possibles are research universities with strong math and computer science programs (through a Ph.D. degree in either subject, in most cases) in large metropolitan areas. </p>
<p>The safety is lined up for sure. It’s good enough that many of my son’s local friends don’t think of applying anywhere else. </p>
<p>My son has two far-off colleges that HE likes particularly well, for his reasons, that are both reachy for almost anyone. The art of refining the list is figuring out what to stick on the list between the safety and the two favored reaches. </p>
<p>Good luck to all the class of 2010 applicants.</p>
<p>Hi toledo,
My understanding is that all juniors take the PSAT’s. Did your high school hand out the PSAT packet, which would have included a practice test as well as general information about the exam?</p>
<p>We finally got Naviance data for S2’s school, so we have a little better sense of how he stands in relation to his classmates. It doesn’t look like the guidance office hounds the seniors as much as S1’s school for admissions data, as there are not as many data points from some schools as I would have expected. </p>
<p>DH took him out to visit seven NE schools in early August and liked three, two of which will likely be top choices. This process gave us a bit more insight as to what he does/doesn’t like before we expand our travel itinerary. The next part of the plan is to have him do research online to find more schools that share characteristics with the schools he liked so we can eliminate/add possibilities that are floating around in our heads, but for which we have little on-the-ground intelligence.</p>
<p>He has identified four schools as likely admits; all offer merit $$ in various shapes and forms. I doubt he will apply to all four – that depends on how the rest of the list shapes up. He is solidly in target range at some excellent mid-size universities, but the difficulty is that he will be competing against folks with stronger records who are likely to end up elsewhere. He’ll need to demonstrate that these schools are indeed where he wants to be. (He has decided that Dartmouth is the only Ivy to which he’ll consider applying.) Again, it will be all about the essays, essays, essays. </p>
<p>In summary, he doesn’t have a “list” yet, but he does have a sense of direction, and that is a big improvement since June.</p>
<p>D still doesn’t have much of a list. We took a little college tour this summer and visited 4 schools, and she liked them all. Unfortunately, every school she’s expressed interest in is a big reach (for everyone) and the only safeties she has are SUNYs. She definitely has some research to do!</p>
<p>Catholic colleges offer a good midrange between safeties and reaches, and if your kid has good stats, merit dollars are often available.</p>
<p>My junior fell head over heels for Sarah Lawrence College thanks to a teacher of his who is an alum and feels my son would be perfect fit. On one hand, it was very nice for the teacher to reach out to him. On the other hand, SLC is 53K a year and they do not offer merit aid. So we’ve deemed it the “one in a million” because academically he should get in but financially we need a “one in a million” senario to afford it.</p>
<p>Out of nessicity, we’ve helped him find some other schools to consider. So far he’s looking at UT Austin, UMASS Amherst and SUNY Purchase. </p>
<p>I had really hoped to put this off for a little longer!</p>
<p>D’s school asks that students have the start of a list when they start Junior year, but the curriculum is also designed to help them with that during the year. D already has a general list, and a specific goal: she wants to say no to RISD. 
A lot of what she’s done for the past year is focus on what sort of school is a good match for her goals. Parsons is out, Otis is in. </p>
<p>Our family has to plan early because I can’t afford a lot of travel to schools; the travel the children do for college search has to be spread out over more than a year. So D has to have a strong list to be able to visit one early next year. Then there’s the matter of Portfolio Day – since she can only see 6-7 schools when that happens in January, she needs to know <em>then</em> who she’s most interested in, not next fall. </p>
<p>Both of my children had a strong sense of what they wanted in a school by the end of sophomore year, and we had a good sense of what their stats were. My son’s last SAT was in January of Junior year. My daughter’s school choices aren’t looking for SAT, and we can pretty much see what her GPA will be like in 18 months, because of the track of her coursework.</p>
<p>I think with the first child it’s all new to the family, which college is the perfect fit. Over the summer when we took our rising senior D, we took along her 11-year old sister. Who, by the 6th college said, “I know what type of college I want” and her eyes lit up when we visited one schools Film and Production class. So i think by the time she’s a sophmore or a junior, she’ll be way ahead of the game than when we started with D #1.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info on the PSAT. Maybe I jumping the gun by signing up for the SAT so soon. Now she’s going to kill me, as she’ll have both tests back to back.</p>
<p>As a very general rule, Toledo, I have seen that kids do better when they are older and have more school under their belts on the SAT. The PSAT can point out the weak areas that the kid can work on before the SAT.</p>
<p>I was going to agree with the “way too early” poster but it is so exciting, particularly with your oldest. I strong-armed him into a couple of visits as a hs junior because we were going to be in the area, but, in hindsight, it really could have waited til his senior year. If the kid is excited and wants to explore as a junior, great! However, I’ve told my current hs junior that unless he has a burning desire to get going on the search, I don’t want to hear the word “college” for another year.</p>
<p>My DD '10-er came home with a huge packet of college info from school yesterday. </p>
<p>Of course, since it was a teacher talking about college, DD couldn’t get enough of it (doesn’t want to hear much from good 'ole MSUDad)</p>