Best Advice: Do not have a “first choice” school. Even if you do, do NOT tell anyone what it is. Tell everyone you will be happy to go to any of the schools you are applying to.
Why should you tell people information that will make them feel sorry for you if you “only” get into your 2nd choice. Even in your own head, try to keep a lid on that dream school idea.
@ beenthereanddone – can I ask what was so awful about (2) info sessions at Dickinson? I am really hopeful that is a nice fit for my kid, and shudder a little to think that he could get turned off by the info session. I know there is so much more than that, but at 17, they can be rather unyielding.
Best info session: Boston College.
Worst info session: Boston College.
Best tours: University of Delaware, Northeastern, NYU, University of Maryland
Worst tours: Boston College, Boston University, Stony Brook, George Washington University
Best info sessions: Tufts, Northeastern, NYU, University of Maryland
Worst info sessions: BC and Johns Hopkins (by far JHU was the worst)
Best Advice: Finish up your essays early and try both the ACT and SAT
Worst Advice: Only take the SAT two times at most, don’t bother taking the ACT because colleges look down on it, don’t bother applying early decision because you can’t afford $60k/year
Best parts of the process: Touring colleges and getting to know myself and my interests better
Worst parts: Stressful days spent staring at blank Word documents, waiting anxiously to hear back from colleges about scholarships/financial aid packages, trying to tell my parents to leave me alone at some points because they were becoming a bit too intrusive
My advice for Juniors and other underclassmen: Go to every college with an open mind and try to keep everything in the perspective of where you see yourself in two or three years. It’s easy to view yourself as a Junior in high school who’s suddenly transported to college, but that’s not necessarily how it will be. Don’t shut yourself out of college choices that may be good fits for everything else, just because you don’t like one specific aspect of it. I went to Johns Hopkins thinking it was going to be my favorite, and I traveled to Boston for three days expecting to really want to go to BC or BU.
Best Tours: Penn, Duke and Belmont Abbey
Worst Tours: Alabama was the absolute worst (my son and I got back to our car, turned to each other and said “hate it”), a distant second was Princeton
Best Info Sessions: Lehigh, Syracuse, Seton Hall
Worst Info Sessions: Princeton (“we reject most of the valedictorians who apply and even if you get in, we don’t give much aid so you probably can’t afford it”) and Texas A&M because we couldn’t get into the session. We registered and drove almost three hours to College Station but they overbooked. The turned us away at the door but “welcomed” us to do a do-it-yourself walking tour and to attend a session in Houston.
Best admitted Students event: Syracuse Own the Dome
Worst admitted Students event: at a Service Academy which I won’t name to protect the service.
Best Advice received: Look into SAT IIs and figure out best time to take them keeping in mind that they are on the same dates as SATIs
Worst Advice received: Private colleges are more expensive than in state flagships so consider them financial reach schools
Best internet find (other than CC, of course): one of the searches where you can narrow to schools where your students stats will have stats that attract merit aid
Best book for carry around reference: Princeton Review Best 379 Colleges
Best Tours: Ohio State, Chapel Hill, Virginia Tech
Worst Tour: University of Maryland
Best Advise: Make sure you can afford OOS schools before you visit them and spend a lot of money. Also work on your essays over the summer before school starts so you have a lot of time to think the essays through.
Best advice: Study for SAT1 during summer between soph and jr year and take both SAT and PSAT in the fall of Jr year. This way, you study only 1 time for 2 tests, and testing does not interfere with midterms, finals, or AP tests.
Best tour: MIT (although my D didn’t apply there), RISD (personal tour from a family friend), SAIC (tour went over the allotted time slot by about an hour)
Worst tour: n/a
Best info session: n/a
Worst info session: Harvard (the students they provided didn’t seem to want to be there at all)
Best accepted students event: Princeton, NYU Abu Dhabi, SAIC
Worst accepted students event: RISD
Best advice: take both SAT and ACT; appeal financial awards
Worst advice: go for the name school
Worst advice: No need start working on your essays the summer before your senior year in HS.
Best advice: Don’t fall in love with one school.
Best tour: William & Mary (our guide was a riot – think David Sedaris)
Worst tour: Centre (guide must have been either new or very reserved; although we were the only family on the tour, she never tried to learn about D’s interests to personalize tour and was so low-energy it was hard to maintain our initial excitement about being there)
Best info session: Sewanee (recent alum spoke very movingly about his experience, and we were seated at a conference table – very engaging)
Worst info session: Vanderbilt (ad com put students on the spot by going around the room asking each one questions and then announced that none of them were likely to be admitted anyway)
In general, although D had a happy outcome, we should have started everything earlier. A little test prep the summer before her junior year might have made the difference between Commended and NMSF or NMF status.
In our case, I wish had a college process. The schools don’t prep the kids at all, and if you haven’t been through the process yourself, you have no knowlege to guide you.
DD19 was a FAFSA only school, local. DS17 was much more difficult, because we could not find any affordable options for him locally in engineering. Luckily he was high enough stats to get full tuition scholarships. I was literally shaking when we looked at his ACT scores, he needed a 32.
DD14. I am going to have her prep for the PSAT, which I had never even heard of before. She will need to prep for the math. She is also in the honors/AP track in highschool. She will also prep for the SAT & ACT.
I dunno, in a sense, the “worst tour” may, in an ironic way, been one of the best - I won’t name it, but it’s widely considered the pinnacle of LAC’s - to recap
Arrived on a Saturday to see what appeared to be the entire faculty down on the main drag, holding a protest of some kind. The admissions office itself was locked up, and no one in sight - considering we actually flew in for this, didn’t give up easy, and hung around hoping someone would show up. Finally, after about 45 minutes, two guides showed up, both apologizing profusely, both appearing much the worse for wear.
Since the admissions office was locked up and unstaffed, we had to settle for a tour - no “info” session, though it was supposed to be available. The tour progressed into a messy-beyond-belief dorm, where we were greeted by the stench of stale beer and sick and some very hung-over and angry students, put out at being disturbed… Embarrassed, we were rushed out, proceeded to the dining facility, where the students on the tour were the recipients of quite a number of contemptuous looks, like “You’ll never get in here dressed like that.” Went through an empty student activity center, where posters on the wall seemed to indicate the primary activities at the school were sexual in nature. Were shown the outside of instructional buildings, but never went into any of them. And the point was made, early and often, that if they didn’t have a class you wanted there, you could take courses at nearby institutions - obviously meant as a positive, they said it so many times, it became a big negative. There were similar other things of that nature - things were said that sounded positive, but on reflection, were kind of defensive, and seemed designed to cover some shortcoming.
That tour took “Dream School” entirely off the application list - which is why it might’ve been the “best” in an ironic way - had DD applied and accepted, might’ve attended just based on reputation - and it seems that would’ve been a disaster.
Best tours: Williams, William and Mary - both gave a good sense of what the schools were about and what it would be like to live and study there, and the feel was relaxed and humorous and self-deprecating and personal. Perhaps more than any other tours, we saw students, engaged in studying, socializing, recreating, and gave a vibe of friendliness and intellect and contentment. That kind of thing might be totally random; but those two schools stick out in my memory more for the students we encountered than anything we were told on tour or in an info session.
Best advice: Maybe not “best” advice - but when it comes to tours and visits, visit some mid-range schools you’re probably not that interested in first - after awhile, you’ll learn what questions to ask, will learn what’s important to know, and will come to realize that every school in the country thinks they offer the “best” study abroad program…