Helping your kid navigate the college admissions process

Parents Forum
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I did a presentation at my kids’ high school yesterday to parents, talking about stuff we learned while helping our HS Class of 2024 grad navigate the college admissions process.

Am including some of the de-identified information here in case it might be helpful to other parents who are confused and stressed about the whole process.

Listen to the college counselors’ advice at school:

  • attend info sessions they might offer during the school year
  • schedule 1-on-1 meetings w/1 of them if you have a lot of specific questions about your student

Encourage your student to explore their interests in high school!

  • And expect their interests to change. This is normal.

Don’t panic if your student brings home a bad grade.

  • ask for help at school.
  • ask to meet w/teachers after school.
  • ask for a peer tutor.
  • try to guide your student to embrace the concept of resilience. Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude.

Remember:

  • on college apps, ‘leadership qualities’ doesn’t only mean “I was president of XYZ club.” There’s a lot of other ways to demonstrate leadership.
  • it’s OK if your child is undecided on a major or changes their mind on a major.

Determine what your family can afford to pay per year.

  • This amount might be different than what the college thinks you can afford to pay.
  • Use Net Price Calculator tools on each college’s website to get an estimate of what they’d expect you to pay.

Identify the ‘must have’s’ for your student/your family. For example:

  • nowhere “with a bunch of snow in the winter”
  • nowhere “in a big city like NYC” (this was a criteria for our D24)
  • distance from home requirements/limitations

If you know the college is out of your budget range:

  • DON’T PUT IT ON THE LIST.
  • DON’T VISIT THAT COLLEGE.
  • DON’T CAVE TO PEER PRESSURE from your friends, your relatives, your neighbors, your child’s friends.
  • IGNORE people when they say, “But what about ‘Fancy School?’ How come your kid isn’t going to ‘Fancy School?’”

Use info on colleges’ Common Data Set.

Browse through colleges’ websites.
This is a good opportunity to guide your student in how to find information on a college’s website.

Watch college tour videos on Youtube.

  • this is a helpful way to get a general idea of what the campus looks like before you do an in person visit.

Listen to the Your College Bound Kid Podcast.

  • new episodes every Mon & Thurs. We learn something new every week!

If the college doesn’t have your kid’s desired major, DON’T PUT THE COLLEGE ON THE LIST!

  • EVEN if it’s a Fancy School.

Don’t fill the list full of Lottery Schools/Fancy Schools.

  • this is a great way to end up not getting accepted ANYWHERE.
  • make sure you have a balanced list of colleges your kid is going to apply to.
  • you make THINK that your kid’s perfect grades & perfect test scores, or their valedictorian status, will make them a sure thing for a “top 25 US News & World Report ranked college,” but, for example, the Ivy League colleges could fill their entire incoming freshman classes with kids with those stats. Literally 10s of thousands of students just like that. I’m sorry to say, but perfect grades & test scores aren’t enough to get into a Fancy School.
  • instead, change your mindset to one of finding the right fit. What fits for 1 kid won’t fit for your kid.

continued in next post…

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If your student is pre-health/pre-med:

  • consider some Colleges That Change Lives schools.
  • many have excellent merit scholarships and good track records of students getting accepted to health professions’ grad schools.
  • www.ctcl.org.

But what if YOU had your heart set on ‘Lottery School,’ but your kid’s favorite is NOT a Lottery School?

  • You may be wondering, "What am I going to say to people when they look at me funny and ask, ‘Why is your kid going there?’
  • Guide your student to own and be proud of their decision.
  • Have a quick elevator speech to give people when they ask that question.
  • For example: “Son/daughter is excited about going to Univ of New Mexico this fall. He/she is a film major and did you know that Netflix has a huge studio right next to campus? The film majors regularly get internships there at Netflix and Netflix hires UNM film grads all the time. It’s a great opportunity!”
  • I GUARANTEE YOU that if you say it with CONFIDENCE, then the person who sneered at you will then turn around and say, “Oh, interesting! Tell me more about that.”

FINANCIAL AID:

  • financial aid is NOT THE SAME as merit scholarships.
  • some colleges do NOT hand out any scholarships and ONLY give out need-based financial aid (NYU is a good example). This means at a school like that, if your family does not qualify (based on FAFSA and/or CSS profile) for financial aid, THEY’RE NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU ANY FREE MONEY. NO discounts on tuition, fees, room & board.

College Essay Guy

  • www.collegeessayguy.com
  • also has a Youtube channel and podcast
  • he has several ~5 min short writing exercises designed to get your personal statement essay writing juices flowing.
  • our HS senior used a lot of those and found it to be really helpful.

DON’T TALK ABOUT COLLEGE ALL OF THE TIME!

  • Pick 1 15-min time slot a week to talk college w/your kid.
  • ONLY talk about college during that time slot.
  • It’ll keep you & your student from driving each other bananas through the process.

The same major at different colleges can have slightly different course requirements:

  • info about this can be found on college’s department websites or in the college’s course catalog.
  • This is a good task to give to your student.
  • Give them a spreadsheet to fill out. Have them look up & document the required courses for ONE major at ONE college per week.
  • this would be something good to start looking at in latter half of junior year, in my personal opinion.

General ed requirements are not the same everywhere:

  • does your kid want a more open curriculum (like at Brown)?
  • or something more specific like at Jesuit universities?
  • or something in between?
  • have your student look this up on colleges’ websites.

When going on college tours:

  • don’t have the 1st tour be to a Lottery School.
  • pick a college closer to home 1st. Go in with the attitude of “we’re just going to see what A college looks like.”
  • AFTER THE TOUR IS DONE: do NOT share your opinion right away. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Ask your child what he/she thinks. And when they say, “Uh, I don’t know,” ask them to name 3 things they liked and 3 things they didn’t like as much. This will shed some light onto what they’re thinking. And it will help you and your child refine the college list better.

Remember:

  • YOU are not the one going to college. Your child is.
  • Your child may feel overwhelmed at times during this process. This is normal to feel this way. this is a marathon, not a sprint. And how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Modern States’ Freshman Year For Free Program:

  • www.modernstates.org
  • you can take up to 8 of their online self-paced courses for free. At the end of the course, once you take and pass a practice CLEP exam, they give you a free voucher, which you then use to register with College Board to take the exam.
  • in-person test centers are usually at universities and community colleges. This usually has a ‘test center fee.’ the test center fee at our local community college was $25.
  • there’s also an option to take the exam online. You’ll need a webcam for this.
  • Will the colleges your kid is applying to give them course credit for passing a CLEP exam? Most public institutions do, even some private colleges.
  • How do you find out if they’ll give credit for a CLEP exam? Go on the college’s website and do a search for “CLEP” or go to CLEP College Credit Policy Search – CLEP | College Board

Helpful books you might want to read:

  • How To Get The Most Out Of College, by Elliot Felix
  • Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success, by Louis E. Newman
  • The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into In College, by Harlan Cohen. NOTE: follow him on Instagram. He has a whole bunch of short reel videos chock full of helpful, practical advice to high school seniors and college students and parents.
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Very nice, @sbinaz!

I’m sure a lot of readers will find this advice very helpful.

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Some additional info:

Create a spreadsheet to keep track of the colleges your kid is interested in. Even better if your kid is the one to create the spreadsheet, but that might be like pulling teeth if your child is like mine was.

Top row of spreadsheet would have 1 column for each college.
Far left column would have 1 row for each of the following data points:

  • location (city)
  • setting (urban, suburban, college town, rural, remote)
  • total # of undergrads
  • % living on campus
  • COA (cost of attendance)
  • COA after merit scholarships and/or financial aid (which you’d estimate by using the Net Price Calculator)
  • majors of interest
  • % admitted
  • GPA profile of admitted students - sometimes this is an average #, sometimes it’s a range
  • mid-50% SAT/ACT of admitted students (this is available in the Common Data Set)
  • app factors deemed to be Very Important, Important, Considered, Not Considered - this data available in Common Data Set
  • is it a Reach, Target, or Likely school?
  • app deadlines
  • are test scores required?
  • does the school ‘super score’ test scores?
  • app fee
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Remember: If your child doesn’t get accepted to a Lottery School, it’s going to be ok!

(I didn’t include this next part in the presentation, but this is something we did after all of the acceptances & financial aid packages came in and it was time to make a decision on where The Child would attend):

  1. those ‘must have’s’ or decision factors that you & your child came up with earlier in the process? Get those out of your memory/storage.
  2. Have your child rate each of those decision factors in terms of priority or importance (high, medium, low).
  3. Priority of High gets a weight of 5. Med = 3. Low = 1.
  4. Now for each of those decision factors, have your child give the college a score for each of those. The score would be in a range of 1-5, with 5 being the highest.
  5. multiply score * priority = final score for that decision factor.
  6. do this for each decision factor for ONE of the colleges your child got into.
  7. add up all of the decision factors’ final scores for that ONE college. This will give you a final score for that college.
  8. Repeat all of the above for College #2, #3, etc.
  9. Compare the final scores for all of the colleges he/she got into. See if they kind of line up with where your child’s gut says he/she/they think they want to attend.
  10. YOU as the parent could do this, too. You will get a different score for each college than your child did. That’s ok. When that happens, you compare notes and talk about it.
  11. Doing it this way takes out a lot of the sometimes difficult emotions about the decision making process.

Here’s an example of 3 colleges from my kid this past spring:

Priority (high, medium, or low) Score (1-5, where 5 = highest) Weight
(High = 5, Med = 3, Low = 1)		 Austin College Final score for each criteria Score (1-5, where 5 = highest) Weight
(High = 5, Med = 3, Low = 1)		 Southwestern Final score for each criteria Score (1-5, where 5 = highest) Weight
(High = 5, Med = 3, Low = 1)		 U of A Final score for each criteria
Cost high 4 5 20 3 5 15 4 5 20
Small class sizes high 5 5 25 5 5 25 2 5 10
Strong pre-health program medium 5 3 15 5 3 15 4 3 12
Classes are all in person high 5 5 25 5 5 25 2 5 10
Ease of getting internships, doing research w/profs medium 5 3 15 5 3 15 2 3 6
Not too far away from home high 5 5 25 5 5 25 5 5 25
Not too cold in winter medium 4 3 12 4 3 12 5 3 15
Fun stuff to do on & around campus high 4 5 20 5 5 25 4 5 20
In or near a large suburban or urban area medium 5 3 15 5 3 15 5 3 15
Easy to get to airport to fly home high 5 5 25 5 5 25 5 5 25
Strong PA grad school partnerships medium 5 3 15 3 3 9 1 3 3
Campus safety high 5 5 25 5 5 25 4 5 20
Choir scholarship available for non-music majors low 5 1 5 4 1 4 1 1 1
Final total score 242 235 182

She did end up deciding to attend Austin College and so far, has been very happy there!

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Excellent list!

I might also add (or tweak) the percent admitted column to include the ED or EA vs RD admitted percentage, as for some schools those admitted stats vary by a lot.

And add a column for projected travel costs:

  • for schools that require a plane ride, think about how many times your student will go back and forth and remember that some of those trips will likely be at peak airfare times. Also add in the costs (if needed) of a hotel room, train, cab, etc. along the way if required. Additionally, consider if parent(s) will visit at all during the year ($), or will one or two parents be traveling to move kiddo in the first year, and account for those costs.

  • At the same time, if you’re comparing schools a plane flight away, with schools that are within driving distance, don’t discount the drivable schools as somehow free! They’re likely “not nothing” in gas money, and you are probably still going to be staying in a hotel at some point either at the school or partway along the way. You may also visit more often than you would for schools across the country, and/or your student may go back and forth for shorter breaks, all at some cost.

  • For all schools that are going to require the use of hotels, do consider their local norms and your preferences when thinking about what that will cost, e.g. a school in the middle of rural Iowa will have cheaper hotels nearby than schools in major cities or tourist destinations. There is also peak pricing in some areas (for example, in Walla Walla—which is wine country—fall weekends can be quite expensive; e.g. the non-fancy place I stay at is $140 on a normal day, but it is $340 a night during fall weekends, and in May).

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But note that most schools do not have dedicated college counselors. In many schools, a student has an overworked counselor with hundreds of other students to handle and lots of non-college issues to handle in addition to college preparation and applications.

It does mean that if the student has dedicated college counselors at the school, they are likely a very valuable resource regarding college preparation and applications, an advantage not present at other schools.

Also, if the parents are divorced or separated, check each college as to whether it required both parents’ finances for financial aid. If so, be sure to include both parents’ finances in that college’s net price calculator.

Sometimes more than slightly different, or the curriculum may be organized differently even though the overall content is similar. For example, engineering major programs can vary based on how early engineering design course work is introduced.

In addition, some more specific majors can be found as subareas under more general majors. For example, while some colleges may offer finance or marketing majors, others may offer just a general business major under which students can emphasize finance or marketing within that major.

The College Board’s CLEP (and AP) listings are more likely to be out-of-date or incorrect compared to the listings on the college web site.

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More things for the student to investigate about a major at different colleges:

  • Some majors are quite broad in terms of subareas (examples include biology and history). If the student has particular subareas of interest, it may be worth investigating how well they are covered in the department at each college.
  • In some majors, advanced students can go into considerable depth, including graduate level course work (math being the most common example). If the student is highly advanced in high school in the subject and wants to major in it, investigating the depth of offerings at each college is worth doing.
  • Particularly where the major has small enrollment at the college, investigate how frequently upper level courses in the major are offered. Sometimes, a course’s presence in the catalog may not mean availability to the student if it is offered too rarely for the student to see it while at the college.
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More things to consider about majors, specifically if the student is undecided between some different majors:

  • For each college, how easy or difficult is it for a first year student to make progress on the prerequisites for the different majors, in order to keep options open before deciding? Note that a high volume of general education requirements that do not overlap with major prerequisites may increase the difficulty of making progress for different majors with different prerequisites.
  • For each college, are any of the majors limited access such that declaring or changing into the major after enrolling at the college in a different major or as undeclared requires a high college GPA or competitive admission process? This type of thing is often related to whether applicant can or must apply to a specific major at the college.
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Need based financial aid is not the same as merit aid.

BUT merit aid is a form of financial aid. @BelknapPoint

As noted, some colleges don’t give merit aid at all.

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Our school got one (actually one and a half - one full time one part time) between D19 and my current student at the school. It is definitely a huge difference in the resources available to the students.

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We made a spreadsheet with different criteria, but another thing I had my kid do was to pick 3 majors within engineering and 3 majors that were not engineering for each college. Which definitely worked to our advantage, as soon after we made our initial list, S23 decided not to major in engineering. It was nice not to have to start the list from scratch.

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A few other data points might be helpful. Here are some suggestions:

Travel - information on flight time and number of connections along with ground travel time (can be two different rows/columns)
Guaranteed Housing - number of years for guaranteed dorms
Dorms - if there is some desirable feature such as living learning community, single-sex or something the student liked or did not like about dorms at a particular school
Honors - is there an Honors college/app needed (could be filled in with App with 2 essays and 1 rec, Yes, No with Yes standing for auto-admit into Honors
Fraterrnity/Sorority - Percent of students in frats/sororities
Essays - number of essays and word counts
Weather - could just be a rating from 1-10 or for students with SAD maybe number of sun days or for those who don’t like winter the inches of snow in typical year
Crime - there are sites that offer a numerical ranking or can do a personal ranking based on looking up statistics of surrounding area etc

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Figuring out the travel beforehand is a must. My D goes to a large university in a small town. The airport options are a small regional (with most routes requiring connections) which is 40 minutes from campus, and a large full-service airport about 2.5 hours away.

I can’t tell you how many OOS parents in our parent group don’t consider travel at all until AFTER they have paid the deposit - THEN they panic about how they’re going to get their kids back and forth from campus to these airports. Many incorrectly assume that the university is going to provide transportation for their kids to the airport and then balk at having to pay for a bus or uber. Additionally, if considering a college in a winter weather-impacted area, have a plan. Flights get delayed and canceled for ice & snow, as do buses. Busy travel times occur and Thanksgiving & Christmas, when weather can be an issue.

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If the student is interested, when and how competitive is the joining process? Also, if the campus or particular chapters have been problematic in this area.

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Keep in mind…travel options and costs can change. When our cross country kid started college in 2006, non-stop flights to the airport very close to the college and our house were $200 round trip. By the time she was a junior, they were $400 and none were non-stop. By the time she was a senior, they were $500 round trip.

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Good list.

Maybe add understanding the difference between direct admit vs competitive admit vs holistic admit for majors.

I also recommend applying to one local school. Circumstances change for kids or families.

The next lecture series should be “I have all my admission decisions. How do I pick a school?”

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In addition to all the great information already posted, the number one thing on my child’s list was finding a hands on type engineering program vs one that was more theoretical. She wanted to jump right in to engineering from day one. It was really important to look at the four year plans of study for each school on her list. It was honestly shocking to see the differences, even amongst ABET accredited programs. Big differences with timing and depth of engineering design classes, AP/DE/IB policies, and undergraduate access to the top research facilities on campuses and to graduate level classes. Also huge differences between available concentrations/minors.

Also high on her list was strength of the career center, support co-op (but optional not required), and in general, career outcomes. There were some top rated schools for her major that were pipelines to industries where she wasn’t interested. Those got scrapped from her list.

Her spreadsheet was pretty specific to her needs and wants.

I second the recommendation to touring schools near home to visit and trying to do a mix of large/small/urban/rural to get a sense of what kind of campus your student prefers. It saved us some trips down the road to know what to eliminate.

I’m also in the camp of finding the affordable safety that your child really likes FIRST. Bonus if they have rolling admission so you have an early acceptance. It takes the pressure off the whole process and negates the need for applying to 20 schools.

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Our high school has 3 counselors for 1200 students, every junior gets a 20 minute meeting, no colleges are ever recommended, just told to check naviance. Not one of my kids had the same counselor every year.

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Our spreadsheet had some information we filled in before we visited (to determine where to focus our energy) and some we filled in after the visit.

Price We wanted to compare apples to apples so used tuition+room and board. We had a fairly high budget, so the extras weren’t that much of an issue.
Location Not a deciding factor in terms of preference, but wanted to group for visits. Also was able to add details about travel times, flights, etc after visits.
Auto-merit We added other merit as it was offered and ultimately added a final column for “actual cost”
Actual Cost This was figured after all offers were in. We used tuition, room and board - all merit to come up with a price, with notes on if an additional semester would be needed, added travel for one school that was crazy expensive to get to, etc. We also kept in mind that anything can happen with changing majors, having to take a light semester for illness, differential tuition, etc. In other words, we made sure we weren’t cutting it too close and kept lots of “wiggle room”.
Housing We were originally concerned about 4-year guaranteed housing, but after our first few visits, we realized that at some schools off campus housing is great and plentiful, while at others it was expensive and safety was an issue. List was updated to consider all housing options.
Special Programs - Research opportunities, internships, study abroad, programs unique to the school, clubs, anything that really made a school stand out
Major offered I know the statistics of kids changing majors and didn’t want S23 to go to a school that limited his choices. I had him pick 3 that were what he was currently thinking about majoring in (similar majors with slight differences), and 3 that just looked interesting and were not related to his current choice. We also considered direct entry, difficulty of changing majors, adding a minor, double majoring, etc.
Size This seemed to only matter to me. S23 wanted larger state schools, but also had some very small schools on his list. I also included %OOS.
Test optional simple yes/no
Type of admission Rolling, early, EA, regular
Key dates Continually updated. Started with application dates and updated with honors application dates, accepted students visit dates, housing deposit dates, etc
Other factors These weren’t deciding factors for S23, but information that should be considered. We included things like required courses (specifically if they required college level foreign language as he struggles with this due to a learning difference), required summer courses, probability of finishing in 8 semesters, if a car was needed, etc. Some of these factors were only of interest to parents and some were only of interest to him.

I probably would have added a column for selectivity, but he built his list from safeties so we weren’t worried about final options.

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