- Starting early takes the sting out of these lessons. Like grade school for the parents, but tenth grade for the kids.
- The student should have a separate email address for college recruiting stuff. It has to be monitored, but it's going to get so much trash that putting it in its own bin is a minor blessing if you start early.
- Parents need to learn to use NPCs early (8th grade?) to get a feel for how financial aid works and to get numb to the numbers. No one wants any surprises in spring of senior year.
- Try to establish an early grasp of Fit vs Prestige. Get a copy of Colleges That Change Lives or something similar in the hands of your ninth/tenth grader before they fill their heads with Fiske or Peterson's or US News. Students should work on self-awareness and let Stanford take care of itself. Corollary: don't give away freshman year, but grades don't need to be perfect and you can skip some APs if you don't care about the subject.
- Schools don't care about The Right ECs, they want ECs to reflect your interests and abilities. Don't join things you hate just to look good, do things you love. Your EC is where you get to invest a little free time and it should not feel like an obligation. People can tell when you're grinding out some hours vs personally invested in something.
- More and more people are throwing up their hands at the cost of college and considering the trades. Do not scoff when you hear this from anyone, as the money is good and the costs don't hang over your life choices for decades. To our surprise (at the time) our S18 did it, and this year he has friends considering the same path. Education is too expensive these days to drift along to the next stop just because everyone does it.