“I think it’s too early to talk about college suggestions. We will wait for a couple of years till he is in 12th grade” - Junior year is a good time to start. Our guidance counselors suggested applications be submitted by Halloween senior year (or Thanksgiving to ensure they’d get sent to colleges before year end).
Interesting. The GCs in my son’s school don’t even want to start talking about college apps before spring of 11th grade.
Waiting until spring of 11th grade will make it hard to schedule trips to visit/ see colleges- especially if your DS has no idea where he might want to go to college. Visiting colleges in the summer when there are few students / profs there makes it harder to figure out what they like/ dont like- except distance/location issues.
Kids start talking about colleges well before Spring of their Jr year.
My DS visited colleges starting in Oct of his Jr year. We were able to spread multiple trips out because he started early.
I should probably start my own thread on this, but how do kids visit colleges when classes are in session? Don’t they have their own classes to attend in high school?
@1Wife1Kid On scheduling visits – high schools often have days off when colleges don’t. School holidays, like Columbus Day, Presidents’ Day etc., are popular college visit days. This is another reason why starting with visits to schools which are closer, to get a feel for large/small/urban/rural etc., rather than specific target schools, makes sense. Many schools schedule Junior Visit Days starting around February, and hold them on Fridays or Mondays. Those events usually require registration, and the ones scheduled for typical school holidays fill up fast.
As junior year progresses and there are more representative grades and test scores, families can be more informed about what type of schools might be on the list. Spring break junior year is a pretty common college visit time.
Interesting, thanks. I think my son would like to go to school in a big city so spring break sounds like a great time to fly to one city in a day and fly to the next one the next day, so on and so forth.
“…people who need to relax are those that keep pushing for depth AND breadth despite evidence to the contrary that elites colleges don’t require that.”
Ha.
My kids visited very few colleges-no money for that. In fact, my middle son visited exactly one school (during Christmas break) to which he applied (and he applied to 20+) before April. After acceptances, he visited three of the 17 he was accepted to, and never even visited his final choice school before saying yes (because he got sick).
Oldest visited 3 out of the 10 schools to which he applied before he applied; two were during spring break. After acceptances, he visited three more (and one flew him in for a revisit). I think he missed a few Thursday or Friday classes, but he was homeschooled/dual enrolled, and his college profs were fine with it, so it was no big deal.
If you don’t have time or money to visit, it’s ok, IMO. Visits don’t always net more information than just communicating with admissions, students from the school, and the schools’ own websites.
I always thought it makes more sense to visit after you get accepted.
Same here. Cost is not justified with possible small boost on admission chance unless it is local.
The challenge is that there is a very small window between the time decisions are released and when the student has to commit, with few, if ant HS days off in between. Visiting after being accepted can work to see a couple of schools, but beyond that, it’s not feasible. Obviously when finances are an issue, one does what one needs to do.
On visits – one approach is to start quite local, and explore types of schools – big public, small and medium sized – which are a simple day trip. Then, as you start to have a sense of what types of schools kid is more serious about (only LACs, or mid-sized private etc), longer trips to specific schools can be planned around breaks etc. Many families cannot visit for all kinds of reasons, and there are lots of threads with advice about how to show interest in a school when you cannot visit it before applying.
For what it’s worth, we drove to visits, even those which were about a 12 hour drive, staying in modest hotels or with family/friends along the way. Although there was conflict along the way, both parents and kids have good memories of those road trips.
My kid drew 100 boats for the 100 days of kindergarten celebration. I guess I should have known then he’d join the navy! He is quite artistic though these days what he likes to do is design spaceships using computer modelling tools.
We visited colleges February break, spring break and Labor Day weekend with my youngest. The only issue was that we forgot about the Jewish holidays when we visited Brandeis and the campus was full of people hurrying to get back to their families. It was theoretically a class day, but I think all of the classes must have been canceled!
We also went “minimal visit” route and it worked fine for us.
We visited 1 or 2 locally - just to get the idea what the campuses look like. There were also a couple of incidental visits (robotics competitions on campus and a quick stop during the vacation trip). S got most of the info online and from the local alumni interviews (and here was his “interest demonstration”), he also got some info from the older kids from his school/robotics team who were already in colleges.
Then, during the spring break, we visited 3 “finalist” places from the acceptances list trying to get to the accepted students days.
I think we will repeat this with my D when the time comes.
So, if you apply to say 7 schools, how many schools do you visit? 20? That’s 20 school days that the kid is going to miss. May be 10 comes from school vacations when college is open. I will ask the school how they handle this. I don’t mind the parents’ time or the expenses, but missing school to visit colleges seems wrong.
On the other hand if the kid applies to 7 and gets into say 4, only couple schools need to be visited as the bottom 50% wouldn’t even matter. That’s missing 2 school days. Just sounds more efficient to me.
" but missing school to visit colleges seems wrong."
visiting to figure out where he might want to live for the next 4 years is wrong???
would you move into an entirely new part of the country without checking it out first?
Schools KNOW that students will be visiting colleges- mostly during vacations sure , but there is NO reason that a student cant be given homework assignments in advance and miss a few days of school. Trust me. It happens every year and the teachers are well aware of it.
here are some links to past and current discussions
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1918284-help-with-planning-college-visits.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1797245-how-important-is-visiting-colleges.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1872769-plan-for-visiting-colleges-on-the-east-coast-ny-pa-ma-md-nj-ct-p1.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1909529-visiting-colleges-any-impact-on-admissions.html
I am not saying don’t visit, I am saying visit post admissions decision.
your kid needs to do both.
when we started talking about colleges, my DS was SURE he wanted to go to an “east coast” LAC. So we visited the EC during June after his Jr year, , after school was out, and he changed his mind big time.
Kids need to see the options available to them, before they spend all the time applying. Besides, music depts at top colleges will want your DS to audition before accepting them into a music program, even if he only want to minor in a music area- so that means visiting BEFORE admissions decisions are made by the colleges.
IF music is to be a BIG part of his college life, I suggest you head over to the Music majors forum and start asking questions.
He won’t apply to a music program. He knows that he will never be a top musician given the amount of work that needs. He will apply in English, likely. May be Classics. Who knows. But anyway, I will talk to the school. I just feel that missing a month out of the 8 months of school to visit colleges in 11th grade is a bad idea, and, knowing his school, that would guarantee a B average for that year.
He may not be a top musician, but he MAY want to minor in music, or at the very least, continue his lessons or play in the schools orchestra/ chamber orchestra. Both will require auditions.
Or are you going to dictate what he MUST do in college??
"I just feel that missing a month "
It WONT take a month- not if you plan it carefully, and ask questions of the veterans here on CC who have done it before , instead of making assumptions about how much time it will take.
sheesh…