I want to second the idea that parents should be wary of measuring their child against a list of “shoulds”. It’s harmful given that there are so many ways to approach this process. My best advice is to regularly check your own biases / expectations and block out as much noise as possible. Of course there are deadlines and things like ‘demonstrated interest’ to know about and attend to (once a list is formed), but otherwise there are no rules and the idea that our kids should all be ready at a given time is an artificial construct that creates a lot of tension in many households. Try to normalize as much as possible - it is ok for a kid to be freaked out, or not ready to leave home, or not interested in the process because what they really need is a break and some time to reset after a grueling four years.
My two cents is while Boston is certainly one good choice, it seems to me many larger metro areas have a lot of colleges within easy visiting distance, more than you could plausibly visit. They may not all be nationally famous, but in terms of size and focus and format and vibe and such they will cover a lot of ground.
Rice University was originally chartered with the restriction that it would be tuition free but limited to White students. These restrictions were removed in the 1960s, though the school had to fend off some alumni lawsuits on the matter. Perhaps they knew of that?
But other private schools (not necessarily in the south) also have historical dirty laundry regarding racism. Public schools obviously had whatever historical dirty laundry regarding racism inherited from their state’s historical policies.
Obviously varies drastically by parent and by student. We had three kids and it was different with each. They made all the decisions, wrote their essays, etc. We did proof read many (but not all) of the essays and resume and offer suggestions, some of which were considered and some not. I helped provide lists of schools to consider and data.
The only real “push” was about making sure they had a balanced list that wasn’t all reaches and no safeties or matches. Which two of our kids readily listened to, and one did his own thing, immune (or more likely allergic) to our input. I did get annoyed when he had completed none of the RD applications by 12/30. If he didn’t want to apply to them that was his call. But I wasn’t going to pay application fees for him to phone in 5 minutes of effort in seconds before the deadline. His list had almost no matches, save possibly some UCs, so I did look up a few no-supplemental requirement matches with later deadlines after his big push was done to suggest adding. He didn’t end up going to any of them but got into all of them, so had he not gotten his reaches it would have been worthwhile.
On the other hands, some of their local peers had private college advisers since Freshman year of high school literally helping define which ECs they did and which classes they took, and of course helping put their college list together, ghost drafting essays, etc. One of my sons had a friend who lamented that his parents didn’t let him even participate in the college application process – the parents wrote the essays, picked the schools and did every part of it. He got into Harvard and Princeton (clearly a talented student in his own right, independent of the parents over-involvement).
Seems like the most important tasks for the parent are doing the financial planning and communicating the price limit to the student before the student builds the application list. Running the net price calculator on any potential parent recommendation before suggesting it would also be a good idea, as is running the net price calculator on anything the student indicates interest in.
2025 son. We started by visiting schools in places we were traveling to to get a sense of what he liked as far as size and environment. I then built a list based on that. Frankly, I run NPCs and compare merit charts for everything so there’s almost no way the student could build a realistic list on their own. We’ve been strategically visiting and he now has a top school. He will spend the next 8 months showing demonstrated interest, including doing a major-specific second visit. We’re looking at a few more schools to have a solid backup option, but other than that, we’re pretty focused. He had a lot of “unicorn” criteria, IMO, which both helps in some ways and and makes it harder in others (e.g., warmer weather, medium-sized school, access to an airport, a gaming community for the game he plays, internship support, etc).
His responsibility is to keep his grades up and attend the visits I schedule thoughtfully. He’ll obviously write the essay and do the apps, but I will help organize as that’s not his strong suit.
Your son’s friend didn’t get into college - his parents did. How can this kid (regardless of what kind of student he is) possibly feel good about himself and his capabilities when his parents are signaling that they think he can’t do it on his own. They think they are “helping” him, but in reality they are stifling his growth.
Seems like the Harvard and Princeton admission readers were not able to tell that the essays were written by the parents, despite common conventional wisdom on these forums that they should be able to tell the difference between a 17-18 year old’s writing style versus the writing style of someone who would be their parent.
I’ve always doubted that AO’s can really tell - and I’m sure this is far from the only kid who had someone write their essays for them . People also claim that AO’s at these schools can sniff out fake/exaggerated/pay to play ECs and I doubt that as well. How discerning can they be given the immense volume of applications to review?
Agreed. A few times we were looking at “types” versus actual schools. “This is a big state school in a city.” Or, “This is a tiny liberal arts school completely isolated in the woods.” Even if they might not live that school, it lets them see… something. And while all schools are unique in their own way, it can help build their list. I mean, if you hate every city school you visit, you might be able to scratch NYU off the list.
I got the sense many AOs believed they did not really have to spend a lot of time trying to detect those things because they do not believe they are normally very helpful. Obviously Duke recently announced they were not going to be rating essays for writing quality, but that is a pretty narrow issue and I didn’t think most colleges really cared much about that anyway.
I note in the case reported above, the kid was admitted, but that isn’t really the same thing as knowing the parents writing the essays actually made any difference to that outcome. Maybe, but plausibly they would have done just as well with their own essays, and really it wasn’t the essays that were a tipping point at all.
I understand for a lot of EC issues, their attitude is similar–it helps less than a lot of people believe anyway. For any really big things, my understanding is they do some audits to verify some applications. If it were me, I would do a combination of random and flagged, but I don’t think I have seen any colleges explain their audit policy in details.
I think there are a lot of kids at Princeton and Harvard that can write better than their parents, so there is no way to tell. I have one who is a natural writer. Another who is not, however his writing although a bit dry and formal is technically perfect and not what someone may think of as a teenagers writing. My kids read a lot so they also use “big” words.
When your absolute “we can barely afford” limit is the cost of the in-state publics, it makes the process a bit easier, especially when you live in VA and the in-state publics are very good. That being said, we did hunt for scholarships especially for older S. Our motto was “This is the $$$ we have. It won’t cover the cost of 4 years at an in-state public, but we will commit to getting you through one of those. If you can get scholarships and there is anything left over, it’s yours.”
College tours: Our kids regularly saw our alma mater VT since they were born. Older S tested into the JH CTY program in 2nd grade at the request of his principal. We couldn’t afford any of their paid programs, but we did attend a few of their free weekend things at places like JHU, Dartmouth, and somewhere in Harrisburg. I LOVE college tours, so I fit in several within driving range starting in 10th grade.
Aside from that, the kids did most of everything. College counseling basically doesn’t exist here. I was not involved in their class selection, nor were the guidance counselors. The kids in their class discussed everything themselves and let me know what they signed up for. I did take care of registering older S for the college math stuff when he was in high school. It was pretty complicated, as he wasn’t a traditional student. Someone higher up always had to override the financial system for him for it to be free.
College Lists:
Older S – He applied to 9. He’s the kind of kid who would fit in anywhere and didn’t care much about size, fit, etc. VT/UVA were a given. I chose W&M because an online friend worked there. He picked a few T20s. I had no idea the NPC existed back then, but I looked at the school’s printed stuff that said if you made between X&Y, expect to be around Z. A HS prof introduced us to W&L (where he wound up attending). He did get into Duke, but it wound up being to $$$ for us, especially since additional scholarships would not stack. The Ivys he was waitlisted. I considered that a rejection.
Younger S – He applied to 4. He is definitely a large public, loves football, basketball, etc type. Again, UVA/VT were a given. He asked to tour JMU, and we did. It wasn’t on my radar before. I’m so glad he did! He also applied to Clemson, mostly for fun, as he loves their FB team. He got into all 4, but JMU had the major he was interested in, and gave him a scholarship.
Majors:
Older S was always going to be something with math & money. I figured the school would help him figure it out. He wound up with math & econ double major.
Younger S was MUCH tougher. I actually found his IA major on the JMU website. Not wanting to pick his major for him, I had him read it, but told him to definitely NOT pick it because of me, and to not feel pressured to stay in it. It just sounded like him 110%. He loved it!
Applications: They did them. I read them over and made suggestions.
As far as I know, nobody from the school or the kids actually communicated with an AO. I had no idea that was even possible before I came here (after younger S had received all his acceptances!)
I think you are overstating things a bit…though agree it is appalling if parents truly wrote the essays…
Grades and rigor and test scores (when applicable) are most important part of these applications…that, with recommendations, are accomplished by the kid (though obviously parents can prod and pay for tutors), etc.
It is a combination here, but with very different roles. in short - I have been the driver of creating the list and she is the driver of vetoing schools from the list.
She has very specific requirements for what she is looking for in a program and environment and we have a price range we would like to reach and she is not eligible for need-based aid, and that combo makes the list creation aspect complicated.
I happen to genuinely love researching and creating detailed spreadsheets so I have taken on that role. (My spreadsheet has 50 individual columns tracking info ranging from basic (acceptance rate / % ED) to very specific (if it has a study abroad option in her major in the city she wants). I am the unpaid overworked college consultant I guess. 
She looks at the spreadsheet frequently and adds her own info and personal ranking, and, most importantly, has full veto power over the schools. She went through and removed over half of the 40+ schools on our original list based on a variety of reasons of her own.
[adding - our kids go to a public urban school where the overworked counselors are more focused on getting kids to graduate than helping them craft a good college list. And we have seen high stats kids in our circle apply to 7 high-reach schools recommended by their counselor and one state school they didn’t want to go to and, no surprise here, only got in to the state school. So we had to be involved ourselves to avoid anything like that from happening.]
We had a really interesting ride that’s almost over! Our D24 was driven by 2 major desires in her junior year:
- the desire not to think about moving away from us and becoming independent;
- the desire to have a college experience that met her standards of a good young-adult experience, including a) an urban environment; b) a medium-to-large undergrad population; c) a good Psych program; d) dance opportunities; d) no all-female college.
We parents were driven by a set of criteria that we thought would make her happy and keep her from transferring after one semester, like her mom did.
a) no red states; b) no overly preppy schools, c) no populations that were limited by demographics (in other words, diverse both formally and informally).
We are a two-professor couple, so we have some knowledge of a lot of schools. I (Mom) did a huge amount of research on schools, and came up with a preliminary list of 46 colleges. Not all of them met every criterion, and some of them were in Canada! (not something we ultimately decided to pursue at this point. D24 had no interest, for one thing.) We then did a lot of talking over the next months, and D24 added a few schools that weren’t on the initial list. We were able to remove an entire lower tier of schools after D24 posted an SAT score that, while not as high as those of a lot of your kids, was respectable enough for merit at quite a few OOS flagships. Oh, I forgot to say that only one school on her list is a top-30 school. The schools she was most interested in tended to be in the 40s-60s in the rankings anyway.
She ended up applying to 14 schools. She was very concerned throughout the process that we would try to pressure her to go to one or two of the outlier schools she had no interest in. However, she realized pretty quickly that she would get to make the final choice. I did pretty strongly dissuade her from one school that was at the top of both expense and academic (and possibly social) unsuitability. Not sorry! She came to her senses there anyway. I think she’s pretty happy with how things are turning out, as she thinks about what the next four years will be like.
When parents do every part of the application as described above (from school selection to writing the essays) it is hard to discern exactly who is applying to college. What are you demonstrating to your kids - that academic dishonesty is ok (having your parents write your essays is a form of cheating), that you don’t think them capable of completing their applications on their own? Every time a parent takes over tasks that kids can and should do for themselves they send the message that the kid isn’t capable - how disempowering.
My S24 drove the process of what sort of school he wants to go to (very urban, very large). I drove the process of which of those schools we could afford and suggested additional schools that might be affordable.
He goes to a large public school and has no relationship with his counselor. So we did all the research ourselves (a lot from reading here). After learning here on CC, I suggested he apply to the large and urban schools that have good merit scholarships, full tuition scholarships to apply for, or where the NPC said the price would be in our range (basically the highly rejectives). I also told him he could apply to a dream school or two (like NYU) where it would most likely not be affordable, but we could cross our fingers and see.
He did all the other aspects of the applications himself.
So he applied to more schools than would have been his choice because we really need a lot of money. He did not love our involvement, but we told him early on that since it’s our money and there’s not a lot of it, we have to help him find the best price.
But there is a world of difference between creating a college aplication list and writing your kid’s essays. I think those of us who spend time on CC forget how clueless most people are about college admissions and how to make a proper list. I see many educated and well-meaning people who follow their kids or their uninformed college counselor’s suggestions and end up with lists like “Duke, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Cornell, Notre Dame, and State College of Homestate where kid would hate to go” If CC parents are involved in helping (or even making) their kids college list I do’t think that is telling their kids they aren’t capable. It is recognizing that it is an extremely complicated process and that no one should be left alone to try to swim through that turbulent sea.
large urban schools–
I hope he applied to U of Minnesota! We absolutely love it after our family visited. The only problem for us is the distance from home.