<p>Someoldguy…thank you!!! I needed that.</p>
<p>I read that clam fart thread a couple of weeks ago. I laughed so hard I cried :)</p>
<p>Ha, Suzy.</p>
<p>So on a different note: I will re-introduce myself since it has been so long since I have posted…</p>
<p>I have two sons. One is a sophomore in college and the other is a junior in high school (duh, otherwise I wouldn’t post here 
). S is a serious musician (double bass is his main instrument) who plays across genres. He is much more into the college process than his older brother was. His path is different than most of your kids as his focus is “the audition”. He has great grades and will do well enough on the SAT and ACT for his purposes. Although if he decides to audition at Rice, he will have to focus more on the tests–yikes. That is where we are at with that. He already took it upon himself to introduce himself via email to a professor whose studio he is very interested in and got a terrific response back. Of course, none of the schools he is interested are anywhere near us. We have plans to visit a couple of schools on his spring break already, where he will attend classes and get private lessons with the professors. OY! It is an intimidating process (for me, at least) to be sure.</p>
<p>PSAT coming up on October 16. It is great, this year all of the juniors get to take it on the same day during school. This is different from the past when it was only offered on Saturdays in our district.</p>
<p>My kids used to hang out on the Art of Problem Solving forums. Over and over again they would see kids (mostly young teen boys) with very, very good (but not perfect) scores in various national/international math competitions loudly and vociferously complain about how stupid they were because their scores were so bad. This was so common that it became (and has become) the way that this demographic talks IN PERSON when they compare results after math competitions (such as the AMC exams) The end result has been that my very mathy girls came away feeling like a) this is a culture I don’t want to be part of because it’s so hypercritical and b) I’m just not very good at competition math, I might as well give it up. Neither of these is the response we wanted our kids to have to math competitions (where they were actually, objectively doing quite well, and with some work could have done very well).</p>
<p>This is why the talk matters. It’s one thing to give up a particular EC. It’s another to give up on a college education. I suspect for many parents hear, one of the issues we deal with all the time is perfectionism. “Run your own race” is a really, really brilliant thought.</p>
<p>Run your own race is brilliant. I am going to use that one.</p>
<p>Ah, SomeOldGuy, I always love your posts and this one was just wonderful. Thank you.</p>
<p>I also want to say to anyone out there who may have found anything I’ve written offensive, I am sorry. As I wrote above, I have three girls with three very different temperaments and the college search has taken on a different feel each time. It has ranged from frustrating to humbling and from miserable to ecstatic. I think I may have experienced every possible feeling along the way. When I write about this daughter, I tend to focus on her challenges and don’t consider that the rest of you don’t know the larger context.</p>
<p>Suzy, that was really funny!</p>
<p>IJD, I feel your pain. I once spent an entire week chaperoning a contestant at the National Spelling Bee. It was . . . ummmmm . . . educational.</p>
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<p>Wise words for us, thank you. </p>
<p>momsings - [waving hi] - I was ohiobassmom before a tech glitch that made me make a new username. I remember you well from the 2012 grad thread :)</p>
<p>Hi back, OHMomof2–I remember you too (AND your name change).</p>
<p>SomeOldGuy–your post was pure wisdom. Thanks.</p>
<p>Something I am seeing with D more clearly this year than I did before is that she is very humble and self-effacing, and I don’t mean always in a good way. She talks down to herself sometimes. I see it in sports a lot and her coach even noticed it and challenged her about her negative “self talk”. </p>
<p>So D did her app for NHS last night. It asked her to list and explain her service, leadership roles, academic qualifications, etc. She was fine with the service part but the leadership part was a struggle for her. As it happens, she is the captain of her sports team, she was in charge of a volunteer effort that required her to get other kids to sign up for and show up for a 3 hour task once a month which she then led them in, and some other things that are most definitely leadership roles- but she didn’t see them that way.</p>
<p>I sat her down and had her walk me through what she did for, say, her captain job, and I told her not to tell me if a thing was valuable or judge it in any way but just to tell me what she does in that role. It turns out she is responsible for all kinds of things I had no idea she did, and she hadn’t thought of them as leadership either, but they absolutely were. We discussed her other stuff and she went off and did her app, hopefully with a new view of herself. Good practice for college apps, in any case.</p>
<p>I now am trying to be very sensitive to how she sees herself and encourage her when I can. She can be very hard on herself but she doesn’t always let on. I suspect many of us have kids like that…high achieving but self-critical. This process will push our kids’ buttons, and I know they push mine…it’s a minefield :)</p>
<p>momsings, hi! We just finished a bad job of shepherding D through the music process and I am SO tired. Don’t want to think about college stuff again. Hoping S15 will just want to go to the university down the street, at this point. It didn’t help that she never told us until summer after junior year that she wanted to major in oboe performance. I always thought her music was just a hobby, albeit all-consuming.</p>
<p>Ah, the joys of driving white-knuckled to Ann Arbor and Urbana-Champaign in a spring break blizzard for auditions, jack-knifed trucks littering the roadside while she complains sleepily from the backseat that she doesn’t even want to be going back to these schools at ALL because the she is going to attend the school she fell in love with at which she auditioned in January, where the prof(unofficially) has accepted her, and this is all just a waste of time. Me trying to ignore her and focus on just getting there alive.</p>
<p>Then the why-am-I-not-surprised time this July when she informs me that she has decided she just can’t give up jazz completely and must try out for an ensemble on the side at college. At which time her sax teacher finally sees fit to speak up and say that her sax is appropriate for a middle school kid but not for university. So there we are shopping for new instrument 3 weeks before she goes off to college, in between all the end-of-summer concerts, brush-up piano lessons for testing out of required class, and just every minute packed with something. </p>
<p>I am not a musician, was not prepared in the least to manage this, especially when there was so little time left to prepare. Do you read threads on music forum? There is one amazing long thread that a parent spent a year writing about the music application process. I think his child is a bassist also(?) It was so helpful. Peabody has a long page on website about deciding where a student fits in in the musical spectrum, from top conservatory, to music as a 2nd major to playing in ensemble for an activity. Sounds like your S already knows what he wants to do (lucky you!) but I found that very useful in developing my thinking about the whole music as a major idea. </p>
<p>Good luck. I hope your S finds the perfect school for his interests. The process was fun at times. I met so many wonderful parents. Some I saw at more than one place. Like, a mom I met in Arizona was also at UIUC, by which time we were comrades on the long trek.</p>
<p>3girls, so so sad about your kitty. I hope you feel better. 19 years is a good long life. You must’ve given so much care and love. (Hug)</p>
<p>All, I declare myself one who is guilty of test score obtuseness. -pulls head in shell and winces… I promise to pay more attention to my words and thanks to those who brought it up for consideration.</p>
<p>I just read the clam fart thread. Not sure how I missed that one. Gave me a chuckle or 2!</p>
<p>celesteroberts–I loved your post, jack-knifed trucks and all! That would have been unnerving finding out right before senior year that D wanted to be a music major. I hope she is happy, and that she found her place!! Congratulations, you made it!</p>
<p>I have communicated with the gentleman you mentioned from the music forum already. He is a font of knowledge, and it is a bonus that his D is a double bassist!</p>
<p>I THINK we have a good idea of what we are doing and have a true sense of where my S lies skill level wise. It is hard to not have rose colored glasses on though sometimes, because it is MY kid, darn it. This is an exceptionally difficult process, and I am so glad we have one more year until the real insanity begins. Until then, it’s all about practice, perform, meet people in the bass community and practice!</p>
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<p>Ahhh memories…why is audition season also blizzard season in the midwest?</p>
<p>IJD, great points made!</p>
<p>Question to everyone, esp. those of you who have older kids - how much do you help (or should we help) in our kids’ college application? how much is too much? how much is not enough? I mean they will need to learn to do things on their own. But on the other hand, they’re still young. I’d like to hear from you, esp. looking back in retrospect, what is the right thing to do? (I know it’s really a hard question. but still I’d like to hear your opinion based on your experience.) If you can be specific, I’d really love it - like what do you do for them? reminders? suggestions in choosing teachers to write rec letters? essays? etc. etc.</p>
<p>Great question, Maxwell! With about 100 correct answers. ;)</p>
<p>I definitely don’t buy into the “if they can’t find and apply to colleges, they aren’t ready for college” mindset. For one thing, it’s a completely different skill set involved, for another, our kids are really busy even without adding a huge college search, and finally, the search/applying starts sometime between the end of sophomore year and the middle of senior year; there’s a lot of maturing to do before they actually head off to college. I view the whole application process as an excellent chance for my kids to apprentice under me through a huge project. They don’t have to know everything going in, but they’ve learned a lot by the time they have their acceptances in hand. </p>
<p>For my kids, I’d say there were four main things I did. (1) I spent hours looking at search engines and websites and came up with a big list of school, learning along the way about financial aid, reach/match/safety, test scores, what questions are important to ask, etc. Thank you, CC, for having tons of information hidden amongst all the angst! (2) just about all of the secretarial work - maintaining a spreadsheet, organizing the timeline, identifying deadlines for partial goals along the way (like essays), knowing dates, planning trips and scheduling college visits, communicating with the high school, etc. (3) endless conversations with my sons about what they were looking for, questions to think about, etc., (4) made sure that they understood that at the end of the process, they’d have some schools they were rejected from, some they were admitted to without enough money to attend, and a list of schools that they could actually choose from.</p>
<p>I’d say I did a huge amount of work before they were even engaged, finding potential colleges that were a good fit. I suggested the first round of college visits. After that, they usually had gotten enough of a feel for it all and become interested enough to take my long list of schools and whittle it down to a reasonable list of schools to consider. </p>
<p>When it came to applying, they did all their own work, except I did the online request for transcripts to be sent (more secretarial work) and checked online to make sure things had been received. They called or emailed when the schools or profs needed to be contacted about something. With my older son, I had to talk him in to including some EC’s he didn’t think were relevant because they didn’t have to do with school. </p>
<p>So I was on the upper end of the parental involvement spectrum I guess. I did a lot, but nothing I felt crossed an ethical line (writing essays, too much input on apps, etc). Their choice of teachers to write letters of rec were usually pretty obvious, and I did help them put together the envelopes or things teachers needed. I definitely made sure they knew when essays should be done.</p>
<p>Flash forward - they’re both doing great in college. My senior is taking all grad classes this year, has a 3.97 in his major (and not much lower over all), has been grocery shopping and cooking for himself since sophomore year, has a good relationship with several profs, holds a job, has dealt with car breakdowns, emergency room visits, travel snafus, etc. very successfully. He has made it clear he doesn’t need my help for grad school applications beyond making a spreadsheet for him with application deadline info for the schools he has chosen (and that’s just because I am a self proclaimed spreadsheet queen ;)) My sophomore is also doing great. </p>
<p>There are other students who do a lot more on their own, and parents who gently push their kids to do a lot more on their own. I think those are great approaches too. I guess my bottom line is, don’t worry too much that they’ll never figure out how to navigate life if you help with the college process…even if you help a lot.</p>
<p>Maxwell- D1 worked with a college counselor. H and I went to Uni overseas so we had no idea on the US process. She helped keep D1 on track and took the " nagging" away from us. Both my girls are organized so they are pretty on top of dead lines etc.</p>
<p>H and I both proof read her essays and applications for typos before she hit the send button. I sat with her high school transcript and double checked all courses/info were entered correctly. Our deal was that I would look for scholarships and keep her on track with those dates etc I was happy in that role, since scholarship $'s meant less money for us to contribute.</p>
<p>The three of us went on a college road trip together. I booked the hotels etc, but she planned the itinerary, set up tours etc. It was fun trip!</p>
<p>I have great intentions that I will not stress as much with D2. I remember being wound tightly as decisions approached and deadlines loomed. Some moments were not my proudest parenting moments. I recall screaming at her around midnight one evening that the essay she was printing off was a $200K essay and why the h*** was she printing it at this time ( the ink ran out). Older and wiser in the process second time.</p>
<p>With S12, I mainly helped with researching to build the list (which he edited after visits), deadlines, visit planning/driving and nearly all of the financial aid stuff. He did his apps, essays (I proofread), rec letters, transcript requests, audition prep. </p>
<p>Once we had all offers in spring, a couple were ruled out for financial reasons by me but he decided where to revisit and obviously, chose the school he attended. </p>
<p>One good thing about a music major is that in many cases he had to apply early to get an academic acceptance before he was even allowed to schedule an audition, so his main essays and apps were complete before Christmas break.</p>
<p>Sally - I think we’ve all had those moments! :p</p>
<p>Pinot’s list is pretty much spot on with what we did with D1 (now college junior) and are doing/planning with D2 and S. One thing I would add that (hopefully) all the parents here have done is to be honest and open with your kids about the financial realities of a college education for your family.</p>
<p>I read WAY TOO MANY threads here on CC from students/parents who are at the end of their senior year and only have acceptances to schools that they cannot possibly afford and are scrambling to come up with a plan. There’s nothing wrong with applying to reach schools (academic or financial) and seeing what happens, but being “up front” with your kids about what you can realistically afford can avoid a lot of heartache and stress.</p>
<p>Having a TRUE safety school (both fit and affordability) is an invaluable “bird in the hand” to help cushion any potential blows from rejections or acceptances that aren’t followed with a workable scholarship/FA package.</p>
<p>I am dealing with a different type of kid this time, one who is a stronger student and much more organized…but who will also be applying to a more selective set of colleges. And one who will likely have a lot more input into the process. I sometimes wonder if I did too much for S, he didn’t stay at his college and is in the midst of a semester break, living and working in a nearby city. In any case while helping S I found CC which has been a great resource for both kids (and for me…).</p>