18 months. But the hard part is over in about 12 months. By this time next year, college apps will be done for most of our kids. Those with EA/ED or rolling decision kids might already know where your kid is going to college in twelve months! It’s both exciting and scary.
This is the first year where D19 is pretty close to seniors. She knew seniors when she was a sophomore, but not really well. Now, some of her closest friends are seniors. And they are already getting acceptance/rejection letters.
It’s also a bit of a burnout. We visited a lot of colleges during summer and fall and D19 doesn’t even want to visit any more. She said she’ll probably want to later in this school year or early next , but she’s just tired of it now.
My S hasn’t visited any colleges yet. I am hoping to do some visits over spring break though he won’t even talk about it yet. I think there is a real possibility that he will end up applying without visiting any. He says “Why do I have to visit?, I know what college campuses look like.” I tried to tell him they aren’t all the same but he says that he can look at pictures on the internet. Well, it will make my life easier this spring, but we may end up scrambling to visit schools he is accepted to next year.
We went last summer through Ohio and saw Kenyon, Denison, and Oberlin. Saw University of Chicago and Beloit on day trips. In the fall, I took him to a two day event at Grinnell and my husband took him to see Macalester and Carleton. We are seeing Davidson, Wake, and William and Mary in March. I still feel like we should get to Dickinson to confirm he likes it enough and to Haverford because I actually think it could be perfect. And, if he gets more serious about Tufts, we definitely need to go. S19 is super engaged while we are campuses, but I understand there could be fatigue
He recently said that he’ll have to revisit schools after acceptances come in so he’s wondering if it makes much sense to keep visiting now. . But, since we are looking at LACs with low admit rates, it’s best to visit to get a real feel for the school to write good essays and to confirm he wants to apply. Plus, some look at demonstrated interest. When a school is taking 500 kids out of 4000 and 1/3 of them could be athletes or have another hook, we need to do everything we can to make sure his application is strong for those places he wants to attend.
As for knowing seniors, this year S19’s senior friends are doing pretty well. One to Dartmouth, one to Wash U, one to Tufts in the ED rounds. I don’t like that. He thinks he’s just like these kids and they are getting in. I told him to make sure he does not get cocky. Each one of these kids picked exactly the perfect school for them to ED and it showed.
Meanwhile, most kids he knows who shot for Michigan EA were deferred and the ED kids to Northwestern were denied.
@me29034 , It’s nice to do college tours because the prospective student can learn so much from the tour guide. We’ve been on five tours, only because I set them up. Sure colleges look like colleges, but to hear first hand how much you can get out of your college experience is pretty neat. If you can get your S to just do one tour to see what a tour is like and humor you, that might help get the ball rolling.
We just went to visit USC last week. D19 liked it, but I was hoping to get her to be more excited about studying for the SAT in order to get good merit $ there if she actually likes it. I didn’t realize it was so expensive. I knew it was expensive, but jeez. My SIL (and a few other alums) went on the tour with us. SIL said that when she went there (grad 1992) it was $32k a year and now they are saying $53,448 for this year’s cost of attendance. That does not include all of the other stuff you have to pay for which makes it approx $72,273 a school year. Yikes! My D19 is in love with the idea of getting out of TX and going back to CA where we came from. You would think that would light a fire for some SAT studying, right? Our USC tour guide had so many stories of how this friend and that friend are traveling to X country, etc. etc. it sounded so fantastic. It better be for all that tuition!!!
This seems like a good time to re-up a post I made on this thread last July (post #3270):
This is an article about college tours that I found quite interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/well/family/skipping-the-college-tour.html?_r=0. I’m definitely NOT advocating skipping the college tour, but it’s something to keep in mind DURING the tour. People have a high confidence in their ability to quickly size up and intuitively grasp what a college is like, but that confidence probably isn’t warranted.
I’ve read quite a few comments here on CC where somebody comes back from a college tour and says something like: the students at this college are not friendly or not collaborative – they were all walking around with headphones on looking at the ground. The person probably saw 1 or 2 people doing that but then the mind fills in the rest. Or you note how 1 or 2 students are dressed and categorize it as hipster, preppy, pretentious, grubby, etc. You feel confident that you’ve sized up the campus culture! But in reality you could be totally off base and have been influenced by one or two random encounters.
It’s hard to make a choice from too many options so it’s natural to want to rule out options and narrow the field just to make the process of choosing less stressful.
S19 has been on one college tour (Pitt) but seemed to like it enough to try to meet their SAT/ACT score requirements for merit by testing again. I have him signed up to visit Maryland (College Park) - very close to home - next month, and I might schedule a trip to VA Tech for spring break. My mental list also includes Delaware, NC State, and “maybe something in Ohio or NY.” His mental list includes “I just turned 16 a few months ago and college is way down the line.” He is currently interested in majoring in ??? and does not appear to be thinking of any of this. I’ll give him a little nudge if/when his December ACT score ever comes in.
@Corinthian The college tour recaps that categorize students as “cold” and “unfriendly” based on the headphones thing bug me so much. Do people expect random college students to strike up conversations with visiting HS students and their parents in between their classes? It’s perfectly normal for teenagers to listen to music while walking around campus!
All of the campus tours we’ve done took place when school was on recess. The only place that was still pretty active even in the middle of summer was UCLA. I am mainly trying to get my D19 to try and be interested in figuring out where she might like to go. I have to admit to some envy of those of you with kids who have ideas of where they want to go!
So d had 3 days of school last week (Friday was cancelled because of windchill) that weren’t too awful. This week is full of tests and quizzes every day, multiple some days. I’m so glad it wasn’t like that when I was in school.
@jellybean it’s not too late for your daughter to find out where she might like to go to college. She’ll start receiving all sorts of mails and emails from schools soon. Son19 has started to get some already from schools he has visited or expressed an interest in. I helped him devise a short list of some schools where I though he might like to attend, with some safety type schools, some matches and some big reaches. He added a new school to his list the other day. He visited Northeastern to see his brother and they checked out the new engineering building- he loved it! I doubt he’ll end up going there, and he might not even apply ( or get in!), but it was good for him to see a different place.
My wife and I try not to talk to him too much about " his list" and all that, as a lot of it hinges on final sat/act scores and also the possibility of some athletic recruiting. He is not sure what he wants to do. But by the summer he’ll need to figure it out, and by then I think he’ll have a better understanding of it all.
We were lucky enough to be able to visit all of DS16s choices several times each as he applied to only instate schools. We didn’t have to fill in too many blanks.
@RightCoaster we have plenty of mail and email coming from all kinds of colleges but she doesn’t care about any of it! I had an extra plastic file box and file a lot of the college info we picked up at the college fair and in the mail. We live in TX, I don’t think there are a ton of in-state choices. I was flipping through some book I got at the library about colleges and there are some states with TONS more choices, especially Pennsylvania. D is not interested in snow, so PA is out of the question! I don’t know much about the east coast, being from CA, so what do I know. D has no “list”, even with me trying to drag something out of her here and there. I’m trying not to be too annoying, but I think I’m already there! I guess there are some kids who just don’t really want to deal with it, mine included. I am a huge “planner” type, so I like to be prepared for anything. D, not so much.
My son17 did not really have a solid list put together until Fall of senior year. He really didn’t care that much where he went to be honest. He probably would’ve been happy at a zillion schools.
@JenJenJenJen S19 is like that too. Loves whatever school he saw last. I guess it’s better than not finding schools he likes? Part of me wonders if it’s just the pleaser in him. Maybe he’s afraid to speak up and say what he likes and doesn’t like. If that’s part of it, I hope he will become more opinionated once this search gets more serious. He did hate Oberlin so I guess he’s not open to every single school we saw…
If your kids are finding multiple schools that they like all is good! It will make your final decisions easier because there won’t be a “bad” choice. Getting set on one or two schools can be a tricky situation. I’m fortunate that so far neither on my kids thought in terms of “dream school”. Neither of my kids have visited a school and just said “wow, this place is so great! I want to come here.”. Maybe if they saw UCLA lol. It’s hard for kids to know what “the best” place for them is. My kids don’t sit up in their rooms all day watching youtube videos of campus tours and reviews or reading glossy school brochures.
We found it harder to decide what the true worth of education was/is. Full pay private vs in state flagship vs moderate selective with merit. We ended up with full pay private and I can’t say that I feel that it is going to totally worth the financial outlay. It’s a lot of $$.
I think son19 will have similar choice to make, it will be interesting to see which path he takes.
@RightCoaster Ha. Youtube videos of campuses - not. S19 is so busy and I think a little nervous about this going away to college thing. He’s a little in denial. He’ll spend a little time talking to me about it and he will briefly look at his email from schools if I ask him to do so, but I think he’s waiting until summer to wrap his brain around the fact that decisions aren’t that far away.
Ugh. A lot of money. I cannot imagine writing the $35,000 check twice a year. Like buying a new car every six months with cash. I think my husband will throw up if he has to write those checks and will make me do it. Maybe, just maybe, they will be a little smaller than that.