Ah, that one! It got discussed in depth on a CC thread somewhere a while back, and the general consensus seemed to be that in most cases the methodologies of the underlying studies are, to put it gently, lacking.
Basically, this summary oversimplifies the picture and doesn’t even consider possible confounds.
ETA: Not to mention that the definition of “elite” in all this is, as always, quite slippery.
Do any of you feel like your son or daughter is fully vested in this process yet? I just mentioned to S19 that I’m adding UNC to our visits for spring break and he just told me that he has no brain space for any of this college stuff. He trusts me and his dad to come up with options for him. For those of you with older kids, did interest in college pick up over the summer when there’s more time? Or maybe this is just the way it works. Maybe most parents have to lead the ship on this one.
I’m reading The Gatekeepers this week. One big takeaway so far is that it’s really important to stand out to the local AO if possible. At this point, I’m also wondering if our guidance office has GCs that know certain colleges better. I’m going to ask our GC if any of her colleagues know any of the AOs from the schools on S19’s list and if he should get to know those GCs so that they can speak up for him. Also, at least according to the stories in this book. colleges do indeed compare kids from the same high school. So, S19’s concern about who is applying where is founded in facts. I don’t think it will be a huge issue for him since I’d like to think these smaller colleges would like to start getting more kids from his high school (so far only about 30 out of 700 go to LACs and almost all are athletes). I’m devouring the book and recommend it for anyone who hasn’t read it yet! (Wait until you read about how this Wesleyan rep reads all of his apps out on the cold three-season porch of his house to keep him awake through the six week, 12-hour day reading period!)
Oh gosh that’s us, @homerdog
Kiddo had an initial burst of enthusiasm and he is enjoying all of the mail from colleges he knows he doesn’t want to go to, but when I bring up visits he wavers between apathetic and hostile. He has a lot on his plate, though.
The snow days have wreaked havoc on the rehearsal schedule so we are likely to have some 3 to 9 PM rehearsal days in the near future. We expect that during tech week, but not quite yet. The teacher put together an ambitious schedule and the ensemble is huge.
I don’t have to worry too much about competition in applications at our school. Most of the top kids (anecdotally) have ambitions that stop at the state border, and my kid wants to get away from home.
@homerdog Um, that’s a resounding NO from our end. As far as S19 is concerned, there is no “process” yet. He’s finished with testing, but that is the extent of his progress towards college.
I don’t have experience going through the process with a high stats kid targeting highly selective schools, but I can certainly understand a parent leading the way under those circumstances. There was not a lot of effort on anyone’s part to locate the right school for my D16 with average stats. We visited her school in the summer before senior year while on vacation. My gut told me she would end up there. She ended up there. They had the major she was interested in, and the vibe was right. She met the scholarship cutoffs so she was sure she would be admitted. It couldn’t have been much easier and she’s happy.
S19 has something called “Junior Focus” day at school today and can attend four out of 12 possible sessions on post-high school planning and opportunities. I’ll see if I can pry something out of him later.
He did talk a little bit last night about “wishing he could make money with music,” so I think I may start searching for places where he could do a double major. If anyone has any experience with a music major for a kid who is not a prodigy, I’m open to advice. The music major forum on CC is not very helpful for kids who aren’t qualified for top 10 programs.
@ninakatarina between apathetic and hostile :))
@homerdog my son17 had no interest in researching or visiting colleges. He wanted to go to college, he just didn’t want to deal with the search and all of the time that it took. He filled out some sort of college identifier survey and it gave him some initial results. He asked us to go through it and pick the schools we thought would work best for him. We did some visits, but he was bored at every single one. The best visits were when we just showed up unofficially and walked around on our own, so we could leave whenever he wanted. Some school we were there for a few minutes, some we stayed longer and even revisited.
We gave him a list of about 12 schools, and he dumped about 4 of them off immediately. He then applied to those schools. Still he was not particularly interested.
It wasn’t until the spring of senior year that reality set in and he had to pick something. He talked with his friends a lot and what their plans were, and adjusted his criteria accordingly. In the end he wanted to go to a school in a city, where he could study abroad, not play a varsity sport, close to home, in a school with a "good: reputation that other kids thought was desirable. So the choice ended up being simple in the end, we were happy he got in and that was that.
Son19 is not particularly focused on any particular schools either, but he also wants to attend some sort of “decent” private school. Most of his friend group are looking at school like NEU, BC, Columbia, NYU, etc so he is compelled to look at similar level schools. He does understand the financial impact of his choices though. Up to this point he has done very little research on schools either, other than looking at some mail, and we’ve visited a few schools. But he is far from having a concrete #1 choice at this point.
Alright then. Seems like S19 is par for the course. @RightCoaster I totally get what you’re saying about not being particularly interested until the student has to actually choose. I guess our jobs are to make sure they apply to a list of schools that they will be happy choosing from in the end. Let’s hope my husband and I know S19 well enough to make a smart list.
Hi! I’m another jumping in on the late side, I guess. S19 is my second to go through the process, but his needs and wants are very different from his brother’s so it is like starting from scratch.
While he seems interested in attending college and knows what he wants to study, his interest in process of getting there is pretty meh right now. He is taking the SAT in March but I don’t think he has done any prep yet, and we are taking him on his first tour this weekend.
I have done most of the legwork up to this point in terms of taking his interests and parameters and coming up with a list. He did sit down with me one evening and we talked briefly about each school and he cut the list by about half. But I really have to catch him in the right head space to have any productive conversation about the college process; I am hoping when school is over he will be more open and relaxed about it in the summer months.
I think it has been a shock to him (and to me in certain instances) seeing how competitive some schools are; he’s a bright kid who has always done well but expectations are in the process of being adjusted in terms of reach/match/safety for sure.
Question: if he takes an SAT practice test, how accurate is it in predicting the score on the real thing? He has yet to pick schools for the 4 free reports and and this might help him decide where to send them. Thanks!
D has been surprising me lately showing a tiny bit of interest in college. She still doesn’t even glance at the mail or emails she gets not has she cracked the ACT practice book, but she has mentioned college a few times so that is a start. We are trying to figure out how to visit a bunch of schools without missing too much school (poor thing has missed three days being sick since Christmas already!) and she hasn’t been too annoyed when I talk about it.
D went out with a friend who is incredibly motivated and they talked about their plans a little bit. The friend is super active in Science Olympiad so has many friends who are seniors and some who are already in college and that got her more interested in the whole process. D came home from that night talking a little more and even talked about UF which was always a big no for her. She said the friend has visited a few times (not tours, just visiting the kids she knows there so much more fun than a regular visit!) and it wasn’t as bad as she expected. The kids at UF reported that they don’t see the other kids from our high school very much but it is kind of nice to know they are there if you wanted to see them. Wow, I could have never told you that D!! :)) She mentioned UF again last night in a way that made it sound like she was almost considering it. I still think it will never be at the top of her list (way too big) but I like that she is at least trying to imagine herself different places.
Oh - she also saw Ladybird and that got her talking a little bit. Shoot - I started to explain what she talked about after the movie but then realized it would be a big spoiler!
@bearpanther welcome! S19 studied over the summer and took four practice tests with real time constraints. His August SAT was just a little higher than his last practice test two weeks prior. As long as your son is taking the practice tests straight through and only using the time allotted, his real score should probably be close to his practice scores. Be sure to use the official SAT practice tests. There are eight available on the College Board website. Print them out (or buy them in a book on Amazon) and have him do them on paper, including filling out the bubbles. Some were harder than others according to S19 but, if you take a few, you’ll get a good idea of how your S will do.
I suggest doing a practice and then going over the wrong answers with a fine tooth comb. Your S needs to understand his mistakes in order to increase his score on each test.
You’re not too late by any means, @bearpanther . October senior year is late, now should be fine.
The accuracy of a practice test probably depends on the kid, I would think. Some people react much differently to practice conditions than they do to the real thing. Practice is always useful, of course, but your kid could be one of the ones who panics when faced with an actual page, or he could be one of the ones who buckles down and finds something inside greater than what he had before.
How was his PSAT? I have read that that’s sometimes a decent gauge, although they grow so much between October and March of junior year it might not be.
I know some parents let their kids handle the whole thing. I think that strategy is OK if the kid has an understanding of the whole process and is focused on a few schools of interest., and has the time to sit around and read Fiske guide and search the internet for other ideas.
My kids don’t seem like those kind of kids. They have little downtime. We don’t baby them, and they are fairly independent , but they just don’t have the interest in researching colleges and figuring it all out. it’s also hard for the kids to know if they actually stand a chance of gaining admission, it the price os OK, if travel logistics work etc.
I think it’s been easier for us to ask the kids if they had any particular school they wanted to add to their list, and then help them identify some other schools we thought would be decent all around fits. We’ve told each kid they have to apply to two state universities as safeties, they could apply to a couple of hard to get into schools, and then we’d add some schools that work well for them based on their interests/gpa/scores.
In the end, when the kids have to start actually choosing is when it all shakes out. Some kids decide to stay close to home. some decide going to be state flagship with their friends will be fine and cheap too, others want to go to schools with more “prestige” than their peers, some want to escape far away. Next winter after EA round is over and before RD round comes out is a stressful " what if". kind of time. Then all of the decisions come in and it’s a full on rush to decide, it goes by fast and then there is a sense of calm.
@RightCoaster Ugh. Serious only have one EA school on the list. There really aren’t that many out there for a kid who isn’t really considering state schools as his safeties. (He has some LACs in mind for his safeties that should shake out just fine for him in RD.) March of 2019 will be a nail biter.
Am a parent of a 2018 graduating senior, but recently read a book that I wish I had read a year ago, maybe some of you have read. If looking for another perspective on the process you all will be facing this next year, check out "where you go is not who you’ll be by Frank Bruni. Addresses some of the myths of equating success or doing right by your kid by putting too much stock in the rankings, or keeping up with the Jones’ mentality (i.e., peers and friends are applying to these top schools, therefore so will I…). The author, through stories of students, parents, counselors, university deans and provosts…, speaks to the overall benefits of broadening the search to include many types of schools, both small and large, instate, Honors programs, and OOS if one can afford it. Not to say that smaller “top 30” schools may not be the right fit for some students, but it can be helpful to keep an open mind to many options out there.
Strong suggestions to consider the emotional as well as academic factors upcoming, the pressure parents sometimes overdo, and keeping a balance between advising kids vs. over-functioning. Personally, we began looking at schools and doing some tours sophomore year, on the way to a destination, camp, summer program or what not. Some of the orientations can be a little intimidating to a sophomore in my opinion. I think Junior year is probably a better time to get started, although some may be interested earlier.
@homerdog I definitely feel that my D19 is not fully invested in this yet. I’m driving the process of touring our in state public universities. She’s getting emails and snail mails from OOS privates. But so far I don’t see evidence of anything beyond a superficial interest in those. Meanwhile I’d prefer she stay in state so I’m proceeding with tours of those. She mentioned yesterday that she got an email from Harvard. Why is Harvard emailing my 3.5 gpa, no hooks, few EC’s kid? Ostensibly the email is about their great financial aid. But of course it makes her think, “maybe I should apply to Harvard.”
D15 came to us and said here are the 4 schools I want to apply to and why, is that ok? and then filled out apps and turned in by September, and I wasn’t really involved in the process until decision time came when she had gotten into 3 of the 4 and we went on visits and gave our opinion (and then she did what she wanted which is working out great)
D19 its a different experience we’ve been actively talking about college for a year. She gets frustrated easily. Mostly because she doesn’t really get a choice so to speak. Her chosen major is musical theatre. If fit were just about academics she knows what her #1 choice is and she is a 100% match there. Unfortunately for theatre majors, you have to get in academically and then you have to audition for the program and most programs audition between 300 to 1000 people for 10 to 20 spots. Making all the programs even at the smaller lesser known schools like getting into the Ivies.
@Corinthian got the Harvard email too. Ridiculous. Why would they send out emails to anyone? Like kids don’t know about Harvard!?
@ninakaterina, he doesn’t have a junior year PSAT, but his school has everyone take it in 10th grade. So fall of 2016 he got a 1200 (630 R, 570 M) with no prep–they are just supposed to take it as a learning experience I guess.
Of the 8 schools currently on his list, 3 are SAT considered if submitted, and one doesn’t take the scores at all. Of course his list may change a bit once he gets his results.
I will really try to get him to take a practice test.
Thanks for the welcome @homerdog!
@RightCoaster I hear you. My son is interested but this is a lot for him to take on. He wants my involvement. So I am serving as his College Administrative Assistant. He gave me parameters for schools including distance from home, desired major, and interests. We talked finances. He wants to work within the budget and avoid debt. With all of this information, I pulled together a list of schools and scheduled visits. And I made a spreadsheet with school data and info.
Now, this is my S19. He needs a bit more of a collaborative college planning experience. S21 is my kid who taught himself how to ride a bike. I have no doubt that, in two years, he will present me with a list of schools to visit along with a spreadsheet he created himself. 
It all depends on the kid.
I actually enjoy playing with spreadsheets and variables and google searches, so being the college admin helper has been fun for me. I have a spreadsheet on my work computer that I spend my day happily updating. Spending time fiddling with the spreadsheet focuses my anxiety on something I can control and makes me feel more in charge of the process than I actually am.