@jellybean5 DS16 received the meningitis B vaccine. As a healthcare professional, I am very pro vaccines. Last year on move out day , I received an email from my son’s school that a student in his dorm had tested positive for meningitis B, was hospitalized and that they were treating the people that he had been in close contact with prophylactically. If you ever receive an email like that, you’ll be relieved that your child was immunized.
@jellybean5 You can’t look at this as purely a decision of whether the vaccine is harmful or not, you have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each course of action, because both have risks. In my mind, the risk of not vaccinating FAR outweighs the risk of vaccinating. It is also vital for my own peace of mind. One year, I didn’t get my older daughter the flu shot. She got the flu and suffered terribly. I vowed I would never let that happen again. I am well aware that she could still contract the flu even with the vaccine, but at least it won’t be MY fault. I never want to feel that my daughter’s contracted something that I could have prevented.
My kids definitely got the various meningitis vaccines. Meningitis is scary. Death rates are like 10-15 per 100 infected and college dorm-life years is a high-risk time to get it. Yep, definitely got the kids that one.
A couple more. This is for the parent not the kid. Your kid has a hard Junior, but the parent as ‘administrative assistant’ has a lot of work too. Try to get a jump on it without letting your kid know that you are stressing about this so early—because it will probably freak them out.
Start getting a handle on the financial side
- Start running Net Price Calculators and getting a handle on how much your different options would cost.
- Depending on where you live, you’ll have different ‘tuition-exchange’ options (states where you can get in-state tuition or 1/2 off or something like that). Do some research on that so you know what your options are there.
- Get a handle on what your financial strategy will be. Do you need to target ‘meets 100% need’ or ‘merit’ aid schools to bring costs into your budget? Do you need to target a full-ride, half-ride options?
- Even if you can pay your EFC, you’ll want to be aware of the amounting of discounting (not paying sticker-price) that happens. Skim the 2017 3.0-3.4 thread where the acceptances with financial aid and merit awards are listed for each student:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1871275-parents-of-the-hs-class-of-2017-3-0-to-3-4-gpa-p266.html - Poke around on the admissions pages/financial aid options of your in-state options. Get a good handle on how much those cost you and what the admission process is like. You can do that now before you are busy with a bunch of junior year stuff.
Start thinking about college tours and when/how that’ll happen
- How you will do that given your family’s time, money and other constraints? Are you going to do big trips over longer breaks complete with flights, rental cars, hotels? Ca-ching. Or are you going to road-trip from home? Or are you going to only visit local options?
- In sophomore year, do some college visits at a number of your local options so you get a handle on what tour and admission sessions are like before heading off to farther away places. Try to get a friend to go with your kid if they are scared (many kids are nervous and scared the first time they go on college tours). Also if they have a friend with them then you can go in a different tour group and not embarrass them by asking a bunch of questions.
- If your kid refuses to go, then well you can go by yourself. You’ll learn a lot by going to a couple info sessions for a big U and a small LAC. Doesn’t really matter re the school, more the type of school this early.
Do you think your kid will have special admission requirements?
Engineering, any performing arts requiring auditions or portfolios, athletics recruiting that sort of thing? Definitely then you need to start researching what is involved in that now if you haven’t already.
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@Redslp we did SAT test prep in the late summer before Jr year . We also began to form a list of potential schools and looked at requirements for admission including years of certain subjects, test requirements and if they interest was considered in admission.
@liska21 Thanks for the thorough response. I’ve been working on the financial piece. I’m not sure when we’ll be able to squeeze in the college visits with our school schedule. DS isn’t very interested in college tours at this time- with the exception of MIT, UC Davis and Berkeley- which we’ve already toured. He’s interested in CS, Math and Engineering so he will be casting a wide net and it’s probably better for him not to get his mind set on any one particular school. Location, size and weather are not as important to him as the quality of the program.
Our list includes: Tippy Meet Need Schools; Merit Aid for High Stats Schools; UCs and Cal States as well as some OOS schools like Purdue, WPI, GA Tech and Case Western.
Just got back from visiting four campuses in two days. Phew! Ambitious but a good experience for D, who now has a better handle on what size school works for her and what she’s looking for in a school. Our most productive visits yet. We only took two official tours/info sessions because two campuses were return visits. We also had one-on-ones with two professors on those campuses, which REALLY enhanced the experience. I was inspired to arrange these by a friend who makes visits “tailored to” her son’s interests. Made sense to me. So we talked to professors, visited a student art exhibition, and also attended a choir concert at a third campus. Put a lot of miles on my car and we ourselves walked about 7 miles a day, and D missed a day of school, but all well worth it. Really glad we got these in before the school year ended too…was informative to see students walking around, run into a class sitting outside, etc. That goes without saying I guess.
Also pro vaccine here. I have a PhD in experimental psychology and understand research methods, so I trust the process. All three of my kids are fully vaccinated. My third child is diabetic so I take illness vulnerability seriously.
Still have my pet peeve of family members with 1990s experiences providing seemingly endless commentary about college admissions. Sigh. Also funny because family members contradict each other too. I guess they all keep themselves entertained…
@Redslp I’d be tempted to advise that you should start the college visits/search process the summer before junior year, but I also think that this early start only works if your child is interested. The general conversations about interests, and/or visiting schools in your city, may be worthwhile but honestly I feel like the process is most informative and productive when your child is ready and also has a well-articulated idea of interests, goals, desired school features, etc. Test prep may be a different story. I made the mistake of having D do a test prep class in April-May of her sophomore year but then she didn’t take the test for months after that, so it was wasted time and effort. It wasn’t that expensive but still was almost a total waste. So whatever you do, arrange for a test not long after whatever intensive prep you choose to do. That’s one “lesson learned” I have already. I’m sure we’ll experience various additional ones as these process goes on…
Is anyone else starting to have the upcoming “lasts” feel all too real? S19’s final band concert of the year was last night. It is a tradition at his school that the band and choir instructors call up each senior to the front of the stage and say something about them. It’s a really small school so they can do this without having the concert last for six hours. LOL!
Anyway, some friends were sitting behind us. We’ve known them since the kids were in preschool. Their son was one of the seniors and mom was bawling her eyes out. Not quite ugly crying but close to it.
I thought “oh, crap, that will be me a year from now.” 
This past weekend was the senior play. It’s the capstone project for the magnet program, the last time we will be seeing many of these kids.
One girl was in DS’s first high school production 3 years ago, and she slapped him when he told her to stop yelling at the makeup girl, and DS reported her and she was kicked from that production. Fast forward to this year and they are best of friends, he almost asked her to prom (on a friend basis), they share so many silly jokes and classes, he cannot imagine getting through next year without her.
Next year it will be my kid’s turn to do the capstone project. They have been discussing plays that fit their class’ size and talents and they are very far from picking a project. Kiddo is pondering whether he might step back and direct instead of acting in it. Adults don’t help with anything except handling the legal rights and purchasing materials within the budget.
So many good kids in this senior class. I’m going to miss them too. I’m not at all fond of the sophomores, but a bunch of the freshmen seem pretty OK.
@infinitewaves Oh yes! I’ve been enjoying the college search process so much with my daughter, but I keep thinking how next year is going to be a long anguished process of saying goodbye. All the upcoming lasts are just about killing me. I keep wondering how this all happened so fast.
I just made a yearly doctor appt for S19 and the nurse said, “so he’ll be a senior next year?” It took me a beat to say “yes”. Ugh.
I’m in my thirteenth straight year at our elementary school, with my youngest in her last year there. Thirteen years is such a long time and I’m definitely the “Been there the longest” mom at the school – I go back to when D19 entered their preschool program. So this year has been a year of “lasts” for me on that campus. High school has been an absolute blink of an eye for D – I can’t believe how fast this has gone. She’s been saying that she herself can’t believe she’ll know her college destination in less than a year. When I visit schools with her, there’s a part of my brain that experiences it as if I were the one about to start my undergraduate years. Time really feels strange and fast to me most of the time…sigh. Even the summers used to seem so long, and now I’m looking at our family’s calendar for this summer and thinking gosh, there’s not a ton of time to work with here. It’s going to go fast too.
I hear you all on the last times that are coming. I’ve been thinking about what it will be like this time next year. I’ll be relieved to know the outcome of the whole process, and I’m sure we’ll be excited for D, but I can also imagine the feeling of impending loss.
@ninakatarina, we will also miss the seniors from drama! I’ve watched them grow as actors and people for six years. But it is great to see D19 and her posse getting ready to step up and lead the productions and be role models for the younger grades.
The sad feelings of “last things” only hang for a bit. I had some of those feelings last year, but now son17 is just finishing his first year of college, blink of an eye. I didn’t get sad at any big events like graduation or senior night at sports, but we went to a banquet and my son won an award and I was so happy and sad all at once and was caught off guard. After that I was fine.
I’m sort of stressed out because son19 is going to have to make up his mind soon if he wants to commit to a school for a sport and start sending all of his school/grades info in on 7/1. He’s nowhere near making a final decision and I don’t think he’s going to have much time to process it all in the next 2 months. But the coaches are going to want him to decide asap so the pressure will mount. Once he decides though, it will be a big relief I think.
We’ve actually had a fairly relaxing last 2 weeks here, but now that we are in March it officially starts getting bonkers until the end of June. Like totally bonkers. I need to get mentally prepared.
Senior night was last night at S’s soccer club. Yeah, strange to think that’ll be S19 up on the screen next year. But even stranger that that guys you ‘just’ graduated will be juniors in college next year. My D16 will be a junior in college next year! Ack.
I’m getting close to the ‘cannot talk with anyone in real life about colleges’ phase. Seems like every 1/3 conversation has a statement like ‘Colorado? But the only good school in Colorado is Colorado College.’ That is a direct quote from this weekend. I did protest but it landed on deaf ears. Last weekend’s quote was ‘Minnesota? Meh the only good school in MN is Carleton.’ Shoot me now. The other 1/3 say ‘Why would your S go out of state?’
Frustrating day with large public school GC. We are in the south, and RPI doesn’t have name recognition in our High School. As it is on D19’s list, last December I sent our counselor the information to become a participating school in the $25K/yr Medal scholarship. Basically, if the nominated student is later accepted to RPI, the merit $$ is guaranteed. The fact that our HS wasn’t already a nominating school confirms to me that there hasn’t been much, if any, interest in RPI. Nonetheless, just because I brought the scholarship to the school’s attention doesn’t mean they are obliged to nominate D19. Since March, I debated and debated if it was appropriate to even ask about it again, but mid-April I caved and asked (email) if the counselor had received the nomination form. Crickets (silence).
As the deadline is May 1st, I sent another email Friday. GC just responded that she didn’t even know if the high school was approved to be a Medal school. Good grief. I checked the website of RPI months ago, so I know the school is listed now. Clearly, the nomination package is lost somewhere in that school.
Too bad D19 isn’t seriously interested in GT, but she will be required to apply.
@liska21 I’m with you on the hush hush about college lists. I just throw out a few college names and then say “and a handful more”. I’m already tired of people saying they never heard of Davidson or Grinnell. I get weird looks on William and Mary (a state school in VA? Then why not UVA?). And of course everyone assumes he’s appying to Northwestern because he’s a double legacy. If I say he’s not, the person looks at me knowingly, assuming he doesn’t have the stats.
S19 has added a few new ideas to the mix. Vanderbilt. Pomona. Claremont McKenna. Maybe even UNC. I have told him not not share any changes with his friends. As they all start to narrow down their lists, I can feel them questioning each other. I hope he stays out of that.
@InfiniteWaves - Usually this is a very difficult time of the year for me. I don’t know if I’m in denial or what, but I haven’t been hit with too much of the emotional stuff yet. This past weekend was Prom, and my parents came to stay so they could see S19 “all duded up” My mom started getting misty a few times, and I just told her to stop. I have very mixed feelings. My ex husband walked out just after S turned 4 and a week before my youngest daughter’s first birthday. While he’s still around and very involved in the parenting, I’m still just completely exhausted. S19 just got his license. It’s the first time in 13 years I’ve been able to ask someone else to go run an errand for me. My financial situation has been very difficult, so I don’t get to get out and do much other than just be chauffer, go-for and chief cook and bottle-washer for my kids. I’m tired of taking care of other people. I really, really am. On the one hand, the kids are my life, and I don’t know what I’m going to do without them. On the other, I am looking forward to having some more freedom and being relieved of some laundry and cooking duties.
I am wishing my husband was willing to hush hush on the college visits and applications. I understand, he’s proud that our kid has some ambitious schools to apply to. But I’m afraid he’s setting up unrealistic expectations and that he is putting the perception in the kid’s head that if kiddo doesn’t want to go to the ‘best’ school then he is somehow lesser.
My husband never went to college. He had plans to go into the military, but took a summer job out of high school at a construction company and by the end of the summer he had enough money to get his own apartment and buy a car and a boat. Can’t do that today on a construction salary. I’ve had to take on his share of the mental load of preparing for college.
But it meant that at the start of the process he hadn’t heard of a LOT of colleges. This can be good and bad. He doesn’t come in with the ‘safety school’ baggage that I’m seeing in a lot of my contemporaries but on the other hand he is more swayed by college advertising than I would like to see.
@Trixy34 I hear you with the mixed feelings. I don’t know who I am without my kid. I don’t know what I enjoy doing that doesn’t involve the things he is interested in. I can’t go back to the hobbies I had 20 years ago, I’m not going to take up knitting. I don’t have the emotional capacity right now to devote a lot of time to thinking about this, but I do think about it in the occasional quiet moment.