We visited two more farther away colleges (WashU and U Chicago) on a road trip as a family over fall break, and S27 visited a big state university (Purdue) by himself this week. We actually did have a productive conversation as a family last weekend about how each of us would rank a bunch of different considerations for college (which ones are really important vs kind of important vs. not important at all)–an idea that I got from the very helpful Your College Bound Kid podcast which I’ve been binging on during my commutes. I added a few additional categories to our lists (music and coaching/team in his sport) and then we all ranked our priorities and talked about the differences. During the long drive to the college visits, we also listened to some useful episodes on that podcast about the athletic recruiting process (with Connecticut College’s Andrew Strickler) which I think were helpful for all of us to hear.
I think those conversations were enough of a catalyst to get him researching schools and teams using various tools (niche.com, runcruit, NCAA rankings and TFRRS) in order to build a coach contact list for another round of schools (and/or recontact some of those that didn’t reply the first time around).
S27 also did the PSAT right before he went on 2 weeks of fall break. It didn’t sound like he was super happy with it, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
I think his school will actually be having a few conversations with the juniors here soon about the things they need to start thinking about for the college search. Very little support though (or at least support that isn’t where he needs to be at this point). His HS coach talked to the team a bit about the process of sending letters to coaches over break too, but he was probably already ahead of everyone else in the process, even the seniors.