Your 27 is very, very on top of it all! Kudos! My S27 has done nothing on the application front, despite some gentle prodding from me. (In his defense, he’s generally gone 12 hours/day with transportation + job, but that still won’t make this fall any easier. The only saving grace is that testing went well and is done.)
@stuffedtacos S27’s list is not finalized; he might be shifting directions (not entirely, but enough that the list might change) which I’m trying to take in stride, partially successfully. But for D25 we had one “parent choice” on the list in case she decided not to dance (it did not have a strong dance program), but it never got entertained because she decided to double major and include a BFA. We have not put restrictions on our kids, but I will say after D25 being a 7-8 hour drive away (1.5 hr flight), it’s really nice to have them be sort of close. I mean, D25 forgot her ID to get on the plane for Thanksgiving, so I hopped in the car and drove down to get her. (That makes it sound like it was a piece of cake. I drank a lot of coffee, turned the AC on full blast, listened to music, and crashed at a friend’s house at 3am, to get up and grab her at 7. Would not recommend, but it does make for a fun bonding memory.) And I know that for many of you 7-8 hours away is multiple states away; she’s still in state.
Are the rest of you parents picking colleges for your kids to apply to?
Well, only sort of. Last fall and into spring of this year, my kiddo chose the parameters for schools (size, climate, majors, etc). I did help do the preliminary research within her criteria. Initially I had around 18 schools. That was then narrowed further as she refined things (must have education program, etc). We then visited 7 schools. She threw out 2 of those. So, she’ll be applying to 5 as early action. So, technically I “picked” them, but nothing outside of her set of criteria, and honestly even adding schools at this point would be difficult because her set of criteria simply doesn’t align with many more schools!
I didn’t pick colleges for them to apply to, but did make recommendations based on my student’s criteria. Especially after we had visited 10+ schools, I had a sense of what they were drawn to and then suggested more based on that. Some of those schools have made the list and some haven’t.
In terms of limits - no, we have not set any. 27 can apply to any college they research and determine is a good fit, regardless of location, fees, etc.
I’ve definitely shaped the list because I found schools that are known to widely give merit for students with his stats and would be “affordable” (barely) if he gets that merit. But he’s chosen the ones he’s interested in and has also been encouraged to research other options on his own. We haven’t set a specific budget, but did tell him ultimately the cost would need to work. We are making him apply to the state flagship, which he doesn’t really want to do (because of the typical not entirely rational reasons kids don’t want to stay in state) but we told him he needed a safety that is an affordable option.
We didn’t put any restrictions, no. I have, in some manner, helped pick the list as I know a lot about schools, so I helped suggest schools, as did 27’s college counselor. However, I have not at all vetoed anything or made them apply anywhere. We have certainly advised on the wisdom of not applying to too many places, as A) it means a lot of essays, probably b) potentially TOO many choices in the end. (Their school also recommends no more than 12 unless there’s a good reason, though it doesn’t cap it). However, they picked their own parameters and size etc. etc. I do give advice on what we learned from our 25 search and our own experience…
I CAN see the sense in saying “just apply to the local UC” especially with no extra work. My kid also has some schools on the list near home. If they had only schools super far from home (say on the opposite coast or in UK), I might advise adding one w/i driving distance or closer, too, just in case, come spring they could have second thoughts on being super far. Not sure I would force it, but I get it.
Like @L_NewEngland I helped shape the list, mainly because S27 is so busy and seemed to do better with specific college research tasks (looking up athletic or academic matches) rather than trying to come up with a list from scratch. Last summer we went on an initial tour of 6 colleges that were a bit further from home but within driving distance. S27 wasn’t super excited about doing that many visits in a short time, but I thought that it would be helpful early on to see some different environments (urban, suburban, rural) and different sizes (small, medium, and large). For our big trip last summer, basically what I did was pick about 15 schools that would be accessible on an Ohio/PA loop and told him that he had to pick the 6 to visit, without any expectation that any of them would remain on the list. While we don’t have financial constraints, I do belong to a tuition exchange program so I told him that two schools on that list had to be from my list. On vacations when we where going to a part of the country where I thought there would be a potentially good match, we encouraged him to take a look. Last January I told him to pick a further away one-off school that was on his list to visit because I wanted to use one of his “excused absences” during junior year (they are allowed 2 days junior year and 2 days senior year for college visits).
As things have developed in his athletic recruiting, I helped him keep track of his communications and encouraged him to reach out (or reach back to) to new coaches at other schools that seemed to match his preferences as his times improved. A couple times, I had to explain to him how well-respected some of the small schools that were that were contacting him were because the view of college among his Midwestern ambitious peers is basically the Big 10.
The narrowing process to just a couple of official visits this fall is going to be challenging but will hopefully be all him though–it is just difficult because we have visited less than 1/2 of the schools on his current list, so he is going to need to balance seeing new schools vs. revisiting those that he likes from before. And he is going to need to do some culling for sure.
I did a lot of list-creating & -shaping for both of my sons; neither was interested in doing the initial research, and because they need financial aid (& the NPCs for us vary considerably) it was helpful for me to give them a list of schools that were financially possible & work from there. I kept reshaping as we visited & they got a better sense of what they liked. We let S25 apply anywhere he wanted, but he knew ahead of time that the financial aid package had to hit our number for the school (his #1 choice ended up being too expensive after acceptance).
Both kids agreed to apply to a few “mom picks” sight unseen as long as they didn’t have supplemental essays; for S25, those were schools where I thought he had a chance at merit or generous financial aid (one of these “mom picks” ended up being his #2 choice in the end). We also insisted that he apply to one of our state schools. Once he had acceptances, he could choose any school that hit our financial number. Planning to do the same with S27.
We didn’t put any geographical or other restrictions on them. I told them both up front that if they were interested in faraway schools, I would help them with the research & set up visits, but if they left the initial list up to me, it would mostly be schools within 3 hours of home. S25 did apply to a few schools 10+ hours away; so far, S27 has no interest in anything far.
I have helped two of my three kids who have been in this process so far shape their lists, but no restrictions other than financial. I did tell my S25 (the only one of my kids so far interested in applying to a long, long list of schools) that I really only wanted to pay no more than 10 application fees. I didn’t care if he applied to more if he paid the fee after that! As it turned out the extra he added beyond ten were ones where he got the fee waived in some way.
My mom put a lot of restrictions on me in where I could apply to schools back in the day, so I was pretty set on putting no geographical or “type of school” restrictions on my kids (again, other than financial of course).
My D22 was super intimidated of even starting the research process, and she told me she was pretty sure she wanted to stay within a 10-12 hr drive or less of home. Luckily she had a rarer major (food science), so I was able to quickly give her a list of all the schools within 12 hrs of home with her major, and it was only about a dozen schools! She looked at the list and from there picked 3 to visit and apply.
My S25 was completely in the drivers seat for his process with tons of research, making his own list, narrowing it down, giving us a long list of schools he wanted to visit.
S27 was happy to accept my help in me “curating” a list for him based on various factors. I gave him a list of about 20 schools to potentially consider, which he narrowed down quite a bit upon further discussion. Our family does have a “rule” that each kid needs to visit at least 3 schools just to make sure they are getting a breadth of understanding of their options. After the first 2 visits, I had to press S27 a bit to get him to think about which to visit next. We have one visit planned for this fall (during fall break), and one more school to maybe visit if we can find the time, as well as a school that S27 will only visit if he gets in and the finances work out – one that didn’t give S25 a very good package, but potentially it would work out better if S27 is offered a different scholarship.
So S27 already has his Iowa State acceptance in hand (yay for a safety school he is actually pretty excited about that opens its application early!). Then he will have either 3 or 4 other schools he will apply to, unless he changes his mind and adds more – which I don’t think is super likely for him. Iowa State is a great choice for his major (Mechanical Engineering), and we have a lot of personal connections in Ames – including the fact that D22 and her new husband are staying in the area now that she has graduated and has a job nearby! So we are totally fine and more than excited about it ourselves if that is where he ends up, but we want to make sure he isn’t just “defaulting” to an easy choice but picking it for himself.
I have helped D27 a lot with her list. She basically had not heard of any colleges at all before we started and had no idea where to start, so I’ve done preliminary research, then she looks, we discuss, and she decides whether to put something on the list or not. She seems happy enough with that process that she hasn’t added anything that I didn’t first suggest she look at – though she certainly has tossed out plenty of ideas I liked. I suppose I never added anything to the pre-list that we for sure couldn’t pay for. I don’t have any other restrictions that aren’t important to her too (trans-safe state), and she hates essays, so is more likely to drop schools than add them.
Got to see D27 for a quick 24 hours this weekend! I tried not to bring up college stuff but it came up while we were in Target. She wants to add some more safeties to her list. She’ll apply up to twelve schools due to the competitive major. It was a good conversation and she’s excited, me, not so much lol.
Coming back after a 4 year hiatus. D22 just started Med School in a top school in TX after completing her 4 years of pre med at UT.
D27 will now start applying for school and she is also looking at pre med. She has done far more research around which colleges to apply than what D22 did back in the day. The good part is that we now have some expertise / experience in the area and are able to guide her. She is all excited and looking forward to Aug 1. Academically she is in the Top 1% of her class, 1510 SAT and hopefully with TX automatic enrollment process, she gets in without much efforts.
The list is slowly coming together, I think. I’ve stepped back a bit now that we’re done touring as I did a lot of the initial legwork. D27 had strong preferences about location, size, and a few other easy to filter criteria. I gave her a list of around 60 schools that met most or all of her preferences, and had hoped she would take the lead at that point. But I ended up being a bit of a victim of my own success: one of our first tours was to a safety I insisted we check out that wasn’t on her radar and she loved it. So after that, she was content to let me do all the visit planning no matter how hard I tried to get an opinion out of her.
I don’t think the final list will be too long. It was tough to find target schools; she’s a pretty high stats kid and a lot of those mid-range acceptance rate schools all seemed to have a fatal flaw to her (location, religion, size). I think the list will end up being a couple safeties and a bunch of reaches, which makes me a bit uneasy but she genuinely loves one of her safeties so I’m letting it be.
I’m letting her decide since she will have to be attending there. I’ve given a few suggestions but up to her to decide and fill out the apps. I’ve given her my budget so as long as she can win some merit aid at her options to get down to my budget, we’ll be good. She has already been accepted in some schools without even applying, some small schools in-state (not the flagship or sister campus) and Wingate with a pretty nice scholarship (but I have never heard of it). I believe I told her she can apply to about 9 schools but no more than 12 and no geographic restriction.
I actually went to Wingate for just two classes a million years ago. It was a cute campus and seemed nice. I enjoyed the classes (an English literature course and a psychology course).
July ACT scores are out, and D27 pulled her composite up by 4 points. I’m relieved. Not sure it’ll help for art schools, but it will absolutely help for the LACs to which she also intends to apply.
