What exactly are individual top colleges looking for?

melvin123
Wed, 07 Jun 2017 00:19:31 +0000

@compmom , I can’t disagree with you more about waiting until second semester Junior year. I think that puts kids at a huge disadvantage to their peers who have been thinking about this for a while.

We started college tours the beginning of Sophmore year, which allowed us to visit a lot of schools while students were present. If we waited until second semester Junior year, my daughter would have had to visit during the summer when no students are present. That’s a huge disadvantage.

My child also took her standardized testing in Sept of Junior year, and did well enough that she was finished and was able to spend her time on her classes and ECs Junior year rather than adding one more thing to stress about. This was a true gift. Her friends who started second semester Junior year struggled with overload and also had to take fewer ECs.

She also had to take Subject tests. It was disappointing that we didn’t know about the need for these until Mid-sophomore year because she should have taken the Bio test at the end of Freshman year since she’s thinking about being a bio major and isn’t taking AP Bio until senior year (so taking the Bio SAT 2 at the end of the class is too late).

I also wish we were more aware of summer programs for HS students; it would have been beneficial to start doing these as a rising sophomore. Ok, so this isn’t a strict “thinking about college” issue, but I found out about most of these opportunities during my child’s Junior year. If we had known earlier, she could have been engaged in more opportunities, which isn’t just helpful for creating a resume spike, but is more importantly helpful for helping kids decide what they are interested in.