What would you differently do the second time around?

Parents Forum
1

As I come close to the end of my D’s senior year I am already getting anxious/worried about my second child’s journey to his junior/senior year and preparing for colleges and their apps.
Made me wonder: what will I do differently? Besides the obvious, that each child (even siblings) are very different people, I feel so much more informed as we head through his journey.

I think he has more options since he doesn’t have a specific area of study he is interested in.
I will suggest that he applies to more than 1 state school.
I will suggest that he apply to more schools that are known to give a good amount of merit scholarship.
Those are a few things plan on doing differently.

How about you? What will you do differently?

2

The biggest thing I learned was to be prepared for anything. My S, (my first kid through the process) applied EA to a few schools including his top choice. Mentally we were completely geared up to be done with the process by December. But…deferrals changed that. We had to re-adjust quickly and he added in another two applications very of last minute. All ended well but we were unprepared when things did not go as we naively anticipated they would. For my D we were all geared up for a long process and she got in to her top choice ED. So, you never know I guess.

3

Try to get at least one school with rolling admission on the list. It was so nice to have at least one admission in the fa,l. Both kids went to their first admission (and stopped applying!). My niece went to her first admission. Nephews were also admitted in the fall and while they didn’t go to their first admission, did go to an early one and were decided by Christmas.

4

I would suggest applying to early action schools. My D just went through the application process and although she is still waiting for some RD schools to post their decisions she is relieved to know that she has places to go. Many of the students in her high school did not do that and now have to wait until mid-march to know if they got in. One friend was rejected by her early decision school and did not to any early action schools. She regrets that now.

5

Put more emphasis on SAT/ACT preparation. D’s test scores don’t match her GPA or difficulty in courses.

6

For kid #2, we researched more schools. Spent more time with Fiske, and worked harder to make sure she would be willing to attend every school on her list.

7

I would have nailed down every penny before sending off a single application.

Not “we think we can afford X”. But “we’ve got X dollars out of the 529; Y dollars from a savings account, z dollars from my paycheck”. And then stand back and see if it makes sense.

I know lots of people who say things like “well we can cut back”. Sure. Or “If we stop eating out we can pay our EFC”. Wow- that’s a lot of eating out. Or “we won’t take vacations once the kids start college” which is interesting logic- you haven’t been able to save a dime since you were married but you’re going to become Mr. Frugal now?

I’m done with colleges and grad schools and all the rest- but if I had one more kid I’d be doing a very granular financing plan showing how every year was going to get paid for. At a minimum, I’d have gone off to work every day grateful to have a job!!!

8

For the first D, I didn’t know the existance of Net Price Calculator nor this site. I didn’t know that the safety had to be not only academically safe but also financially safe. Very scary to think what if she didn’t get into her 100% need-met school!

Also my whole attitude is more mellow… little bit.

9

Find out more and very current information about merit awards. Some schools have shifted to more need-based. Others may say merit is potentially available to kids with certain stats, but with rising applications may make the bar for significant merit higher.

Apply as early as possible to rolling admission schools, especially to specialized programs, for the best shot at admission.

Check OOS publics for tuition. Tuition at some is not far behind privates and is rising fast.

Kind of glad I am done, even though I really miss having my kids home. It is hard to believe the degree to which tuition has risen between my first that was a freshman in 2007-2008 and now - a 38% increase at his school. Where once $50K seemed outrageous, many of the top privates are now over $60K.

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  • Apply for scholarships everywhere. Even if they say there's a 1% chance, you could be the 1%
  • Don't have any regrets about your final list. $70 now is nothing compared to a decision that ranges from $0 - $200,000
11

Last year, we had a very smooth process - low stress and almost fun for my daughter. It could use some tweaks. I already see some things to do in the first few posts.

I encouraged my daughter to be done with things early. Tests done by and asking for LORs in spring of her junior year. We made her school list based on her first two ACT scores while she studied to raise her score. She wrote a rough draft of her CA essay over the summer but she didn’t get it finalized until October. Then she submitted all her applications in mid-October. All but one was EA. So the college application process went very smoothly. Absolutely no complaints. I highly recommend EA or rolling to a range of schools.

Next time, I may encourage one more test in the fall of senior year but I can definitely improve on the financial side of this college thing. I will be more precise with the amount we can afford. I will strongly encourage (aka, force) my child to apply for scholarships of any sort, even the small local ones (unless he decides he wants to attend an in-state public). Things worked out very well for us this time but it could have been better.

12

“Put more emphasis on SAT/ACT preparation. D’s test scores don’t match her GPA or difficulty in courses.”

+1 on that one!! I didn’t discover CC until after the applications process was over with for my daughter.

13

Play into the “I love you,” nonsense. We really didn’t know that colleges track the emails they send to you as some kind of interest. Do you open them or forward them on to others? Really? This is so faulty. Student forwards them on to two cousins and someone else forwards them on to 22 cousins?

Some of these colleges are pathetic in their attempts to raise their yield.

14

After the first one, I told the others not to check that box on the SAT’s (or PSAT’s or ACT’s) that results in mailings and e-mails from umpteen colleges.

15

What I’d do differently for son #1 who applied in fall, 2011: nothing. We had no expectations (ok, maybe I was a little harsh telling him his safety was the community college, but we were homeschoolers and it was our first go around), he applied to 10 schools, with three being financial and admit safeties, and he fortunately got into all his schools including six reaches that meet 100% need. He’ll graduate from a top school debt-free.

What I’d do differently for son #2 that applied fall, 2014: have him apply to fewer schools (he applied to 23!) even though he had six different majors to which he was applying. I knew financially, the out of region Cal State schools were unaffordable. In retrospect, I would have taken three of those off the list. I would have taken one UC off the list (UCLA since they didn’t have his major of choice). I would have taken the schools that I knew would likely be unaffordable off the list even though they had his very first major of choice (explosives engineering at Missouri S&T, and Metallurgic Engineeing at SDSMT). In the end, he wasn’t interested in engineering at all! It’s so hard to know for some kids.

I would have taken off three of his reach schools. They were on for one reason only: they met 100% need, but none of them had his major.

That would have knocked the total of schools down to 14 schools, which for him, who had a lot of weaknesses to go along with his strengths, would have been the right number.

Oh, and I should have made him either apply for the full tuition scholarship at WPI or not applied at all since I knew, without that scholarship, it was not affordable. He refused to write the essays for the scholarship, and of course, the package wasn’t affordable.

Other than that, I think he did right by applying to a lot of schools since he was looking for just one affordable school. He ended up having about 6 affordable schools because of a yearly outside scholarship (which we thought he never had a chance of winning at all).

Sometimes, you just can’t know everything going into applications, so you do the best you can.

16

I completely agree with early test prep. If a kid can have satisfactory scores by the end of junior year s/he will be ahead of the game senior fall- more time to work on apps, keep up grades, engage in ECS, and have fun. Senior fall is just so crazy, the less they have on their plate the better because it is already full. Test prep can be exhausting for many kids.

1 Like
17

I only had one and won’t have a chance to do anything differently, but if I had to do it again, I would stress less about it and try to make the junior and senior year of HS less about college, college, college and more about living in the present. That said, I would also make my kid visit any schools that offered really nice merit aid (I’m talking a major scholarship, not a few thousand). My D had a fabulous merit offer from Rhodes that she did not investigate because she got into another school she liked better (in theory). We would not have forced her to go there if she did not like it, but I wish we had insisted that she visit (considering what we ended up paying, it would have been worth the price of a plane ticket to find out what she was turning down). I also should have made her go to the open house at the Honors College at Rutgers (again, she decided she didn’t need to). This is our fault, not hers. We should have made her investigate her options more thoroughly than we did, even if the outcome would have ended up the same.

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I would advise My child to apply to fewer reach colleges and spend enough time on the applications to these schools so that her supplemental essays were stronger. Do not apply ED to a school with a 5 percent admission rate and very little ED boost unless your child only needs a slight boost. Realize that the sequence of admissions decisions from February to March will mean a string of acceptances followed by a string of rejections. Do not let your child’s high school cancel years 3 and 4 of their chosen foreign language even if it means having to throw a fit. Consider sending your child to a private, selective high school if they are trying to get into top colleges

19

Love all the responses. They are each so very helpful. My S18 has very good test prep at his school. Starting in 9th grade they have the kids take the Psat. By now, after 10th grade psat, they take top scoring students and give them test prep classes beginning 4th qtr of 10th through 11th grade testing date. @lr4550, that’s what we encountered with D16, she was done with testing by end of junior year.
I totally agree with @NJSue, I will try to make less about college. I tend to do that with him since most of the time I’m over the top with my first, D16.

I definitely like the EA school choice. It does give a sense of relief going into the new year and while waiting for March/April to come around.

At this time the double edge sword for my S IS that he doesn’t have an area of study in mind. So the choices of schools could be endless. D16 applied to 12 schools and I thought those were too many. I can’t imagine adding more. @sbjdorlo how did you manage to stay sane throughout that time?

We will definitely have to research the financial side of the colleges more thoroughly.

20

Is your DS , who I’m guessing is a Sophomore, one of the top scoring PSAT students?
Even if he is not, he can do PSAT prep outside of school that can have a huge effect on his scores.